Henry Vogel: From Storytelling to Publication

-



Cover of I'm in Charge & Other Stories
For the month of February, I've invited various authors with current releases to share something about their writing.  Today, we hear from my brother, Henry Vogel, author of five books and an accomplished storyteller.  I remember Henry telling stories on long car trips.  The only one that sticks with me had an eyeball rolling across the desert. To this day, I cringe at the sand-in-the-eye feeling I got while listening to his story.  Please enjoy his post below and check out Henry's sites and children's book!


I’ve always enjoyed creating stories for children. I started when I was a child, making up stories for my sisters during long car trips. I don’t remember much about those stories, but I doubt they were any good. Fortunately, I got better at it. When my son was born, I even got somewhat serious about it.

I remember laying (lying? I can never keep them straight) in bed one night when my son was still an infant. I was tossing around semi-traditional fairy tale ideas when the following exchange popped into my mind.

“How would you win the love of the princess?” asked the king.

“If they aren’t too expensive, I’d be willing to buy one of the raffle tickets,” replied the prince.

I liked that exchange so much, I created a story to go around it. Thus was born “The King’s Three Questions,” a story which came together in the matter of an hour or so.

By the time my son was three, I was making up bedtime stories which featured him as the main character. We had “Brandt’s Adventure in Dreamland,” “Brandt and the Great Broom Race,” “Brandt and the Space Pirates,” and quite a few more I can’t remember.

Telling stories in which a child emerged triumphant while competing against adults fired my imagination. But this time I wondered about a child stepping into an adult position and thinking he triumphed until reality taught him otherwise.

 Unlike “The King’s Three Questions,” I spent a lot of time thinking about this new story. I settled on the idea of a ten-year-old prince stepping into the king’s shoes fairly quickly but, originally, had the king die. Not only was that too depressing for the tone I wanted, it meant the child became the king. There was no way the adults around him would act as they do in the story if the boy was their king. After lots of fiddling, I sent the king and queen off on a diplomatic mission. Before leaving, the king tells the prince he’s in charge of the kingdom. The king, of course, means that symbolically, but the prince takes it literally.

“I’m in Charge!” remains my favorite of my children’s stories and is one of the most popular ones I tell during storytelling performances.

Early in my career as a storyteller, I developed a love for noodlehead tales. While the term isn’t well known any more, kids (and most adults) love the silly humor in the tales. “The Seven Silly Brothers” was one of the earliest traditional tales I adapted for my act. It’s a silly tale about a silly boy making a silly mistake when he counts his brothers. He expects seven but, because he didn’t count himself, only gets six. In the original story, the brothers all look for the “missing” brother. I didn’t think that was quite silly enough, so added a twist which could only happen to a true noodlehead.

If you’d like to find out about the twist or how the other two stories end, consider buying a copy of “I’m in Charge! & Other Stories.”


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skin Tone: Describing Your Characters

-
Image
When you write about character's of different races, how do you describe their skin tone? If you've never thought about this, then consider this question: How do the authors you read described persons of color? A few months ago, I attended a webinar about writing diverse characters. The guest was Eliana West of Writers for Diversity . The information she shared felt fresh and valuable, especially related to describing a character's skin tone. I get really tired of seeing African-descended characters described in terms of the goods that drove, and still drive the slave trade--coffee, chocolate, brown sugar. There's some weird psychosocial baggage attached to that.    -- N. K. Jemisin As this quote from author, N. K . Jemisin , indicates, historically, writers have described people of color using food-related descriptors. Many people of color find this offensive. This surprised me, at first, but she has a point, especially when you view it through the quote above. My fir...
Read more

Character Development: Using the Johari Window

-
Image
In my last post, Character Development: the Johari Window , I introduced the Johari Window as a tool for developing your characters. It's important that your character not know everything about their situation. These unknowns can lead to an intriguing story and create possibilities for conflict within the story. How do you use the Johari Window? In this post, I thought I'd provide a simple example of the Johari Window with a character most people know:  Harry Potter. Below, I have filled out the Johari Window as it might appear within the first few pages of book 1, Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone . The Johari Window based on Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone Three of the quadrants in this window reveal what Harry doesn't know about who he truly is and what happened to his parents. I could add a lot to the quadrants representing what he doesn't know, but I hope this gives you an idea on how a Johari Window might be used. What do you d...
Read more

He Said, She Said, Who Said? Punctuating Dialogue

-
Image
Courtesy of Morguefile.com I've been focusing my posts on workshops and panels I taught or participated on at the Imaginarium Convention. Although this serves as a poor substitute for the real thing, I can share some highlights. This week, we're going to explore dialogue punctuation. The first thing writers need to learn is how to properly punctuate dialogue. I've discovered, over the years, that many don't know how. Notice in the first example below, the dialogue starts at the beginning of the sentence, and the speaking tag (he said, she said, Paul said, etc.) follows it.  A few points to notice: The first letter of the quotation is capitalized. What the person says is a sentence, so it must be capitalized. A comma comes directly after the quote and INSIDE the quotation marks. You can, also, have a question mark or exclamation point here. There is a space AFTER the closing quotation mark followed by the speaking tag and a period at the end of the sentence. In the next ...
Read more