Hey I just stumbled across your blog while I was googling 'story structure'in an attempt to 'Go Into The Story'myself!!! And just thought I'd leave a little message to say that I thought your son's advice to 'go into the story and find the animals' was an inspired comment. I'm doing a creative writing degree in the UK and have been finding it hard recently to respond to the writing tasks being set - I feel a bit like I've lost my mojo. Anyway I came across a Ted Hughes poem the other day called 'The Thought Fox' which is basically about going into a story to find the animals. He tried to advise Sylvia Plath of this process in a letter -
"The thing to do in thinking about anything is not to try and get a clear mental picture of it, or a distinct mental concept, with all its details there, vivid in your brain, but to try to look at the actual thing happening in front of you. I find a clear distinction between these two types of thinking about a thing. As soon as I begin imagining the thing happening in my world, everything comes right. That’s not quite it. It’s as though in the first way of thinking I thought about the thought, taking the thought and forcing it into shape or realness. In the second way it’s more like the process of memory, I think straight to the thing and am not conscious of any mental intervention. … The second way I get the feel, weight, sound, every nuance of atmosphere about a concrete thing"

Anyway, I just thought it was a 'meaningful coincidence' that this stuff keeps cropping up in my attempt to fix my creative crisis and thought I'd share it in case it helps anyone else out there!
But that's enough procrastinating from me....off to find the Thought Fox!
x

Thanks for your comments, handsomehead. And for the Ted Hughes poem. The Thought Fox. I'm definitely going to share that with my youngest son (now 8), see what he thinks.

That "second way" Hughes describes, that feels like those moments in the writing process where you are completely in in the story, the characters are right there in 'front' of you. Time, at least as it's measured in the 'real' world disappears and all there is is the present, that unfolding moment in your story world.

And when we get there, that is pure magic.

Again thanks. And best of luck to you in all your creative endeavors.