"Tell me a story." It's ten past eight, you've already used the wolf, the castle and the rocket this week, and tonight the machine stalls. It isn't a lack of imagination: "a story" is an impossible order, for you as much as for them. A good story idea isn't a finished tale waiting in a drawer — it's a trio of three short answers. A hero. A world. A desire.
Everything below stands on this tripod: who is the hero? — where do they live? — what do they want, more than anything? The first two answers set the stage; the third one builds the plot. The desire is what separates a story that lasts three pages from a story that lasts a month: a magical world without a quest runs dry in two evenings, while a hero who wants something precise gives every chapter a direction. The ten starters below come in that format — and your child is free to change all of it. That's rather the point.
1. The animals' postman. He delivers mail to foxes, whales and anthills. He has lost only one letter in his whole career — and he wants it back.
2. The girl who hears plants grow. She hears seeds yawn and roots snore. Her grandmother's garden has gone silent, and she wants to bring it back to bloom.
3. The matchbox dragon. A dragon the size of a matchbox, in a fishing port. His flame can barely light a candle; he wants to light the lighthouse.
4. The museum of lost things. Its keeper shelves single gloves, marbles and forgotten teddy bears. He wants to return one teddy to its owner — who left twenty years ago.
5. The seasick pirate. A captain feared on every ocean, sick the moment a ship moves. She wants to find the treasure without ever stepping on board.
6. The monsters' chef. His restaurant serves sock soup and thunderstorm gratin. He wants to win the kingdom's contest for the most disgusting dish.
7. The polite ghost. He says sorry when passing through walls and good night when creaking doors. He would like to scare someone — once, just once.
8. The sandman's sister. Her brother spilled the bag of nightmares over the town. She wants to gather every grain before sunrise.
9. The robot raised by hens. He pecks at bolts and broods over an alarm clock. Like everyone in the henhouse, he wants to learn to fly.
10. The house that shuffles its rooms. Every night the staircase changes its mind and the kitchen moves out. The child who just moved in wants to find their bedroom again.
Offer two or three, not ten — too many choices is just another blank page. And hold the starter the way you hold a door open: it's a starting point, not a rail. If the tiny dragon becomes a giant dragon who is afraid of fire, don't fix anything — it's the sign the story has just truly begun. An idea only belongs to your child once they have bent it; correcting their ideas is the one mistake that stops them.
A starter launches the first evening; what makes it last is the rhythm of the serial. Write the day's chapter in three hundred words, end it on one precise question — "which button does she press first?" — and keep the answer for tomorrow. The full method, founding questions and follow-ups included, is in Write a story with your child; the starter is only the spark, the chapter-a-night is the fire.
All of this works with a notebook, a starter and an adult available every single evening — and "every single evening" is what breaks most half-written novels. Fablier holds the pen for you: your child gives their hero, their world and their desire, the quill writes the chapter in vocabulary tuned to their age, and draws from its own plot the three questions that will be waiting tomorrow. Characters file themselves into the cast list, the book numbers its own chapters, prints, keeps.
What's left to your child is the only part that matters: deciding what happens.