NaNoGenMo
Have you ever heard the story about the Princess who made friends with a real, live dishwasher?
In the mornings, my 4-year-old daughter has been sing-telling me song-stories on the way to pre-school.
They all follow essentially the same formula:
Did you ever hear the story of the Princess who made friends with a real live [inanimate object, such as a window, tree branch, arm, steering wheel, or dishwasher]?
[Daddy says "no, I have not."]
Well, I'll tell it to you:
Once upon a time [she sings, kinda, all of this] there was a Princess who made friends with a real live dishwasher. Their names were Kate and Holly. The girl Princess's name was Kate and the dishwasher princess's name was Holly. [By this point, the singing has pretty much disappeared.]
Do you want to play a game Holly?
Oh yes.
Let's play hide-and-seek! You hide, and I'll count to 10 and find you!
Okay!
1, 2, ,3, 4, 5, ,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ready or not here I come. Oh, I found you!
Yes, you did! Now it's my turn to count to ten.
Okay!
1, 2, ,3, 4, 5, ,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ready or not here I come. Where can you be? There you are!
And they were bestest friends for EVER!
The games vary slightly, but this gives you an idea.
It ain't gonna be great, and it's gonna be very templatey, but it is templatey in her head. I think it might be fun to play with some of those kids-grappling-with-narrative and communication and see what that gives me. Attempts to count, for example - this morning she said "Do you know how to count to 100? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7..." she got up to 25 and then said "One hundred!" Other days she's struggled to count to 20 skipping some numbers and doubling others out of sequence.
Or not. I'm curious what my daughter will think of the end-product.
One day, the normally-inanimate object's name was "Hannukah, isn't that pretty?!!"
It's repetitive - no surprise!
This is more of an example of playing with Tracery for the first time (mostly), and playing with the algorithm my daughter seems to use.