CHAPTER XII
MAKING OVER STORIES
THE average story must be cut and fitted to meet the needs of the story teller who wants to make a direct and vivid appeal to her children. Writing a story for the printed page and preparing a story for children’s ears are two very different matters. In the former case, there is no time limit set upon the story; the reader may lay his story book down at will when he tires of the printed words, ready to take it up again when he has the inclination. In the latter case, we have to meet the mental and emotional needs of a group of children whose attention must be held by the compelling power of an orally delivered story. To meet these story needs as applied to oral delivery, a story has, ordinarily, to be made over before it is told. It must be made into a perfectly fitting garment for wrapping the child about with a clinging cloak of imagination, full of colorful words and truth. The story teller must do this story adapting herself. How can she bring it about in the quickest, most effectual way?
A large percentage of the stories printed for children are too long. The story that is too short and needs to be “padded” for telling is very rarely to be found. In the case of the Fables of Æsop and Bidpai the skeleton only of each story is given and here the problem of adapting for the story teller is to find a way of filling in each picture in order to make the story of the desired length.
But how shall we shorten the too-long story that we want children to hear because of its compelling theme and motif, but which is, very likely, two thousand or twenty-five hundred words long? This is the average difficulty that the story teller meets in connection with the average story. There is also the time problem to be taken into consideration, as well. While the story teller wants to spend as much time as necessary in the preparation of a story, this time ought to be reduced to a minimum. Is there a short cut to story adaptation and how may the story teller find it?
One may almost reduce a recipe for making over stories. It is possible to outline a pattern by means of which a printed story may be cut to fit the needs of a group of eager, restless, wriggling children. Having this recipe, this pattern, thoroughly in mind, a little practice in applying it to particular stories that need adapting will give the story teller power to apply it, quickly and effectually to any story with little loss of time. Its use will give the story teller an added power in her work. Knowing how to put stories in shape for telling will help her to hold the attention of any group of children.
The first step in our rule for adapting a story that is too long is to carefully read the story.
This seems too obvious a suggestion, almost, to put upon a printed page, but reading a story having in mind making it over means reading it to find out what happens in the story, what is its important action, who are its necessary characters, and what is the climax. This first reading of a story for adaptation means an analysis of the story plot. This kind of story reading may be developed so as to become the story teller’s habit in reading any story, but it is the necessary, preliminary step in all story adapting.
Our next step is to find the pictures in the story.
Suppose you were a stage manager with the problem of dramatizing this special story to meet the interests of an audience, how would you develop the different scenes in the story so as to make it into a play that holds interest? Suppose you are a film maker. What are the moving pictures in the story to be presented in their order of interest through the medium of your film? We have much to learn from the stage manager and the moving picture man. Their problems are identical with those of the story teller in that they must strip a story plot bare of details, unnecessary description and the opinions of the author. They must give an audience the naked story. This is all the audience wants. So it is with children. They demand story scenes, story pictures and nothing else.