Making your Discovery the whole story! (example)
Making up a story about learning.
Make it stand out
(Author’s note: this is a short example story I wrote as part of the final Exercise in my “Digging up a story” presentation. If you want to learn more about why I wrote it, then I suggest that you check out that blog post first here.
But a quick summary is that you can tell an entire story about characters learning. And this is an example I cooked up on my own, inspired by audience feedback in my presentation.
You, dear reader, learn about an extremely dangerous tree which grows in tropical locations, 2 days before your family is leaving to spend summer vacation on the beach! You want to keep them safe, so you ask your teacher Mrs. Crabapple about this deadly tree. All she knows is it’s name: the death apple! Which sounds terrifying!
So, you go online, to search for “death apple.” And you learn a lot! The tree is called the manchineel! It’s leaves and bark are poisonous, and cause a burning rash. Not like poison ivy though, more like an acid burn! If someone burns the tree, the smoke can cause an allergic reaction! And worst of all, it grows a little fruit, which looks like an apple, tastes like a peppery pair, and can kill!!!
“Peppery Pair?” You think, wondering how anyone knows what a deadly apple tastes like. But you don’t have time for that! You learn a lot about the deadly tree. It grows in Southern Florida, where you and your family are going for vacation. According to legend an arrow, poisoned by the tree and shot by a Calusa Warrior, might have killed Ponce de Leon. And that scientists still don’t know all of the poisons inside the tree. (There’s a bunch of chemistry that you’d have to ask your aunt, a chemist, to explain.) But that won’t help you right now. The one thing you need to know, the most important thing you need to know is too hard to find!
What does it look like? There are lots of pictures on the internet, but the leaves and the fruit look like any old tree! If you had to pick out the manchineel from a hundred different tropical trees, you’d probably pick wrong! So, how are you going to recognize it? How are you going to protect your family from the tree. (You know your younger brother always likes to try new fruit! And he puts things into his mouth when he’s not supposed to! Blech!
But, you’re not done yet. You still have time. You go to the library, and ask the librarian about poisonous trees of Florida. She helps you look through the catalogue, and together you find a book on Dangerous Trees. She takes you to the botany section, and helps you check out the book. It’s big! There are more dangerous trees in the world than you had ever imagined. But you just want to learn about 1.
You flip through the book, scanning past a section on a tree that shoots out exploding thorns, and another section on a tree that has sharp prickly hairs that cause an excruciating rash! But both of those grow far away from Florida. Finally, you find the section about the Manchineel! It’s shorter than you expected, and most of the information is the same you found online- including that weird thing about what the fruit tastes like. But finally, near the end of the chapter, you find what you are looking for: a way to recognize the Manchineel.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, you close the book, thank the librarian and head home. When the day comes, you hop in the car, and head to the beach with your family. There may be manchineels lurking when you get to Florida, but you know what to do! At the beach, you and your family spend all of the first day in the water. (Manchineels don’t grow out there. Only Mangroves.) So, you and they, are safe. But the second day, your dad takes you and your brother hiking through the woods at a local national park, looking for the legendary mark left by a pirate from another tale.
You find the mark, a skull etched into an ancient rock surrounded by two branches. “That’s it!” Your dad says with excitement! But you don’t care. Your brother has found some bright purple berries, and he’s reaching out to grab them. He does, and he prepares to put them in his mouth! You let him. You’ve learned enough to know that those are sea grapes, and are, actually edible.
But on the way home, your brother reaches for the fruit of another tree. A round, ripe, and tasty looking green apple. Before he can even touch it though, you smack his hand away. He starts to cry, and your looks angry. But that look turns to concern when you point to a red X painted on the tree and explain everything you’ve learned. Manchineels are deadly, it’s true, but people have known that for centuries. And in your research you learned that now, in Florida, in places where people might come across the deadly trees, they mark them with a bright red X.
Of course, there was also a sign right next to the tree, and it said “Danger.” But, of course, your brother ignored that! (Argh) Nonetheless your search for knowledge has saved his life. Unfortunately for him, it’s too bad you stopped there. A few days later, your brother’s hand breaks out in a horrible rash. Too bad for him you spent all that time learning how to save him from a deadly tree, otherwise you might have learned about another tree that lives in Florida: the poisonwood tree. Fortunately for him, it’s isn’t deadly, just an annoying rash like poison ivy. It will go away, eventually. In the meantime, you’re left with just one question: How does anyone know what the death apple tastes like?