A story is a finicky thing that will only grow under certian conditions. An autor must work tirelessly to provide the ideal enviroment for each one. This might involve going to a rustic South American resturant for a long lunch or going out hiking in the snow. It is tricky to manage multiple storylines at once of course. One might favor the beach and one might favor the mountains. Tend your stories wisely.
Comments
Who decideds what the meaning of a story is? Is it the author who pours their creative energy into a work or the reader who can look at the totality of the piece with a far greater measure of objectivity?
For instance the carpenter had no plans to make a chicken perch when he spent a day building. And yet for a goodly amount of time a chicken perch was exactly what his creation was. In a bid to make fourth graders more aware of the larger world and how values and culture can vary from nation to nation a teacher does a thematic unit on Christmas around the world. Snacks, gifting traditions, and stories and studied from the three wise man and their camels to a towering old Father Christmas and Black Pete. For many this is a delightful lesson. This author especially loves the stories and was assigned to man the wassel table at the traditions fair that concluded the assignment. But despite the best efforts of the teachers some traditions were never mentioned. Or possibly because of the best efforts of the teachers in a small rural town full of goats and straw some traditions were never mentioned in front of impressionable and creative fourth graders. Take the Gavle Goat for instance. Since 1966 the residents of the rural town of Gavle has done their level best to build and maintain a giant Christmas goat of straw...it is Sweden...go figure. And since 1966 other residents have carried out the tradition of burning the goat down. It has been fireproofed with chemical retardants, water and ice, webcams, and fences but 27 times the Gavle Christmas Goat has burned to the ground. By the time that you have Santa and his Gingerbread men shooting flaming arrows into a tradition you really just have to roll with it. Fourth grade me would have found this tradition very interesting. |
AuthorBetty Adams is an up and coming author with a bent for science and Sci-fi. Archives
March 2024
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