Reflections on mouse story/pictures exercise

I like being described to! It is amazing how different the pictures you imagine from a description can be from the real things.

Pictures are specific in some ways – the mouse looked just like that, with that particular shade of brown fur etc, but pictures are very vague, or open to interpretation in other ways – is the mouse eating the paper or drawing on it? Is he anxious or smug? Is it a he?

Describing sometimes switches over to telling – some pictures just seem to have a story in them.

Telling a story, as the speaker, seems more demanding than just describing. It requires thinking about plot and what will happen next rather than just what you can see now. Telling a story needs pacing and imagination and you need to be consistent – remember what you said before.

Telling stories isn’t easy! Even when it seems to be told for you in pictures.