About Building Stories

BUILDING STORIES:

Fun for Fun’s Sake:

Hi. My name is Dave. I want to share some fun stories that I have been writing. I like to call them my goofy stories. I call them that because they are not meant to be works of High Art. They are closer to Low Art, or, more times than not, No Art. Being serious is not the point of my stories. The point of my stories is having fun, on the run. I love these stories because they remind me of having fun with my kids. We made up stories fast, without a lot of planning. Our goal was to entertain ourselves and, hopefully, each other.

Making up stories has been an important part of our family for as long as we have been a family. We started right after our first child was born- before he even knew what a story was! More accurately, he was the story.

Our family grew. Lots of times, I would make up a story to entertain one or more of the kids while we were doing something else which was not all that interesting. Pretty soon, they would make suggestions for new characters, plot changes, different settings, or completely different stories. Our stories could be quite basic, the way kids’ stories are. Often, their changes would become quite complicated. My personal favorite tactic was to take a typical story or character and give them a quarter twist, so they were just a little different than was expected. 

Our stories were produced quickly, and edited on the fly. They were not perfect works, ready for submission to a publisher. The whole point was to be fun at that moment. 

We told stories just about everywhere: in the family car; later, in the family van; ( in the back back of the van there might be another story being told at the same time ); still later, in the family school bus. Other places included: on the porch swing; in the pool; in the field behind our house; in the sandbox; at many playgrounds; at bath time; on the trampoline; in various waiting rooms; on commercial airliners; in Grandfather’s small private plane; in canoes; in lakes, as well as at beaches; on walks outside during sermons at church; in hospital rooms before and after tonsillectomies; at campfires; at the mulch pile, while I was loading up the mulchmobile; and, of course, at bedtime, when long stories meant staying up later. Just thinking about it makes me realize how rich we were, because of all those stories that we shared. And, that did not even count the children’s books, novels, comic books, tv shows, old movies, new movies, and video games.

Now my kids are grown up. I retired from my job. I thought that maybe I could write a story or cartoon for kids. I went on plenty of long walks, looking for ideas. But not much came out of that, except for some really great walks. 

Then my whole life changed when I happened upon a simple idea: write down short stories which are just for fun, like in the old days. No publishing, no perfection, just fun. It really works! Writing down these goofy stories became the high point of my day.

My goofy stories follow a basic formula: take three or more Lego sets, and combine some minifig or character or vehicle from each set, into one story. Make up something fast, and finish it quickly. I use Lego sets, because I love Legos. Through the years, Legos were often a big part of a lot of playing. I think that is why using Lego sets as a starting off point inspired me to take a step back into that whole spirit of using what was on hand to invent some story. 

Thank you, Lego, for providing so many wonderful sets. I find out more about the sets that I choose by looking them up at shop.lego.com.

After writing forty or so of these stories, I thought that I would put some out there into the world, via the Internet. I hope that maybe there are a few kids, and/ or parents, who will be entertained. I am going to include set names and numbers and characters, just to help it make a little more sense. 

I hope that you will have some fun with some of my goofy stories.

Sincerely, Dave

I’ve started a weekly building group for families. More information here: