Week 7 Extra Reading Notes: Khasi Folktales, Part A

This is a similar style to one of the Chinese fairy tales that I read a few weeks ago. It was about how the cat and dog came to dislike each other. I was a little confused as to why in this story, the lion wasn't chosen to be the king of the jungle, but rather the tiger instead. Tigers are really cool, but I think of the lion as the king of the jungle usually. The monkeys were very clever and I'm surprised the tiger never caught on to what they had done. I guess the tiger was described as ignorant for a reason!

The scenery described in some of the stories is extremely vivid. The sacred characteristics of the Iei Tree are highlighted with the different descriptions of the setting. It helps me because these don't come with many pictures, so sometimes I have trouble coming up with the right images to follow the story. Even without a single picture I still feel as though I am imagining the same thing as the author. Making sure the setting is set well really helps the reader delve further into the story.

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"Hunting the Stag Lapalang" is a really neat way to introduce the background of Khasi lamentations. To have the hunters even realize how deep the love of the mother stag was for her son really emphasized how much she mourned. That would be a great idea to research a culture a little bit and then write a story about how their customs came to be. It would be good to mix up my writing style to a more informative storytelling mode as opposed to completely fictional. Maybe with the Native American readings coming up in Week 9 I can do that! If their is a Choctaw reading I could do that because I actually know a few people at OU that are part Choctaw. Those will be cool to read because Native American culture is so prominent in Oklahoma, so I could focus my research on tribes closer to Norman.

Bibliography: Khasi Folktales, Mrs. K. U. Rafy

Growth Mindset: Writing Challenge Continued

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Last week, I wrote about my writing challenges I chose (lengthening my story and using more visual details). I left off talking about my story length. I had gotten it to almost 1000 words, but still felt like I needed to add more visual details. To complete the challenge I had to go back and take out some of the parts, which I felt were unnecessary and add back words that were useful. I also reworded some sentences and adjectives to make them more valuable. I actually had to look up more pictures to add in (which the readers can use to help them image the setting even better) and also just looked up pictures to visualize what I wanted from the setting. Even though I was writing the story, I still had to look at pictures, which really helped me put what I had in mind on paper (in the blog). Hopefully this challenge will carry over into my other stories without me having to focus on it too much, buuuuuut I doubt it will fix itself that quickly. Overtime I will get better as long as i keep writing the stories. I recommend this challenge to anyone who struggles with story length!

Week 7 Storytelling: Lil Romero

The bell rang out loudly as the clock struck nine o'clock sharp. All of the students in the classroom were seated quietly as Mr. Ryder began to lecture the kindergartners. Everyone in the classroom paid full attention, except for one student seated in the back of the room, Romero. 

He tried listening to Mrs. Ryder each day, but couldn't help staring at Julia, the brunette in the front left of the room. Romero has had his eyes on Julia since pre-K and knew he was destined to be with this girl. He longed for her attention day in and day out, always trying to build the courage to talk to her but never would.

(Kindergarten  --  MJGDSLibrary)
Source: Flickr

In Romero's mind, he thought that if he could give Julia a gracious gift, she would fall madly in love with him. So for the past three weeks he had been stealing knick-knacks from other students in the class. Items he had stolen ranged from Bobby's pencil grips, all the way to Cassandra's pencil holder.

Even with all of the different items Romero had stolen, he still felt as though he needed to take something better to give to Julia. This is where the bejeweled bracelet on Sara's backpack came into the picture. Romero had seen Ben give this bracelet to Sara and she loved it! Romero knew if he could get his hands on it, Julia wouldn't be able to resist him.

Over the past two days, Romero had devised a plan to take the bracelet from Sara. The best option seemed to be that when class was let out of school, Romero could "accidentally" bump into Sara to distract her, and snatch the bracelet off of her bag. Today was the day to act.

As the clock notched closer to the end of class, Romero began to feel anxious. He had to remind himself that he was a pro and he had done this many times before. The bell rang and Romero jumped out of his seat and darted into the hallway to get into position. When Sara came out of the classroom, Romero shot towards her, ready to take the crown jewel. Before he could bump into Sara, he was dragged backwards out of nowhere. Romero turned around completely bewildered as to what had just happened. 

His eyes were met by the glare of Principal King.

"Follow me to my office, now," Principal King commanded.

Romero knew he was in for it. He followed the principal down the hall with all of the other kids watching him, including the love of his life, Julia.

As the principal sat next to Romero, he let out a long sigh.

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"Romero, why have you been stealing from the other students? You know that's wrong and now you have to face the punishment. You will be placed into detention for the next month and then will return to Ms. Wilkerson's class."

Romero didn't bother trying to explain himself. There wasn't anything he could say to make up for what he had done. With thoughts of Julia, he left the principal's office and went to the detention study.
~
A month passed by and Romero was finally allowed to return back to the normal classroom. He walked into Ms. Wilkerson's classroom, sat in the back, and decided to take a look around. 

What he saw filled his heart with a feeling he hadn't experienced in an entire month. In the middle of the room was a blonde, Julie. Romero knew he loved this girl more than any he ever could.

Now if only he could get his hands on a necklace... 



Author's Note: In the original story, Twenty-Two Goblins, many riddles were told to a King on his journey. I found one, "The Girl and the Thief," that intrigued me. Basically, a thief has been stealing from citizens and the King orders him to die. A girl falls in love with him and is heartbroken when he is  killed. He comes back to life and they live happily ever after. I put a youthful spin on the riddle. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, so I made a love story with grade-school children. I thought it would be more lighthearted with a younger character line up. The thief, Romero in my story, wants to impress Julia (his classmate), so he steals things from other kids to give to her. The king in my story is the principal, who finds out he has been stealing and orders him to move classes (be killed). Sadly, he has to learn his lesson and remain in the other class and isn't "brought back to life" like in the original. I thought it would comical to end the story with the possibility of Romero returning to class with the same bad habits. Romero thought Julia was the love of his life (as many kids do), but then is easily wooed by the new girl he sees in Ms. Wilkerson's class. I also included the original author's name in my story with Romero's first teacher.

Bibliography: Twenty-Two Goblins, by Arthur Ryder
                         The Girl and the Thief (in Twenty-Two Goblins)

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales, Part B

The first Japanese fairy tale, "The Goblin of Adachigahara", starts off with a little role reversal compared to your usual fairy tale. Instead of a damsel in distress, the priest was looking for help from the old woman spinning her yarn (the goblin). I guess technically the old woman is actually a male goblin, but still, the roles are somewhat reversed. I think disguising himself as an old woman is definitely a neat idea. Older women would pose the least threatening, but it would be a little suspicious that this woman would be out in the woods all alone. Sort of a "Hansel and Gretel" kind of vibe. Don't eat the candy/spend the night at the goblin's abode. When will the dame/damsel in distress ever learn? Don't go looking in a room means to not go into the room. "Curiosity killed the cat."

(curiosity challenge  --  ankakay)
Source: Flickr

Wow! In this case curiosity did not kill the priest. It actually saved him. I definitely like that spin on the usual plot where someone gets too curious and it leads to their downfall. I was happy to see the priest made it out alive as well. His reactions to the situations that arose seemed pretty realistic too. I wonder what happened to the goblin afterwards? Maybe I could add on to the story by introducing a new character the priest hires to go back and defeat the goblin?

The next story is similar with tales of a cannibal monster (disguised as elderly women), but the protagonists reactions are very different. Watanabe looks to fight and the priest ran. I could use Watanabe as my mercenary hired to kill the goblin of Adachigahara. If he lives through "The Ogre of Rahomon". Interesting ending that the Ogre was not killed, but the conflict was resolved because the knight frightened him so much.

Bibliography: Japanese Fairy Tales, Ozaki

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki), Part A

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I could already tell from the name of the story that it would be great, "My Lord Bag of Rice". For some reason the concept of giving his name and then explaining the story as to how he came to be called that, really interested me. I like that idea and hope I can do something similar to that in a story soon. The fact that they used that name too, Bag of Rice, made it comical too. It just made me think, what did he have to do to get that name and why would he want to keep it? So I guess this storytelling style hooked me from the beginning with its curiosity factor. In the end, the gifts ended up sounding quite strange, but were actually miraculous. I appreciated the diamond in the rough factor involved with the gifts throughout the stories. Usually the gifts granted are numerous amounts of gold and jewels, but these (infinite rice and silk) were more feasible and maybe carried more worth (depending on the person).


The detail involved in the story really helped me visualize everything going on. I know that's important to the reader because it enables you to delve further into the story. Descriptions such as, "the lake glittered like a liquid diamond" and "the light in its hundred feet glowed like so many distant lanterns moving slowly towards the shore". I've been doing the writing challenge about visual details, I think it would be important for me to read stories like this to get more ideas as to how I can better capture the imagery I want to portray to reader, in words. There was a little confusion for me about the description of the centipede in "My Lord Bad of Rice". Some of the descriptions of the centipede were somewhat vague, leading me to wonder about the actual size of the monster. Besides that I though the story was written very well. It's good to have good and not as good examples of readings with a lot of imagery, so I can see what to do and also what not to do.


Bibliography: Japanese Fairy Tales, Ozaki