Hello!
I couldn’t quite
decide how to start these notes, so I decided I would stick with that theme and
take style notes over how the stories in the anthology were started. Many of
them started with some form of “once upon a time,” or “one day” this
included the stories in, The divine, Tricksters, and the Fairytales sections.
This is a beginning I think a lot of us are familiar with from fairytales and
has almost become a cliché in some ways. Unless I was going to write a
fairytale, I don’t think that I would use this tool to start a story and even
then, I might not.
The other stories in the anthology had what I called a “cold
start,” to distinguish them from the stories that used the “once upon a time”
start. There were a few similarities that I noticed.
The stories in the Origins section were a very cold start. For
instance, “The Man in the Moon” only states that there was a blacksmith that
didn’t like his job. We don’t learn anything about who he is as a person, his
life, or his surroundings. There was no character development or back story to
ease the reader in which seemed to make me focus less on the character and more
on what message the story was trying to convey. This could be intentional, but
in my own stories I think I would prefer to give more context.
In the Supernatural, Metamorphosis, and Fables sections, in
the opening there was either character development or scene development that
helped me as a reader better engage with the characters and the story. In “Pygmalion”
we, as readers, get a description not only of the characters motivations but
also of his past. This sets the stage for the reader to be invested in
Pygmalion’s emotions which are a central part of the story.
For my story, I think that I would rather start with this
later kind of opening, because I would prefer that my readers be more engaged
with the characters and invest in them.
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