Portfolio Guide

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First Portfolio Story: Greek Invasion

• Story with a twist on the usual battle between Greeks and Trojans. Achilles must fight the greatest warrior in the land, Hector. Who will prevail?

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Second Portfolio Story: Origin of Camilla

• Odysseus is used to being the man in charge. Never anything to stop him. After he is trapped by Circe, an unlikely hero named Camilla must emerge to rescue her crew members.

(Romeo and Juliet  --  Snapshots of the Past)
Source: Flickr

Third Portfolio Story: Lil Romero

• Romero has his eyes set on the most gorgeous girl in his class. He never has the courage to talk to her and doesn't know what he should do. You'll find out that he is willing to go to great lengths to win her over. Will she fall in love with him?

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Fourth Portfolio Story: The Old Man and an Aching Tooth

• This is a story filled with Blackfoot Indian folklore characters that are set up in an accumulative telling style. An old man can fix his tooth ache, but an unlikely sequence of events may just be the thing to help him. (Probably my favorite style to write. I would highly recommend trying it out!)

Reading Notes Week 11: King Arthur, Part B

It's interesting that some of the stories have chosen not to include King Arthur at all. I find that pretty good so I can focus on other characters which I could choose to use in my storytelling. It's nice to get a better feel of who the different Knights of the Round Table are since they are a big part of King Arthur's stories.

I'm confused as to why Sir Galahad was so afraid of having Sir Lancelot recognize him? Sir Lancelot is his father, so I must have missed the issue there.

The transition between the stories, "Sir Galahad and the White Knight" and "Sir Lancelot's Vision" is really unique. I like how the majority of the story is focused on Sir Galahad as promised by the title, but at the very end Sir Lancelot comes into the picture, and the story is handed off to him. It would interesting to try to write a story of similar style, but it may be difficult with only 1000 words. I could probably do it, but I don't want the writing to seem too brief between the stories.

The transition into the next character focused story is similar to the last with a new knight taking over the scene. I like getting the viewpoint from so many different characters, but maybe the title of "King Arthur" should be changed slightly to signify that so many story don't involve him.

Okay, so it wasn't until later on that Sir Lancelot found out that Sir Galahad was his son! I wonder if Sir Galahad new Sir Lancelot was his father earlier on when he avoided him at the end of the first story in part B (Finally both know and meet towards the end).

There quite a few familial connections involved in these King Arthur tales. Some of them are hard to keep track of. Sir Gawain as Arthur's nephew, Sir Ector (Arthur's foster brother) younger half-brother of Sir Lancelot.

The last story wrapping up the end of King Arthur's rule includes all of the Knights previously mentioned. I think that a unique way to end it with all of them mourning together.

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Bibliography: King Arthur, by Andrew Lang

Reading Notes Week 11: King Arthur, Part A

(King Arthur  --  Balog Janos)
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I loved tales about King Arthur growing up, so hopefully these are either pretty similar to ones I've heard or they are new and exiting! Either way, it should be a win win to read.

Introducing the tale about King Arthur, the story "The Drawing of the Sword" reminds me a lot of the cartoon movie, The Sword in the Stone. Whoever pulls the sword out is the ruler and Merlin was even in that too. I have a feeling King Arthur may be just the person for the job. It is almost exactly like that movie. The only difference is that in the movie, the boy is a servant to the man he is bringing the sword unlike in this tale where he is the foster brother. I am glad that Sir Ector and Sir Kay were kind to Arthur when they realized what he had done with the sword. I was expecting them to be jealous and try to take the sword for themselves.

I am a little confused as to why King Arthur needed a new sword? I know he lost his other one, but I figured that sword was excalibur, since he pulled it from the stone. I guess he had two magical swords then.

Plot twist with Merlin being trapped under a rock by his own student, Vivian. She was very cunning, but I am also surprised that Merlin was not more weary to go under the rock. He told King Arthur about the prophecy, so I would have thought he could better guard against it. It must have been his destiny or something of the sorts.

I think the moral of the story about the quest for the Holy Graal (is this a typo? I'm not sure if it was supposed to be "Grail") is a good one. The knights of the round table are so focused on something that they can't reach, they end up losing sight of what responsibilities they need to take care of. The different lengths of each story makes them more interesting to read. I am used to most stories sticking with a consistent length, but this style sort of mixes things up.

Bibliography: King Arthur, by Andrew Lang

Week 10 Story: The Old Man and an Aching Tooth

One day there was an old man sitting by a campfire, with his donkey. As he properly seasoned his supper, he noticed that his tooth had a terrible ache. He tried everything to cure the ache. He attempted pulling the tooth out with his hand. Then he tied a string to it and his donkey, hoping the donkey could pull it out. Not even the strength of the donkey could make the tooth budge. Eventually he gave up and sat to eat his supper that was warming over the fire.

When he put a spoonful into his mouth, it scalded his tongue, which caused him to spit the hot liquid onto the grass nearby.

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There was a butterfly in the grass that was sprayed by the liquid, causing it to fly away from its resting place.

The butterfly flew off eventually encountering the Indian hero, Kut O Yis, who was practicing his archery skills. The presence of the butterfly caused Kut O Yis to overshoot his target by a few inches.

The arrow flew off in the distance and struck a horse in the rear. At the surprise of the arrow, the horse bucked, whinnied, and neighed.

Eventually, all of the noise coming from the horse awoke its owner who was startled by the horse's reaction. Wondering what had happened, he grabbed his revolver out of its sling and let loose a couple of warning shots.

The old man's donkey was scared by the warning shots from the horse's owner, which made it kick out its hind legs.

As the donkey kicked out its hind legs, it accidentally hit the spice can by the fire pit. The can was propelled back into the old man's face.

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The spice can released a cloud of dust, which hit the old man in the face. After sniffing in the spices, the old man's nose was tickled quite a bit.

With a tickled nose, the old man realized that he needed to sneeze. So he turned back to his left and reared his head back to sneeze. He wasn't polite when it came to sneezing, so as he lurched his head forward to let out the force of his sneeze, his mouth met the boulder of which he was unaware.

The connection between the rock and his teeth caused the aching tooth to be knocked straight from his mouth. In shock and a bit of pain, the old man felt around in his mouth and realized the aching was gone.

To this day, the old man hasn't had a toothache.
This is all thanks to the supper that scalded the old man's mouth.
Causing him to spit on the butterfly.
That flew away and distracted Kut O Yis.
Who missed his target with his arrow.
That ended up in the hindquarters of a horse.
Which woke the horse's owner.
Who fired off his gun.
Leading to the old man's donkey being startled.
That kicked the spice can over.
Causing the old man to sneeze.
Right into a boulder that knocked his aching tooth out.

Author's Note: I was inspired to attempt this story style after looking through the different types Dr. Gibbs gave to us. I combined the technique from the accumulative stories with some of the characters in the Blackfoot stories. In the accumulative stories, there are two styles that I built off of. I used the story, "This is the House that Jack Built" to help create a conclusion to my overall story, and I kind of followed the old woman's tale for the rest of the story. Instead of creating my own characters, I used my reading from last week (Blackfoot Stories), and implemented a few characters from those stories. The old man was a popular supernatural character in the Blackfoot tales, so I wanted to make him my main character. Kut O Yis is a hero from the stories who uses a bow. I thought it would be funny to have him be in the background as part of the sequence of events. The butterfly was a symbol for the "butterfly effect," which was how the story's plot unfolded. Truthfully, most of the other things I included in the story were added in to complement the characters I had already used. I just tried to match what I thought would be appropriate for the time frame of the stories.

Bibliography: Accumulative Stories in The Nursery Rhyme Book edited by Andrew Lang
                         Blackfoot Stories by Grinnell

Week 10 Reading Notes: Native American Hero Tales, Part B

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"Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away" starts off as an extremely gruesome story. The details are vivid and quite disgusting. I'm not sure how the man new his wife had been killed by the Red Woman right after he found that she was dead. The names in the story are quite literal (Thrown in Spring and Thrown behind the Curtain). The plot of the first story is completely random. I am confused as to how the mother came back to life and how the old woman with the pot is their grandmother? So they killed their grandmother by drowning her in the boiling pot? Then went on to kill an alligator by ripping its heart out? Wow. These two boys are seeming to be malevolent. I am looking for the hero aspect to come into the story. I won't write out the details of the reasoning as to why snakes have flat heads, but I will say that the story continues with the gruesome theme.That was one random story.

"The Jealous Father" (similar title to "The Jealous Uncle"). I wonder if the stories will be similar? Not exactly similar but the stories did start off in parallel ways. I wonder why this is such a popular plot to follow. This is the third story I've read so far that has used a similar plot. The first two about the uncle and son in law were really similar and the jealous father started off the same.

So Dirty Boy didn't actually shoot the arrows or is Sun the same person as Dirty Boy? The second daughter did the right thing by keeping her word and it paid off for her in the end. Although the plot was somewhat confusing at the beginning, it did serve a valuable lesson about integrity and honesty. This story had more of an obvious theme at the end, which I wasn't able to find in the others.

Bibliography: Native American Hero Tales, by Stith Thompson

Week 10 Reading Notes: Native American Hero Tales, Part A

(Batman  --  clement127)
Source: Flickr

The first story begins similarly to the story I read in week 9 about Kut O Yis. The Jealous Uncle is the same as the son in law. The parents also aim to hide the identity of the baby born, which is what the husband and wife did in the other story. I wonder if the endings and plot throughout will be the same too. I'm not exactly sure why the uncle got his name "Unnatural Uncle". He is definitely weird and horrific by Unnatural seems like a weird adjective to use. I think there could be better names to fit his character. I don't understand why the parents don't do something to prevent the uncle from hurting their son. He literally told them that he would kill the boy right after he attempted to and they just became sad. The boy also keeps going out with the uncle. At this point, after both of the other sons have been killed, it seems as though someone would do something about this Unnatural Uncle. Plus, aren't there weapons at all? I am surprised the uncle didn't fashion a knife or bow to try and kill the boy.

There is another story of how the bat came to not have feathers (similar to the reasons as to why cats don't like dogs in a story I read in the Japanese Fairy Tales). I'm not exactly sure how the story about the elk and great eagle follows the title of "Hero Tales" though. Jonayaiyin is pretty ruthless when it comes to killing the eagles. I know they were bad, but it seems as though Jonayaiyin is more of a vigilante than a hero. Really, the eagles could be given the benefit of the doubt by saying that the mother was only feeding her babies (not intending to be bad), so really Jonayaiyin isn't a hero at all. It was more of a story concerned with survival of the fittest.

Bibliography: Native American Hero Tales, by Stith Thompson

Story Planning Week 9: Blackfoot Butterfly Effect

I have read one or two stories that implement the cumulative tale style, and I found them to be very interesting. I thought about trying them out a few weeks ago, but I couldn't come up with very good ideas to write about. For next week's story post, I would like to use this style to tell a story about Blackfoot Indian culture. From my reading during week 9, I have found some information about the Blackfoot and also learned about the fables they told. The different steps I use in my cumulative tale may not be one hundred percent accurate, but they will be based off of the stories I read throughout week 9.

"The story about the rolling stone is quite a stretch. The whole time I was focused on the conflict between the man and the rock (which was already pretty crazy), but the purpose of the story didn't even turn out to be about them. It was about the way hawks look today and why they do." (Week 9 Reading Note Part A Post)

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A few of the stories, such as the rolling stone one, involved an old man and events he went through, which lead to something occurring that changed history. The example I wrote about is with the stone that chased the old man, which was stopped by the hawks, leading to hawk beaks changing forever. I think it would be awesome to gather a few of these things from each story, to add together for an overall cumulative tale. In the end, my goal would be to have the specific things add together to cause some grand event at the end. It could also be comical to have a huge list, which end up causing a very small thing to happen (such as a drop of water to fall or someone to sneeze).

My list for the cumulative tale (will be similar to the butterfly effect) is going to include the old man (popular in the Blackfoot readings), a boulder, a drop of water, spices, a fire pit, the old man's wife, the sun, Kut O Yis (a hero from the reading part B) shooting an arrow, some for of animal (probably an actual butterfly to symbolize what is going on), and I may add or subtract any as I figure out what I need. This style is very new to me, but it seems like it will be fun so hopefully all goes well!

Bibliography: Blackfoot Stories by Grinnell