Tell a Story Day

April is full of all kinds of unusual holidays. There are many different unusual and different holidays that fall on April 27, but I'm only going to focus on one special holiday, Tell a Story Day, in this article. Don't you just love to tell a good story? How many do you think you can tell on this day?

Tell a Story Day always falls on April 27 in the United States. What kind of story should you tell on this day? Why, any kind of tale you want. It can be fiction or non-fiction, scary or romantic, thrilling or full of fantasy. Your story can be told from memory, or it can be read from a book. It can be one that comes straight out of your mind.

When I think of telling stories, I picture campers huddled around a campfire telling ghost stories to try and scare each other. Or I think about the world before the invention of the radio and television. Families would sit on the porch in the cool of the evening, or around the fireplace on a cold winter's evening, and make up stories to entertain themselves.

Listening to good stories is still popular. There are a wide variety of books available on tape or CD. Here's a thought. How many stories and/or books have you written? Why not put some of your own them on tape or CD so you can share your talent with others? This would be the perfect day to do it.

To celebrate today, you can tell a story to someone. You can also write a story about a storytelling celebration held on this very special day. Pretend there is a contest held to see who can tell the very best story. The winner is to be decided by ten judges, each one of them a published, successful author.

Do you want your character to be one of the judges, or do you want your character to be one of the contestants? Maybe you prefer that your character simply be one of the people in the crowd listening to the stories.

What if your character is in the middle of telling his or her story and sees a crime taking place in the audience? Does he stop before his story is finished and stop the crime? Or could the crime be part of his story?

What if your character is one of the judges? Did he arrange for the crime to take place at this particular moment to distract the storyteller because he is wanting another one of the contestants to win?

What if your character is a person in the crowd? Is this person behind the crime taking place? Did he hope that everyone would be so focused on what is going on up on stage that no one would notice the criminal activity?

Whatever you decide, have fun writing your story. Then you need to go and tell it someone on this holiday that seems to have been created for writers.