National Pet Day, April 11, 2013
In honor of National Pet Day let's write come up with some ideas for picture books. First, come up with a list of pets - don't forget to include some crazy ones along with those more common pets:
Be specific on breed if you can. It will help an illustrator see the pet you are writing about.
Dog
Cat
Rabbit
Hamster
Fish
Bird
Ferret
Snake
Racoon
Tarantula
etc...
Now create a list of things that happen with pets - think of good things and bad things:
Get a new pet
Lose a loved pet (passes away, runs away, gets lost in the park, etc...)
Pet has babies
Pet is in a beauty pageant
Pet is in a walk event to raise $ for a local shelter
Dress up a pet
Pet breaks something in the house
etc...
Now take list 1 and list 2 and combine them in the most zany way that you can. Don't forget to use those two special words, "What if..." to create the premise for your story.
What if my pet racoon has a birthday party and my neighbor brings his pet dog?
What if I sneak my pet to school (uh oh, this has been done a LOT - skip this one)
What if I enter my pet bird in a local pet pageant but he can't sing? What is his talent?
What if my pet Lionfish gets his fin caught in a _______and our cat is the only one home to help?
etc...
Now write. There are no bad ideas. No wrong answers or combinations. The wackier, the better.
Have fun and post a comment if you enjoy this story starter.
So glad I read this one today!! Wonderful starters! Fun and who could resist a lion fish roaring at someone's dog?
ReplyDeleteAnother great story starter, Alison. I don't feel like I've read a lot of "sneak my pet to school" books - what are some titles? What if a boy wants to walk his pet to raise money for the local animal shelter... but his pet is a fish?
ReplyDeleteAwesome it was National Pet day. I didn't know. We just got our first dog on April 2nd. She's a cute part-lab puppy.
ReplyDelete