Story Structures

From my hopetogetitpublished book
from the chapter on
Story Structures

Have you tried the Action/reaction one below?

Here is another one. It is called Cumulative Structure or A Building Story. While it sometimes has an escalation--of sorts, it is one action followed by another action that is added to the first as a retelling refrain, and then another action with the first two actions retold at the end of the new action and this is repeated until the the story end comes when it all some how gets undone or reversed or merely repeated for the last time.

So this structure looks like this, A, B+A, C+B+A, D+C+B+A. and so on. I have only seen this structure done in true verse with end rhymes. It shows up in many songs.

The classic model is, "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." This is so popular it has been recreated in 100's of books, audio recordings, and animations that have been made of the story.

That story is well known example but there are many others. Another well known one is the song/sometimes book/animation, "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

One of my recent favorites is "My Sister Ate One Hare” by Bill Grossman, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. It is wonderful in the way Bill Grossman shifts the retelling refrain.

As you will note, they are not always about swallowing, but they are always about the process of collecting and the refrain of listing everything in the reverse order of the collection, a counting down of what has come before. There must be a theme of interest. It is fun as it builds and taxes the memory and makes so even pre-readers can join in the recitation of the story.

There is a fun offshoot of the structure that is found lists such as magical chants, or incantations, or advertising like "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce and tomato on a sesame bun," or movie titles "In search of the wow wow wiggle waggle wazzie woodle woo," or like my childhood favorite from Disney's "Mary Poppins", "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." These fall under the same spell binding effect that captures imaginations and creates the silly challenge of learning it for fun. So they can be fun to insert into any story.

Give this structure a try, it is almost too easy. But there-in lies the challenge, make it worth reading and fun! The rules are above. Have fun.