Fairy Tale Prompt: Volume 1

"Miranda at the Stern"

If you haven't seen this before or are new to SSiG, this is a writing prompt community project in which we share our art and writing for encouragement and constructive criticism.

Click here for the rules and deadline.

I'm posting this way ahead of time in case some people are still unclear about how to go about participating and what that participation entails.

Copyright Claudia Bernasconi Esposito.  Source.

Reflecting on the prompt (above) made me think of undines, which became the wreaths or petals of the poem, and grew backward and inward from there.

I would be very grateful for a critical eye: style, word choice, stanzas, story, anything that catches your attention.  I purposefully did not ask for feedback on this before hand.  

The idea is to encourage and critique.  But please be gentle and considerate!  We want to uplift, not to trample.*

Miranda at the Stern

The buoyant fruit, seeded

with pearlescent faces bearing names

of extinct, pedantic gods,

dives from father's cay

in albatross form, sails puffed

but breathless, catching no current,

slapped by the wide palms of rain;

the mineral sea a mouthless

appetite, devouring islands, spitting them

back like stones.

The waves' tongues pitch and roll

the rootless boat.  Fish-eyed

undines swirl, stare

at she who tore and drifted through

the veil, broke the soot-circumference

of Prospero's pentagrams, forsook

what is solid, with no place

to anchor.

*  Please also be aware when offering constructive criticism that, as a writer once said about her craft, "there are no mistakes, only effects."  Tone and style are unique and personal.  It can be hard for the un-trained critiquer to recognize the difference between what isn't working and what isn't his personal taste.  I would be mortified if, through a desire to help foster someone's creative inclinations to art and writing, we unwittingly discourage and cause self-doubt and discouragement.

Storytelling as Part of a Community

The writing lifestyle takes a certain degree of solitude.  So it has been interesting to see discussions sprouting up about writing as it relates to experiences, the degrees of socialization that are necessary in contributing to the formation of a story, and the idea of originality in the creative process.

I mentioned originality in fairy tales briefly before.  My questions prompted A.L. Loveday to assert more or less that there isn't such thing as complete originality, and that there needn't be.  

A similar sentiment was expressed recently on The Dark Forest.  Megan notes that the "remakes" popular in the box office for the past decade or so are only a continuation of the folkloric tradition; that fairy stories are "the most ancient stories speaking to people today."

artist unknown

This leads me to think the idea of originality can be tied into the idea of solitude.  If the Modernists led the movement in originality, a thing by its very nature presupposing standing without company in the midst of others, then the opposite is true of the folk storytellers.  Their aim wasn't originality.  If they had any aim at all, it was to fulfill a role that was an essential part of the community; a role still essential today, as we see it in the career of a fiction author.

These stories, as self-contained and independent bodies, are conscious of coming from part of a larger Story (or mythos).  So much in the telling of a fairy tale is presupposed--once upon a time, the rule of three, simplistic moral extremes.  So much in the hearing of a fairy tale is taken for granted--it's any and every time, three is a sacred number, youth are good and the aged are bad because old age draws us nearer to the borders of that "undiscovere'd country."

So it appears in the case of fairy tales that the creative process is something that cannot be strictly isolated from a sense of community.

We should tell stories to each other.  Our stories matter, and they sustain us.

What do you think?

Grace and Whimsy

Artist Sheilah Beckett

I first encountered this artist in a Little Golden Book, The Twelve Days of Christmas, which I saw in the checkout line at the grocery store and insisted that my mother buy me.  I was enchanted by the details and elegance of the clothing, the ebbing hair, and the delicate hands and features.

When I googled her, I was delighted (to say the least) to see her fairy tale illustrations.

Each story has a slightly different style, which, I think, shows her flexibility as an artist.

Twelve Dancing Princesses

from Sleeping Beauty

Snow White and Rose Red

Titania and Oberon

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Hansel and Gretel

Oh, wondrous internet, opening new worlds to me!  (And yet more and more ways for me to spend money I don't have.)

For more of my favorite childhood fairy tale artists, click the link.

And don't forget to tell your friends about our fairy tale writing contest.  I hope that even if you aren't a contest-type person that you will come back for the writing prompt exercises.