Reading Notes: The Man in the Moon and Pygmalion

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.

Bibliography:

“The Man in the Moon” From Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson (1899)

“Pygmalion” from Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)

Photo (Once Upon a Time on a Vintage Typewriter) Via PublicDomainPictures

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