Week 12 reading: More English Fairy Tales, part A
Today I decided to focus on only one story, The Golden Ball from Joseph Jacobs' More English Fairy Tales. Unlike most of my other reading notes, I'll actually be talking about this story because I didn't like it.
First of all, the story was confusing -- I had to read it twice just to understand what happened. To be fair, I am pretty tired, but I expected a fairy tale to be relatively straightforward. Instead, I was left with several questions.
For starters, who was the woman who told the girl's sweetheart to stay in the house for three days? She is never mentioned again after rising up and giving her message. Was it her house? And where did the giants come from, and how were they so easy for a regular man to slice in half? Who were the ghosts (bogles) and how did they die? Why were they in the house? Why were the giants their masters?
Also, the premise of the story doesn't really make sense. Why did a random man give the golden ball to those girls, and why should they be hanged if they lost them? Who would even keep track of that? But I digress.
I chose to write about this story for my reading notes because I think it serves as a good example of what not to do when writing my stories. For starters, I should always properly introduce my characters. Any character who has been introduced must have at least some explanation -- after all, why include them if the story if they serve no purpose? I want to develop my characters so that readers are invested in them, care about them, and can root against them or cheer for them.
I also don't want to leave my readers wondering why I wrote the story in the first place. The point of a story is to entertain, or make a point, or make someone think. This story did not do those things for me. I want my stories to be different.
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| The cover of More English Fairy Tales. Source: UnTextbook |
For starters, who was the woman who told the girl's sweetheart to stay in the house for three days? She is never mentioned again after rising up and giving her message. Was it her house? And where did the giants come from, and how were they so easy for a regular man to slice in half? Who were the ghosts (bogles) and how did they die? Why were they in the house? Why were the giants their masters?
Also, the premise of the story doesn't really make sense. Why did a random man give the golden ball to those girls, and why should they be hanged if they lost them? Who would even keep track of that? But I digress.
I chose to write about this story for my reading notes because I think it serves as a good example of what not to do when writing my stories. For starters, I should always properly introduce my characters. Any character who has been introduced must have at least some explanation -- after all, why include them if the story if they serve no purpose? I want to develop my characters so that readers are invested in them, care about them, and can root against them or cheer for them.
I also don't want to leave my readers wondering why I wrote the story in the first place. The point of a story is to entertain, or make a point, or make someone think. This story did not do those things for me. I want my stories to be different.
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