Course Improvements

I really liked the idea for story planning, and actually used it once this semester. Sometimes you're not in your zone as a writer, but you have a couple of ideas for a story. It would help for people to still comment on these story planning posts since your peers could help you decide on a story or give you feedback on your story idea.

I also like the idea of thematic reading for each week. When we were reading the Ramayana, it was great to have a schedule for what we had to read each day. However, once the time came for free choice reading, it was a little difficult to know what would be good. Having a weekly theme and then a list of suggestions for each theme would be great for people who prefer to have structure versus freedom.

Story: Criminal District Court Proceedings

Image: Flickr

"Your Honor, the State is ready to proceeds with motions."

Direct Examination

Ms. Smith: Could you please state your name for the Record?

Alan King: Mayor Alan King.

Ms. Smith: Do you see McKenzie King in court today?

Alan King: Yes.

Ms. Smith: Mr. Mayor, could you tell the Court what happened the night of February 2, 2015?

Alan King: Me and my wife were sleeping in the upstairs guest room at my mother's home. My sister and two brothers were also visiting and were staying in the downstairs guest room. It was 11 PM, and both of us have work early. I was woken by a noise in the living room, so I went to investigate.

Ms. Smith: What did the noise sound like?

Alan King: It was the sound of the door opening. It is old so it always creaked, every since we were little kids.

Ms. Smith: What did you do next?

Alan King: I went to the front door to see who had left. The porch light was on, so I could see who was leaving the yard.

Ms. Smith: And who was the person you saw?

Alan King: It was my sister, McKenzie King.

Ms. Smith: And when you saw it was your sister, what was your next action?

Alan King: I followed her but brought no attention to myself. You have to understand that I've always been a little...scared of my sister. When she was born, she acted like a normal child, but then sometimes in the middle of the night, she would sneak out of the window and go places and then come back before everyone had woken up. I saw it happen several times.

Ms. Smith: Is there any other reason you suspected your sister was different?

Alan King: People kept dying. They would find remains every morning of a child, a mother, a shopkeeper, random people from town. Always found in the morning. You must remember what it was like twenty years ago. They never caught the person responsible, but I always wondered if it was McKenzie.

Ms. Smith: So, on the night of February second, you followed your sister. Where did she go?

Alan King: She walked over to the home of our family friend, Tom Pultz.  I stayed outside, too scared to enter. I thought maybe she was having an affair with Tom. I was wrong.

Ms. Smith: And did she emerge from the house?

Alan King: Yes. I don't know why, but I waited outside. I thought of confronting her after about her affair. When she finally emerged, her nightgown was covered in blood. She quickly took it off and buried it in Tom's front yard. When she had gone back home, I dug it up.

Ms. Smith: I want to show you this document that's marked Exhibit Number 1. Is this the gown she wore that night?

Alan King: Yes, that is the exact one I saw her burying and later I dug up.

Ms. Smith: Your Honor, I would like to offer Exhibit 1 into evidence.

The Court: Exhibit 1 is received in evidence.

Ms. Smith: Mr. Mayor, what did you do after digging up the gown?

Alan King: I returned home and put it in one of my empty bedside drawers until I could go to the police department the next morning.

Ms. Smith: And what happened the next morning?

Alan King: Before I went to work in the next town over where I'm mayor, I passed by Tom's house just to see him and talk. There was police tape around his front door and a swarm of officers. I found out he was killed.

Ms. Smith: And who did they suspect?

Alan King: They thought it was perhaps an animal, since the scene was so gruesome. I knew it was my sister who had done it. McKenzie, you can sit over there and smile all you'd like, but I know you're guilty. You've always had an emptiness in your eyes that makes me shiver, and if the Jury were to look into your eyes they would see it too.

Ms. Smith: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I have no further questions.


A/N

I based this story on one I read in The Flowering Tree called "Demon sister." It is about a baby who, when born, looks very unusual but acts like a regular child. Until nighttime, that is. At bedtime, the child sneaks out and one by one eats the people in the town. One night, her brother sees her transform from a baby into a demon, but says nothing. Scared for his life, he leaves the town and marries a girl in a neighboring town. All this time, he is preparing to kill his sister so that she can no longer hurt anyone in the town. He finally goes back to visit, and his hometown has become a ghost town. He ends up killing his sister with a trained lion.

I changed the plot of the story so that it could be in a court transcript style. I wanted to offer a snippet of the court hearing that would go on if the demon sister was accused of murder. I know that the story isn't that exciting, but I wanted to explore a new writing style this week.

 Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.

Reading Notes: A Flowering Tree Part 2

For Tuesday's reading, I again chose to read more stories from A Flowering Tree.

I left off with a story called "The Dead Prince and the Talking Doll." It made me mad that the princess was trapped in this tiny room with a dead man and no company. She nursed the man back to health for 12 years and just when he was about to wake up, this acrobat girl swooped in and took the prince as her husband, claiming to have taken care of him the whole time. Luckily, the princess was telling her story to a doll one night in the room and the prince overheard what happened. He got rid of the acrobat girl and the prince and princess got married instead. The creepy part of the story was the fact that for several years, the princess gave food to a beggar who predicted that she would become the bride of a dead husband.

It's really strange because in all of the stories I read from this collection, the dolls always can talk and act like real people. For example, in another story literally called "Dolls," a husband is angry because his wife always eats what I'm guessing is the good part of their fish. He always has to eat the leftover tail and head. He asked his sister for advice, and she told him to leave three dolls around the house. The poor wife was scared by the talking dolls and left the house before she could eat anything. I guess they did their job.

There was another really interesting story called "Double Double" about a man who asked for a favor from God to double his supply. Unfortunately, God wasn't specific about what was doubled, so every time the man ate, his food doubled itself within his stomach, so he burst. But then at his funeral, his body kept doubling, and the townspeople had to keep burying bodies.

Photo By Roberto Tetsuo Okamura, Shutterstock.  

Since the collection is named after it, I decided to also read "The Flowering Tree." I was expecting a light tale about somebody falling in love underneath a beautiful tree. Nope. So it starts off nice with two sisters. The younger one can turn herself into a flowering tree so that they can sell the beautiful flowers for their poor mother. Soon the Prince learns about the flowers and finds the daughter and wants to marry her. His mean sister disregards the special instructions for turning the daughter into the tree, and leaves the poor girl with half a body. After a while, the Prince realizes that it's his wife and heals her.

 Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.

Reading Notes: A Flowering Tree

This week I chose a new source to work with, and I was not disappointed. The stories are a bit weird, but very entertaining.

The first story I read, called "A Story and a Song", was about a woman who had a story and song she wanted to tell, but she kept them in too long, so they took revenge. In the middle of the night, the story and song became a man's coat and boots. The woman's husband got jealous and they fought. The strange part of the story is that the woman's husband got the explanation from a group of gossiping lamp flames. It's interesting how inanimate objects were able to talk. The husband heard them talking about the true reason for the boots and coat being at their house and so he went home and asked about the song. The most disappointing part of the story is that she had forgotten the story and song. They could have sounded beautiful and it was all wasted because she didn't let them free. The commentary is really interesting because it talks about how nothing is destroyed; it is transformed.

The next story("A Brother, Sister, and a Snake") that was interesting was this one about a King, his new wife, and 2 children. The step-mother did not like the children, so she tried to kill the girl by putting a baby snake in her water. The snake stayed in her stomach, and the two children were banished for some weird reason. The brother and sister stayed in a forest with a nice Ogre for many years until one day her brother for some reason turns into a snake and long story short she almost marries her dad until she tells her story to him and then everyone lives happily ever after.

I liked this story called "Cannibal Sister." The title basically contains the story. There is a family and a baby is born and it looks weird and terrifying but the mother doesn't think anything of it. One night, a brother wakes up in the middle of the night and sees when the demon baby goes out and eats villagers and comes back to sleep in the crib like a human baby. He leaves town and comes back with trained lions to kill his "sister." He ends up killing his sister, but only after his demon sister had eaten his horse's legs off.

A Ghost Town, Wikipedia

Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.

Tech Tip: Meme Builder

I've never done a tech tip yet, but I was going through my friend's blog and thought her meme was super funny, so I decided to try it. It's really easy too. All you do is go to this link, go through the pictures until you find a suitable one to fit your general message, and make the caption! You can either choose "top," "middle," or "bottom" for the placement of the caption. Make sure to add spaces before the caption if it's not centered enough. Here's my result:

Story: The Two Little Pigs

Image: Wallpaper Cave

I was walking along the dirt road that led to the market, which was going to be about a 3-mile walk. I haven't yet trusted the idea of some loud machine that sounds like it's about to erupt in flames while I'm in it. Sure, it's the 1920s  and people are coming up with all sorts of strange contraptions, but I'm staying with what I know. And what I know is dirt roads and water wells and growing my own food. Unfortunately, I still have to go to the market to get yeast for bread and a couple of household things. Now I was holding a large bag  on my way back to my house. I was just nearing the lake, when I heard strange little squeals, one slightly lower pitch than the other. I looked around but saw nothing until I looked down close by the lake and saw the smallest little pink objects. I approached and they didn't seem scared of me. On the contrary, they had started sniffing the bag of groceries I had set down. There didn't seem to be any mother around, which almost made me cry. Someone had abandoned these adorable creatures. I picked them up and put them in my basket. All three of us walked the way back from the market.

"Pinky, Inky!" I called. It was exactly 6 o'clock.
"Time for dinner!"

Three years later, the two little pigs were no longer little, but they were still pink. They both came immediately, oinking their way to the customized food bowls. This ritual continued until one day I didn't want them to come home. Two large men had just come to my door. They were clearly drunk and could barely knock on the door. They offered me a bottle of wine and so I let them into my house.

"Ma'am, we want your pigs. There's a big festival today and we ran out of meat for everyone. We need more." He pounded on the table to emphasize the last three words.

"Those are my children, not for eating."

"How about we open that bottle of wine?" One of them asked.

They drank and talked for about 30 minutes and they had hoped that I was drunk enough to let them have my little ones.

One of them finally brought it up.
"So, ma'am, how about those pigs of yours?"

"They are still my children." This brought them over the edge. The two barbarians stood up and started for the door.

"Then we'll find them then. We don't need you."

It was 7 PM, and Pinky and Inky hadn't come yet, since they always waited for her call. The large men started looking in the barn. These idiot men didn't realize that my children and I had a secret system. If there was danger, I called their names in reverse order. So while the men looked around the barn, I called my children home.

"Inky, Pinky!" I prayed that they understood the message. The men soon got tired of looking and went back to the party, furious.

I waited 15 minutes for them to completely disappear, and ran toward the place I knew my little pigs would be. There they were, laying by the lake where I first found them. I called them over and embraced them. We walked back home, the three of us, just like that day I found them.



A/N
The story this was based off of was from Twenty Jataka Tales called "The Two Pigs." In the story, a woman finds two baby pigs on the side of a lake and cares for them for several years. They became like her own children. Every day, she would call them to be fed at the same time. There came a week when a large feast was being held in the village, but they ran out of meat. They remembered the lady had pigs, and tried to get her to let them kill them for meat. She refused, even after several glasses of wine. After that, to protect the pigs, she called them in reverse order so that the pigs would know not to come. The only difference between the original and mine is that one of the pigs says a magical poem about love that transforms everyone in the village. They no longer want meat, and everyone is happy. After this, the pigs are celebrated and brought to the King of the village and are able to live there until they die. However, I wanted the pigs to stay with their mother, so that's how I changed it for my story.

Bibliography: Twenty Jakata Tales. "The Two Pigs." Link to Reading Guide. 

Reading Notes: Twenty Jataka Tales Reading part B

Image: Deer, Quotesgram

I loved the first story from Reading B of Twenty Jataka Tales. It was about this woman who found two baby pigs on the side of the road and picked them up to bring home with her. She took care of them like they were her own children. Several years later, there came a time when the village needed more meat and asked the woman for her pigs. The lady called the two pigs in the opposite order she usually did when it was feeding time to try and warn them of the danger. One of the pigs came when they were called, and the other said this poem that magically made the men from the village happy. In the poem, it talked about the perfume that never fades away, which is love. The pigs ended up being taken in by the King and lived there until he died. Why did they have to leave the woman though? Wouldn't their happy ending include her?

Another good story was about a beautiful deer that was silent and lived deep in the forest. One day the King was riding in the forest and spotted the deer and tried to get his horse to catch up to it. However, the deer (named Sarabha) could leap over a chasm that the king's horse couldn't. Sarabha, however, saw that he had caused the King to be trapped in the chasm, so he went down into the rocks and pulled the King out. As a favor, the King offered the palace to Sarabha, but the only thing Sarabha wanted was for hunting to not be allowed in the forest he called home.

The last story I'm thinking about making a story about was the one where some travelers shipwreck on an island. They try and find someone to help them, but they only find beautiful women. They become entranced by these women and live with them for a while. One night, one of the men realized that the women were goblins in disguise and that they needed to get off the island. Luckily, a magical unicorn came and brought them home.

Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat. Link to Reading Guide