Making Up a Place by Talking

A character needs somewhere to be. Just like inventing a character, inventing a place works best out loud first — your child imagining a place by answering quick questions, before any of it has to be written down or drawn.

Try this: ask a similar string of fast questions about a made-up place — "Is it inside or outside?" "Is it big or small?" "What's one thing you'd see there?" "What's one thing you'd hear there?" Then put the character from last time into this new place and ask one more question: "What is your character doing there right now?"

That single question — character plus place plus what they're doing — is actually the beginning of a whole story, even though it came from nothing but a game of quick answers. That's worth pointing out to your child directly: "You just started making up a story."