Your eight-year-old announces they’re writing a story about a talking sandwich who becomes a detective and solves crimes in the refrigerator. Your first instinct might be to gently steer them toward something more “realistic”, maybe a story about a regular kid solving mysteries at school?

Stop right there.

That talking sandwich detective might just be exactly what your young writer needs to flourish. Those “weird” story ideas that make you scratch your head? They’re not creative mistakes that n...