In a story, the main character has to have a problem or be in a predicament. How that person solves his or her problem is the plot of the story. Borrow some pieces of old folktales and see if you can create a story around them. For example, the Mongoli an people said the earth rested on a giant frog and when the frog stumbled, the earth shook. Hindu myths said the Earth sat on the back of eight elephants. Japanese myths said earthquakes were caused when the gods went traveling and didn't keep a foot o n a giant fish that started flopping all around. You can read a novel, Little Sister by Kara Dalkey (Harcourt, 1996) to see how one author has woven bits of Japanese folktales and myths into a fantasy adventure story set in twelfth-century Japan. (You'll read about a volcano in there, too.)

This January, a book will be published called Punia and the King of Sharks by Lee Wardlaw (Dial/Penguin). It's a re-telling of a Hawaiian legend based on a version told by Elika Knudsen, a storyteller who did weekly radio stories in the 1940s that came out of the ancient spoken literature of the Islands. The author writes,

"I've traveled extensively throughout the islands, and used numerous books in my research, especially Hawaiian Culture, which is a state-adopted cirriculum guide."