A secret about
Stories 

When I was growing up, everyone around me was good at telling stories. Mom told magical stories of her childhood. Dad told funny stories that cracked us up. Grandpa could tell stories like Mark Twain. My aunt could do all the voices in her stories (she was an actress). My sister could tell you the plot of any story she ever read. Even my little brother could spin stories of people with fantastic names he made up.

Everyone was good at stories but me. Whenever I tried to tell or to write one, I couldn't quite do it. I never had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I liked writing poems, but I thought, “I'll never be able to write a story.”

Maybe there is a secret key that is different for every person. I didn't find mine until I was much older. Nobody ever said to me, “why don't you start with a picture?” But that is what I finally did. The picture was one I had painted myself. One day it seemed to me there might be a story in that painting.

A picture is still. It shows us one moment. But a story moves in time. So I started to ask myself, what was happening just before this moment in the picture? And what is going to happen next? I began to imagine the other moments as pictures too, and the pictures began to string together, like beads. Pretty soon, what I had was a picture book, with a very simple story. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

After that I thought, “I can write a story after all. Even if it is very simple, it is still a story.”

I never thought I could do it, because I never knew you can start with a picture. Nobody else in my family needs to make a story that way, but I do. That is my own secret key.

That picture, and the story I ended up with, is Grandfather Twilight. It became my best-known book.

(See more about this in Idea Box)