A bedtime story generator that stars your child’s own characters

How do I make a bedtime story with InkStak?

1. Pick the characters. Choose from your saved characters or make one: a name, what they are (a girl, a fox, a robot) and how they look. You can start from a ready-made character in one tap.
2. Set the story. Choose an age from 2 to 12, the Bedtime genre, an illustration style and a length: 5 minutes, 10 minutes or your own. Add an idea in a sentence, such as “Rosie can’t find her blanket the night before the big trip”, or tap Surprise me for one.
3. Read it together. The story appears with a picture for every scene, usually in about a minute. Read it on screen, have InkStak read it aloud, or save it for later.

What makes it a good bedtime story?

The Bedtime genre keeps the tone calm and warm, and the story always ends peacefully, so it winds down instead of winding up. A few more settings help at the end of the day:

• The right length. Pick 5 or 10 minutes, or set your own. Very young listeners are capped automatically: a story for a 3-year-old stays short even if you ask for 20 minutes.
• Words that fit the age. Vocabulary, sentence length and how much happens in each scene follow the age you choose.
• Rhyming verse. Turn on Rhyming for a listener aged 7 or under and the whole story comes back in gentle verse, which reads aloud beautifully.
• Read aloud for you. On Creator and Publisher, tap Listen and InkStak narrates the book page by page. Save the narration and it plays with no internet, on a car trip or a flight.
• Familiar faces. Your characters look the same in every picture and every story, so a favorite character can star in a new story every night.

What should tonight’s story be about?

A single sentence is enough. A few that work well at bedtime:

• A small dragon who is scared of the dark learns that the stars are a night-light.
• Two friends build a blanket fort and sail it to the moon and back before bedtime.
• A sleepy otter counts the stones in his collection and falls asleep before he gets to ten.
• A robot forecasts a storm, and it turns out to be a gentle rain on the roof.
• Grandma’s cat goes looking for the warmest spot in the house.

Out of ideas? Surprise me writes a fresh plot that fits your characters and never repeats one you’ve had before.

Which plans include it?

Every plan makes bedtime stories. Free gives you 5 stories a month with one character, for read-aloud ages 2 to 7. Token packs are pay as you go: one token is one story, and two characters can share it. Creator ($9.99 CAD a month) adds unlimited stories, up to 4 characters, chapter books for older children and read-aloud narration. See all plans.