So there. What about it? How did you play? How did your play affect your decision to become a writer? How did it effect your writing?

I, too, did imaginative play with my brother when we were younger. Legos, Hotwheels, Lincoln Logs... I miss those days! I do believe that playtime was formative in training my writing mentality.

However, not all imaginative kids grow up to be pansters/skirters, I imagine. Some children can be very structured with "rules" of play.

When Caleb and I were little, we played with Play-Mobile a lot, and we also played with legos, paper dolls (well, I guess that one was more me than Caleb... though he would use the boys sometimes!), and everything else we could dig up. A lot of times, we would drag out all the toys and play with them all together... that was fun.

But our stories always ended up being strangely similar to each other. I always had a warrior princess, he always had an army commander, and we would always have debates about who got to kill the bad guy.

The other thing we did was cut the people in the costume magazines we got every year around Halloween. That was fun, too!

But I'm getting off-topic...

So... I'm definitely a pantster. Whenever I attempt to outline something, I get bored and move on to a new story.

Besides, it's much more fun to figure out the story as you go!

I generally played one of two ways as a child. One, I would get little figures and build them houses, give them a vague culture, and have them go through various storylines involving lots of battles. Or two, I would use toy guns or other toy weapons to allow me to act out various storylines, also involving lots of battles.

Whether this contributed to my writing style or not, I'm not sure, but that it had a big impact on me being a writer, I don't doubt.

I shot Indians and rescued damsels in distress with my brothers. Oh, and I always had the pet dragon. Didn't matter what we were playing.

However, this isn't the normal childhood most girls have, I guess.

*grin* The title of this thread made me think of a psychologist with their patient on a couch in a darkened room.

"Tell me about your childhood."


LOL!

Ever since I was able to talk, My mom says I would make up stories. She said when I was two, I'd go off by myself behind furniture and talk to the air, and tell stories. Apparently, "Lambie" "Dolphie" and "Little Peeper" were my main characters.

I loved being animals, and I would pretend I was a dog for days at a time.

And then as I learned more and my sister, Valia, came along we constantly and I mean constantly would pretend things, whether it was with ourselves or dolls, or stuffed animals.

And a lot of it had to do with rescuing each other and climbing trees in the process.

Oh, and dress up. How we LOVED dress up! And it was always long, flowy dresses that pouf when you spin. And I was always the mistress, and I always had my siblings as my servants. Yes, I'm the oldest. LOL!

And then when I was eight I finished my first story and it was fourty pages and me, my sister, and two best friends all tried to turn it into a movie with disastrous results. (the whole thing was ad lib. )

So, that's just a little bit of it. I still sword fight with imaginary people, and ride off on imaginary horses with imaginary knights in shining armor. I just have to do it while I wash dishes instead of climbing trees.

I was writing before I could spell. I literally dictated to my mom as she typed. My stuff was never very good, lot's of fourteen year-olds (who seemed very old and all-grown up to me) conquering whole continents in a few sentences. Pretty much no dialogue.

Really, playing as a child decided how I would write. I write how I played. The big events show up, there's dialogue in between, and journeys weeks in length happen in a few sentences. I'm serious; I still write like that. That may be one of my weak points, but it is largely a style choice. Tolkien made his readers care about the white stones that lined the path. I don't care about them in the Red World and don't intend to make my readers do that either. That's why not every place is named in three languages. I cared to see the Ring in Mount Doom, not the Elvish name for the desert they went through to get it there.

Thanks, Jaynin! Now that we have our own topic and aren't derailing a thread, I will expand on my post.

I have always had a writer's mentality, though I didn't realize it until I was a teenager. When I wasn't using various toys (Legos were always a favorite) to create complicated stories with my brother or by myself, I was mentally "rewriting" every book I read and movie I watched. I reworked the story the way I wanted it to go, or simply explored possible "bonus adventures" in the world. Usually I put a perfected version of myself into the cast of characters.

I think God used all of that imagination to form my writer's brain, even though it was many years before it even occurred to me to write some of these stories down. It was a bit of an epiphany... "Oh, write my imaginative ideas down as a story? What a great idea!"

I made up my own stories with just about anything I could get my hands on. I "painted" with socks on, Polly Pockets became my own versions of Robin Hood, and my art easel became a rocket ship.

I also did what Philli did; I imagined myself into books, radio dramas, and movies all the time. I really enjoyed doing this, so I decided to write them down because "I didn't want to lose the trick of doing that", as if. Needless to say, I had lots of rip-offs collecting space, and sort of dropped it.

Then, last year, I started working on a story for school, and I jumped back into writing for fun, not just school. I got a purpose and inspiration, and I'm working on it, but a lot of my "springboard" and my style came from my little games.

When I was very little, I played a lot of pretend games with my siblings. I'm oldest of four, so I always had someone to play with.

When I was between 10 and 14 (approx), I played with Calen and our mutual friends on the other end of the block. Again, I remember a lot of pretend games. Calen, what all did we do? <grin> I remember playing pioneer under the lilac, and sword-fighting with your brother...

As I recall, the main problem with me & pretend games is that I wanted to plan things out too much. Not a pantser.

After Calen moved away, I still pretended. I looked for Narnia in my backyard, I hit branches with my sword pretending they were beasts from a fantasy world... and I started writing seriously because I was lonely for kids my own age.

I'm not sure how it's affected me today though. Just in being able to imagine quite a bit out of nothing.

Oh my word, so many things I used to do...I was a HUGE fan of role-playing/pretend games! Ranging from Legos, Mega Blocks, wooden blocks, Hotwheels, Lincoln Logs, Play-Mobile, horses, Beanie Babies, playing house, Barbies, and stuffed animals (much different than Beanie Babies, I assure you!).

When we weren't using object to play with, we would pretend (as Melody mentioned) that we were pioneers, we'd play Lord of the Rings (which was especially fun in the winter on top of the 20-30 foot tall snow hill in a football field near us), I would act out horses on the trampoline with my friend and we would pretend we were horses bucking off our riders in a rodeo, I played wolves with the same friend I played rodeo with and we'd act out our own packs of wolves containing at least five characters, my brother and I were always portraying deer and other wild animal while jumping over downed logs, ect.

Though when my family moved from my childhood home when I was 11, I only played games like that until I was 13 because then all my friends in the town I presently live in all grew out of them and I was forced to a well.

I've always wanted to be a writer and always have been. My mom has saved little poems, very short story-like things I've written from when I was very young. I've also always been one to journal. My first diary I wrote in often was from when I was in Kindergarten. I didn't start any serious story until I was 10. It was about horses and my horse role-playing was pretty key in that one.

I would say my childhood greatly help me to develop who I am today and has influenced some of my writing. Ironically, none of the role-playing games had a conclusive end to it. Same goes for all my novels. XD

Er, sorry, long post. ^^;;

Awww, thanks for posting this!

I was a total American Girl girl. I had the Josephina doll, and one of my friends had Felicity, and we would always get together and make up stories. She would make our dolls clothes, too.

2nd and 3rd grade was my imagining central (in 4th grade I moved and fell in with some very boring girls, but let's not talk about that). My friends and I all read Little House on the Prairie at about the same time, and so we would go out and play. I was usually the dad or that really mean girl, because I was the strongest and, apperantly, the meanest.

My school playground had this huge patch of clover that was so soft and lovely and cool, so we would always lie down in it or make up stories involving it. It was our ocean. We never played Dawn Treader, though, which is sad.

I liked being outside and making up stories. I was a total tree climber, and I would climb up my neighbor's big tree and just imagine I was off somewhere else. Up till 3rd grade I lived in a neighborhood that was both "bad" and great for kids, because there were a ton of them and we had a bayou behind the houses, so when our moms would let us we'd hang out there and ride our bikes around. There was also a house that was abandoned and looked wonderful all covered in plants, so we would always get together and try and figure out who had owned it and if anyone was inside now.

I promise not to derail this!



YES! I still have my Josefina doll! my friend had Kirsten and we would have "doll dinners." We used a mini tea cup set with juice, a tiny bowl of mashed potatoes, a small plate of leftover meatloaf, and little cookies for dessert! Ah, gooood times....

I still have my Josefina (with an f, geez, self) too! I was clearing out my room last night and found her and got all nostalgic, so I brushed her hair.
American Girl is amazing. I didn't really have many accesories for her (I mainly just had clothes and her little goat), but it's awesome how much you could get for them. Especially for the more popular ones like Felicity or Samantha. Those girls had everything!


In an effort to not make this the American Girl thread...

When I was in my horse phase (that I haven't grown out of yet) I set up this stable on one of my side tables. Each of my horse had their own little stall and bed of hampster shavings and each morning I would fill their little water buckets. I had so many of those little horse and stable things, they're awesome.
I'm also quite science-y and have always been, so I used to love experimenting with helium and how many baloons it took to make things of certain weights fly. Of course, I thought I was amazingly clever for experimenting with this.
I also had this little set of hand lenses and a toy microscope, so I would always tramp around the bayou and get leaves and rocks and little bugs to look at.

My older brother is the musician and my little sister is the main stream girl so I've pretty much always kept to myself. I was home schooled til high school and the kids my age at church were pretty clique-y so I've always just been alive in my head. From an early age I knew if I had powers they would be shapeshifting so my social life was me, as a shapeshifter, in every book and show and movie that I enjoyed (new character, I didn't replace anyone already there). I never was a huge fan of writing until I hit high school, my social studies teacher was big into fantasy and plot lines so I picked it up pretty quickly. My best friend was a writer and often drew pictures from her work. One day I joined her. My first drawing was the eye of a basilisk. I love both science and theology so they integrate a lot into my work.

I would put my becoming a writer back to that pivotal point when I had no friends and I wouldn't have it any other way.

My earliest childhood memories are of me and my sister playing games. We had running plots, like a TV series. My mom told me about one a year ago I'd completely forgotten, called "Captain Siren". All I can remember about that is using our staircase for a ship... We had "Angel Girl" which we always played when the gardenia tree bloomed, and I'm almost certain it was based off of the show my mom watched "Touched by an Angel". And then there was Scriggle Scrag Scroo.

S.S.S (as it came to be called) was a terrible fortress ruled by King Caulker and Queen Black. I was always the prisoners, who got the best of the king and escaped. But as we got older escaping got harder so I invented Lightning Ranger to come rescue me.

Then we got introduced to Robin Hood and Lightning Ranger got a band of outlaws. And then we introduced a police force. And it grew to astronomical proportions. Because then we moved to the country, so we had to figure how to add in barns to our play.

When I was about 8 I wrote a short story that was a whole page long called "Why?" My dad read it and told me it was really good and that I should write more. That stuck with me, but I didn't really have any ideas I wanted to write until one day I got the brilliant idea of writing down the story of Lightning Ranger. My mom bought me my first notebook and I wrote the whole thing and was quite proud of it. It's the first draft of my first novel. After that I moved onto other things. I discovered Shakespeare and started a five act play, but only finished the first act. My sister started growing up before I did, (even though I was older,) and she didn't want to play with me anymore. Years and years later I found out she got tired of me dominating it, so she came up with her own games. This left me alone and at loose ends, so I would come up with non-LR related stories and write them down. Those stories are the only writings of mine I've ever destroyed; I simply couldn't bear to remember their existence.

But even then Lightning Ranger stuck. Until I wrote it again, because the first draft was "childish" in my (still childish) opinion. I spent a lot of time choring in these days, and there's nothing like being stuck alone with a bunch of cows that encourages imaginative play, and I eventually came up with another plot so engrossing it drove all thoughts of Lightning Ranger from my mind for five years. That was the Prince of Yen.

*sigh*

WARNING: This post is kind of long and rambly and nostalgic. Probably I've left things out that are important to the story and slipped in unimportant details. If you want to waste the next fifteen minutes of your life, go ahead and read it. (Now I've piqued your interest and you will read it.

*sigh* Everything's always about revisions and improvement. I remember how my novel started. When we were younger, my brother (Hilly) and I were obsessed with LEGO. But--we didn't have any of the guys or anything, so we just took some of the smallest pieces and made them in to micro people. This was great because we could now have armies of hundreds and thousands of these little pieces--crush the invaders!

We did all sorts of things with our LEGO micro people--we built massive forts and hid them in our closets (did you know that sliding closet doors make a great defense against invaders?). We built colony forts and set them all around the house, in and under things, much to the chagrin of our mother. =)

Then my littlest brother got old enough to (sort of) play and our territorial finagling got even fiercer. We built satellites and rockets and I got the first man in space! =) But Hilly landed the first man on the 'moon' (My dresser). Interestingly enough, our rockets fired and attacked each other on the way to the moon. I guess we're just violent astronauts.

The best thing about make-believe is the inconsistencies, though. We had three-level Lego galley ships rowed by oars, with blaster cannons at the front and an airplane tail at the back. Our planes looked like space ships but they were actually airplanes. And yet, in hand to hand combat, with all this advanced laser gun technology, the men dueled with--swords.

Then we got our COUSINS in to the act, and the game expanded into an inter-house-inental affair. We would have been tempted to even build forts outside, except for the fact that we'd lose them We got another friend in on it and soon we were making moves by email and calling each other to attack! All with little tiny LEGO pieces. *sighs*

Since everything had become so spread out complicated, I decided I had to record it, being a perfectionist. =) I came up with an eleven-age history of the world (that was actually our various battles, etc), but I later lost a few ages here and there. I was left with six, and I thought they needed something to go with. So I made up a creation story to go before the first age. Then I invented a little boy named Zaciré to go in the sixth age. By this point I had lost my cousins and brothers and friend, and I didn't show them my writing, but I still played the game (And recorded more history).

In the first draft of my novel, throughout the first half of the book, Zacire sits down and *reads* this entire legend I'd written. Apparently it was some sort of test to make sure he was good enough to recover the Dagger, or something? I forget. And Numarya was this random girl who suddenly fell in love with him, but only the day before he left . Agh! If anyone ever sees that first draft I will die. Or if anyone sees that original legend I wrote (I modified it a lot for the 'book'), I will also die. They're still stowed safely away on my computer.

But the story doesn't end there. My writing had only increased my interest in the game. But though I was the oldest of the six people now playing, I was the only one left. First our cousins dropped out, then my friend, then Hilly (*glowers*), then even my youngest brother. Now, he occasionally tries to resurrect it but I know that if I indulge and start to play it with him, all my other hobbies will go down the tubes--I like it that much, still, at age sixteen.

And apparently my motive for writing the story and doing the game? Well, the story could be a book published by LEGO to publicize their new sets that were all about these micro-people and their wars and what-not. Sometimes the dreams of a kid are pretty far-fetched, aren't they?

Oh well, I'll shut up before someone rams me with a sword or something. And I've got to get back to my western colonies...

I used to do that, too. Somehow I didn't find anything inconsistent about having knights with armor and swords, pirates in flying ships, and mad scientists with lasers battle each other.

Yup--those were the good ol' days. =D

eruheran

I see Abby (PotK) has already posted some about our childhood, but I'll expound on it. Not only did we play Playmobile, Legos, etc., but we would combine all of them together, and she usually convinced me that she could use her Barbies too. Our action would start in the bonus/play room upstairs and gradually spread throughout the entire house, much to our mother's dismay. The stairs were a giant waterfall that the adventurers somehow surmounted in their rickety ships. Eventually, our storyline would include Playmobile, Legos, Barbies, paper dolls, Ninja Turtles, He-man, McDonald's toys, Bionicles, Transformers, Polly Pockets, Star Wars figures, dinosaurs, pirates, Robin Hood's band, and various other toys. Castles and forts would be built out of books, Playmobile, Legos, and Lincoln Logs. Our characters would have aircraft carriers, Lego spaceships with blasters, lightsabers, blasters, muskets, revolvers, swords, spears, bows, crossbows, axes, sticks, and cannons, and when we ran out of weaponry for our Playmobile, they would get to use torches, pots, pans, and bags of money as makeshift weapons. We never finished these stories, as our mom would make us pick them up before that anyway, not that we would have ever finished anyway. Abby grew out of it before me, when she was about 11 and I 9 or 10, and I employed our younger sister, about 3 or 4 at the time, who would totally mess up the whole world and I would get very frustrated at, which is what got me out. We also did other stuff which I don't have time to relate at the moment, but I'll get back to.

This is a very interesting thread!

I played a lot of Barbies and was quite bossy with the "way I wanted everything to go", and if someone didn't do it the right way, I would show them.

But I also did play with Legos, trucks, and on the trampoline. I was quite imaginative.

I began to write stories at about age 6, and it began quite an adventure of my life. (I write for the glory of God, I became a Christian at age 4.)

Now I'll post some of the other stuff Abby and I did. Our grandparents have ten acres of property and on it there is a certain tree that Abby and I used to play under a lot. It would be our tepee and we would play as indians. We had various pretend little pots and pans that we would use. We take dried corn out of our grandparents squirrel feeder (don't ask) and pretend to make other food out of it along with the classic mud pies. Somehow we would always think of some way for Abby to get captured and me rescue her, fake guns blazing (with my own sound effects). I'll come back later and post about our undercover spy life.

This thread has been moved to General Discussion.

^realizes he never posted about our spy life...

I noticed that, too...

I love this thread!

When I was little, I loved to go outside and wander around, transforming my landscape through my imagination. The thing I loved most in the world was horses, and I ran around the yard, pretending I was riding a huge, magnificent black stallion. I piled up bricks, set lawn chairs on their sides, and leaned broomsticks against trees, then mounted the magnificent stallion and we flew over every hurdle together. When one of my sisters got old enough to play, she joined me, and together we invented several role-playing games. Such as Clover, which followed the life of a wild mare. The game started with her being born. My sister played Clover, and I played all the other characters, such as Clover's mother, father, and the young colt, Lightning, who developed feelings for Clover...(One day he sheepishly gave her a heart-shaped rock. ) Anyway, Lightning and Clover "married", and moved to join another herd. Clover made some friends, had some babies...Wow, that brings back fond memories. Then we also had a game where my sister was the princess, and I was (primarily) a peasant boy whom she loved against her parents' wishes. The game was called Diamond, after the horse the princess rode.

Then, one year, Daddy introduced us to Star Wars.
Horses were over after that. (Just kidding, not completely. ) In our first Star Wars game, I was Luke (yes, I always played the boy), and my sister was a girl who was his best friend, when he was a child on Tatooine. Basically, it was our version of what was happening while Luke was growing up.
That game was played mostly on the big trampoline. (Best toy ever!) We ran in endless bouncy circles around the springy surface, acting out various scrapes and adventures, in the wide desert and winding canyons. (Aw man, I forget the girl's name!) Obi wan Kenobi often made appearances. That game was exceptionally exiting and vivid.
Later we had another game. I was Leia and Han Solo's son, Anakin (it seemed only proper that he would be named after his grandfather), and my sister played his sister, Ashleigh. (That was my sister's favorite name.)

Oh, you should have seen us the day sewer workers laid new lateral lines. They dug deep trenches in the yard, and my sister and I spent the whole day running through the trenches, climbing out of them, leaping over them...it was perfect for playing Star Wars. I was sorry when they finished laying the pipes and filled the holes back in. Basically, every time we played on a play structure, swam in the pool, slid down the Slip-n-Slide, or came across some big steel pipes lying on the ground, we transformed it into some aspect of a Star Wars landscape.

And that's not even to mention all the games we played with our numerous model horses. And our Barbies. Those games got pretty intricate, and I remember rolling around, laughing at the funny situations the characters got themselves stuck in.

Needless to say, both my sister and I retained vivid imaginations, and when we outgrew imaginary play somewhat, we had to resort to writing.

I always played LARP with my brother. LARPING is an acrostic for "live action role playing." Basically what we did was make up worlds and stories and played as characters in that world. It really helps our writing now and days because we were already introduced to having to use your imagination in huge ways. Also it helps getting into the mind of characters and making things more realistic! And...
It was FUN!

We would play ninjas, assassins, secret agents, fantasy, sci-fi, historical... anything!

Those were the good old days...I so very much wish I could be a child again, playing outside with my sister, lost in my own imagination. Free from self consciousness.
Then again, who says I must never do that anymore?

That's why I have littler brothers and sisters! So I can play with them now!

I agree. I now do lots of my "old playing" with my younger siblings.

With*

*edits for Airi* Where was that typo, Namor?

What are you talking about?

Right! In fact, I recently started a game with two younger sisters. To find time to play, we have to get up early on Saturday mornings. Once I'm up, it's really fun, though.
And it's all because of this thread.

That's awesome, Aemi!

Yes, it is.

Barbies are evil! Hah, my sister and I played with stuffed animals so we never liked our human toys... We had a toy kitchen for a while and found that (since we had no doll house) the oven, microwave and fridge were perfect for building apartments in. We also had a foam couch that we would wedge between the walls of the stairwell to build a lovely puppet stage that my brother would perform shows for us in. After that ended we tried a sort of LARPing but that usually consisted of my brother hacking sticks to pieces against trees and my sister not letting me save her life. Those didn't last long so most of my fantasy childhood involved staring off into space where I was assisting the Enterprise with a rescue mission to Auir (dimension jumps naturally [yes, that was my excuse at 10]), as well as any other combination of my favorite places to be.

*Chuckles* Sounds like great fun, Rin!

My parents tell me I had imaginary friends from the time I was very little (named Mary, apparently. I don't actually remember this part of my life).

I would always wish that I could jump into books and change what was happening. I would just stop where I was reading and imagine my own version of what happened next before I kept reading.
*is still guilty of making up a different ending to books*

In maybe grade one or two, my friend and I started developping our games. We always spent ages walking in circles talking about whatever, but then she came to me with the idea of Image. Not an image, like a picture. Image is short for imagination, and it was our world (We shared it with her little sister. Actually, it was probably more that the two of them shared it with me).

In this world, there were only three good people, and lots of horses. I grew to like horses because she likes horses, and taught me all about them.
Besides the three of us, there were imaginary bad guys. These were very creatively named the 'Bad Guys', and they all rode black horses. We had many adventures in Image, and slowly more 'people' came into our game. These were our imaginary friends.

When I was older, my imaginary friends were characters from books -primarily Narnia. That stage lasted longer than it should have, probably. I turned to imaginary friends more and more as my only friend from elementary grew more distant. Image faded, and I was left with the friends but no land. So I woud make up new dilemmas for characters and then we would go out and save the world. Bicycles are handy for this.

It wasn't until grade seven that I started to even consider writing for fun. I liked to write for class, and my grade six teacher was always pushing me to improve my work, but writing stories never really crossed my mind. then one day I had a new friend over and we were roleplaying some rip-off of Eragon, when we decided that our ideas were so good we should write them down.I had never read Eragon, so I had no idea that we were basically taking that story, but my friend had.We did so, and we're still working on that story. I think we're on the fifth draft, and it no longer has anything to do with dragons.

That was a really long post, considering the fact that my childhood was boring.

It sure doesn't sound boring to me! Image is such a cool idea. And childhood role playing games shouldn't be taken too seriously, so "Bad Guys" is a great name.
My sister and I had lots of horses in every game we played (until we got introduced to Star Wars )

It sounds like you had a lot of fun, Aldara.

I loved horses, Aemi, so same here. Although we played 'Janet and Jane' a lot, and pretended to be Mothers going shopping with the dolls. So there wasn't room for horses there. I remember always making up lego stables though, and creating stories around the horses and carriages.

What all did "Janet and Jane" involve?

My siblings and I (always led by my older bro) loved pretending we were living in some historical time period. We would dress up and spend all day make-believing we were living in some different time period. We have pictures of us all dressed up as ancient Egyptians, early American colonists, and pioneers.

Often times, we would transform the lower bunk of our bunkbed into a covered wagon, by hanging blankets from the upper bunk and hitching my old rocking horse to the front of the bed. We'd also play pioneers outdoors with our wagon and pull the younger children around in it. 'Twas awesome, especially as we had a small creek running through our backyard, and we'd have to cross it, just like in our Oregon Trail computer games.

We also enjoyed putting on plays for our parents. One Thanksgiving we did a play about the Mayflower Compact which will forever go down in family history accompanied by much laughter and hilarious memories. I recall one 4th of July when we dressed up as Revolutionary war people, and my bro powdered my hair with flour, so that I could be wearing a wig, and smeared ketchup over himself as battle wounds. Let's say that was difficult to clean up afterwards.

All in all, we were quite imaginative in our play! And, if I wasn't playing with my siblings I was reading all. the. time. (That is, until my mom finally said I could not check more than ten library books out a week. )

I'd say all this contributed to wanting to be a writer.

That's really cool, Nicole! Sounds like a lot of fun.