Easy Eight Page Story Book (even If You Have Writer's Block)

My son's school put me in charge of their Literacy Night. I was looking for a fun storybook writing project for K-8th kids to gain confidence in their story writing abilities. I had an idea to combine three concepts to create this fun book project. I had seen a project at at Maker Faire folding a single sheet of paper to create an eight page notebook. That was really nice, but I wanted to help inspire the kids more especially since I personally get writer's block starting with just a blank sheet. My friend who does improv had told me about this outline invented by Kenn Adams called the "Story Spine". It's simple but a very good starting place for planning your story. It goes like this:

Once upon a time...
Every day...
But, one day...
Because of that...
Because of that...
Because of that...
Until, finally...
And, ever since then...

I created printouts with the story spine on them which should be attached as PDF or AI files. I had to leave out one of the "Because of that..." to get it to fit on 8 pages and still have a title page. (Many thanks to my friend Donji for creating the artwork. )

Supplies

Printer for 8-1/2"x11" or 11"x17" paper

Scissors

Coloring pens or crayons

(Optional) Rory's Story Cubes or other story element prompts

Step 1: Here Is How You Fold the Paper and Create the Book

Print the file attached to this Instructable or create your own

Then: First fold in half along the short axis of the paper to create a crease. Unfold that and fold in half along the other axis. Then fold in the sides to divide the long axis into quarters. Unfold and let just the middle stick up (as shown) and cut along that crease (NOT all the way, just the middle quarters) to leave the page intact except for a slit in the middle. Then fold along the short axis as before and the middle quarters will separate and can be folded into pages sticking out. Then fold the whole thing so that the title page ("A story by") is in the front and the other pages follow.

Step 2: From Here It's Up to You How to Proceed

The third idea is that I have a collection of Rory's Story Cubes which are dice with intriguing icons to help with inspiration for story elements. I got out my collection of Rory's Story Cubes and let the kids roll them for ideas while writing their story and drawing pictures.They had lots of fun and each created multiple books.