Story planning: Week 7

This weeks stories have been a challenge to read. Diving deeper into the stories I decided to do some research to find out the origin. Turns out that these stories surfaced during the time of slavery. The Brer Rabbit stories were meant to symbolize the underdog in the situation. I found this to be a really intriguing fact. Understanding the history behind these stories brings out the powerful message that is hidden within them. The rabbit is meant to be a trickster but not a normal trickster. The type of trickster that the rabbit is can be explained as not using any type of power or size to defeat his enemy but rather his mind and silver tongue. This is what makes writing the story interesting and why I have chosen to plan this week rather than write. I think that I will be making my own version of the story "How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox" which is a story about how the rabbit has to outsmart the fox in order to survive and not be the fox's next meal. My idea is to keep that main idea but make it into a story more modern in nature. Maybe doing a story about surviving in todays world with the people around us. Or possibly doing a modern rabbit and fox. The story will be interesting to write and will take me a little bit longer to write than usual so I will make sure to plan ahead for that. The nature of the text is really difficult for me to read but I have read the story at least six times now and am starting to understand more of what it is about.

This Fox represents the greedy/hungry fox that is trying to eat the rabbit

Photo provided by Flickr

Bibliography: "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" from Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris 

"The History of Brer Rabbit" from Wikipedia by Multiple sources

Week 5 Planning: The Trickster Revelations and Heroes Rising

The intro to my storybook is most likely going to be along the lines of a trickster (or two) coming in to the scene as two separate entities. Meaning they'll start off in a place where they are not aware of one another's presence. As I have seen in the readings, the mythology tricksters have been Gods mostly and have the ability to bend the laws of reality. In the Native American tricksters stories the tricksters were portrayed as animals and didn't exactly have the power to bend reality but instead had silver tongues to talk their way to anything they desired.

The Wikipedia website shows the same characteristics of the tricksters portrayed in the stories. It gave me more insight to how they were used symbolically.

As for the Heroes of the story book they will be men and not Gods, I think that being mortal gives the stories more edge. I really enjoyed the Achilles stories from last weeks readings and thought it was interesting how the plot showed that Achilles could die if he chose the wrong path. There are a couple ideas that I have in mind for the heroes, either Sam and Dean and the Grimm brothers, or I will make my own heroes.

The story book needs to start off with the heroes not aware of the task that will become of them, meaning defeating the tricksters. But the tricksters know of who the heroes are and are afraid in a way that they will be killed by the heroes. This will cause the tricksters to do everything they can to prevent their demise but in the long run will fail and not be able to stop the force of the mortal beings. Overall I am excited to start my storybook this next week.

The mortal man being watched by the trickster from the shadows.

Photo provided by: Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: "Trickster" by Multiple Sources from Wikipedia

"The Slaying of Hector (end)" by A.J. Church from Homer's Iliad