Upwards Embellishable
Second late post of many...
I recently had reason to write a fable. Mine didn’t have any obvious moral, was a nice little story about an evil man, a bird, a tiger, and a flea. Or maybe it was about an evil man, a bird, a tiger, an elephant, and a flea. Or maybe there was no tiger, but rather just an elephant. Or perhaps I’m in the wrong habitat, and it was an evil man, a crow, a bald eagle, a buffalo, and a flea. Or maybe it the bird was always a parrot… right?
Right.
And the tiger was not just a fearsome beast, but was a tiger with a long scar running from ear to maw. And it was white and black, not the normal color. And it used very few words. Yeah.
The point is that that’s what a fable, in my sense of the usage, is. (too many ises, man…)
Fable, fairy-tale, folk-tale… they all share it. There is a basic story, but from there, you can embellish it to no end.
Here’s my little pseudo-draft of my fable. The fable-or folk-tale, you could call it-was for my American Sign Language class, and the languages are way too different to directly translate. I’ll explain what I did afterwards
*copies and pastes*
Long, long ago, a very strong, very evil man went into a forest and declared that the forest belonged to him, and he was the ruler of it. The bird he told this to decided to tell Tiger about it, so that Tiger would get rid of his ‘rival.’ Tiger, upon hearing of the man, ran off and attacked the man. The man was really strong, and after a brief struggle, he beat the tiger with a club, and killed it. The bird was shocked and horrified, and set to thinking up a new idea. It decided to go tell Elephant about this threat. Elephant agreed to kill the man, and charged the man. The man grabbed the elephant’s trunk, swung it around, and threw it into a tree. Elephant died. The bird was shocked and horrified, and tried to figure out how the man could be defeated. The bird had an idea, and flew off. The bird flew through the forest, searching and searching. Hours past, and the bird was still searching. Much later, the bird spotted what it was looking for, and landed on a branch. It asked something what if the thing could help it. The thing agreed, and the bird flew off. What was the thing? A flea. The bird landed on the man’s shoulder, and told the man that Flea was challenging it. The man thought it was silly, but when the bird asked if the man was scared, the man decided to fight Flea. Flea hopped from the bird onto the man’s face, and the bird flew off. The man, who, while very strong and very evil, was not very smart, wound up and gave the flea a mighty punch… the flea hopped up higher on the man’s head, and the punch hit the man instead. The man teetered, and then collapsed, and the Flea had won. The end.
Okay. It sucks. Give it a rest. I was working for good ASL, not meaningful story.
Now, ASL is a visual language, but it still was a live story-telling. With that, I gained the latitude to do some things that would never work on paper. For instance, every time the bird was trying to figure out what to do, he would turn to the audience and ask “What should I do?,” then think a bit and have an idea. Try having a character address the audience is a story at some point. It doesn’t work that well. I also went deep into telling them what the bird was talking to: “You all must be wondering who bird was talking too. I’ll tell you. Flea.” - made a whole big deal of it, too, and impressed the importance of that into everyone: I acted like it was very important and interesting, so everyone else wound up doing the same.
I cut out the elephant because I didn’t think I had the time (I did, which is why had the bird complain to the audience about how long he had been flying, lengthened the flea’s intro, and made bunch of dialogue between the bird and the man, as the bird tried to convince the evil man to take the flea seriously.)
So I moved a few things around. The written version lacks the dialogue and some description.
Here is the start of the story again:
Long, long ago, far over the endless ocean, far over the black mountains, there was an ancient rainforest. Thousands of animals lived and played in the forest, all ruled by the mighty tiger. The tiger was a fearsome king, quick to anger and terrible in his fury, but was otherwise just, if still a bit severe.
This was long before the forests became the battlegrounds of today, and tiger had many friends - the strong and wise Elephant, the cunning python, and the regal peacock, among others. All the animals loved their king, so long as they hadn’t broken any rules(and believe me, they didn’t dare).
Now, on the other side of the black mountains, there was a village of Men. They fished from the endless ocean, took fruits from the surrounding lands, and lived a simple, yet bountiful, life. They were happy.
So happy, in fact, that the Demon of the Deep Waters was jealous. They ate fish, just as he did, but they were all so happy. The Demon of the Deep Waters wanted to find out, and he clothed himself in the skins of drowned fishermen, and, thus disguised as a man, walked out from the waves.
He walked to the village, and met a villager on the way, who was carrying dried driftwood towards the village. He asked the man, “How is it that you are so happy?” The man laughed and called the Demon silly, then told him that there was a festival that night. The Demon smiled, thanked the man for telling him such, and then slew the man for having called him silly.
He walked further into the village, and beheld a great bonfire being built. Fires did not exist in the realm of the Deep Waters, and the Demon was disheartened. “Is this fire why you are happy?” he asked a young woman who was dreaming off into space, with a full smile on her face.
The woman turned to the demon, and shook her head. “Don’t you know? I am being married to the most wonderful man in the whole coast… he just left to get some driftwood for the fire, and should be back any moment…”
The demon realized who she was talking about, and was again disheartened. If they were happy because they were going to be married to insulting men, it certainly would not help him be happy.
I could go on. I could carry the listener through how the Demon of the Deep Waters found a boy and the boy told him that he was happy because of fruit, which eventually - after the Demon eats all the fruit on the coast causes him to go to the forest. I would have to do something about the Demon’s intelligence, so I could use the old trick of giving him some kind of fruit wine. I could make him really terrible, since he is a Demon. He could have ten faces and twenty arms, with grey skin like a dead person and burning eyes like the embers of a fire that should have been put out, but is rather going to get blown into a hapless Boy Scout’s tent, leaving a whole in the plastic that would make the next user of the tent rather miserable since it rained the next camp.
But yes, that is how a village story-teller spends the entire evening telling a tale that can be signed in less than five minutes.
You can see this elsewhere, too. Disney used to do this well - it would take some old folk-tale, and turn it into a movie. Let’s take Cinderella as an example:
A noble-girl is forced into servitude by her evil stepmother. There is a ball where all the girls in the realm are invited, but she’s can’t go without proper clothes. Her fairy godmother casts a spell that gives her clothes and retinue, with a warning that at the twelfth stroke of midnight, it will all turn back into what it was. The girl goes to the ball, and she and the prince fall in love. They dance late into the night, but the clock start to toll midnight, and the girl has to flee, leaving one fur slipper (it got mistranslated into English as ‘glass’). The prince seeks out the girl who the slipper fits, and thus finds the girl, and they live happily for the rest of their natural life-spans.
How does that become one hundred minute of feature film? Embellishment. The little animals, for instance - they appear in some tellings, but were chucked into the movie as a major part. The characters of the sisters and the stepmother, were made major. Same with the king and his advisor. They were given a major part, even if they rarely showed up in tellings. More was done with the embellishment of the stepmother trying to stop Cinderella from putting on the shoe, with a surpise ending there. While the normal stories have the wicked sisters trying to cut/stretch their feet to fit, the was little on the mother’s slyness, let alone the oddessy that Disney turned it into, with having to get the key, bring it up the stairs, fend off the cat, awaken the dog to kill the cat, then come down only to be foiled by a delft trip by the step-mother.
Embellish, embellish, embellish. If your audience asks for details, give them what they want and much more. Embellish, embellish, embellish. Renew that story, so you can tell a fortieth rendition.
Unfortunately this only really works for folktales, and other stuff with a relatively simple plot. Try doing that with the lord of the rings, and you have all manner of troubles, because the details really count. You could have Frodo and Sam be captured by the easterners, and wind up in their lands and go into Mordor from there… but then what of Farmir? What of the challenge at the gates? Would it matter? (To his credit, Peter Jackson did a good job of messing around with things, especially if you watch the director’s cut.)
I recently had reason to write a fable. Mine didn’t have any obvious moral, was a nice little story about an evil man, a bird, a tiger, and a flea. Or maybe it was about an evil man, a bird, a tiger, an elephant, and a flea. Or maybe there was no tiger, but rather just an elephant. Or perhaps I’m in the wrong habitat, and it was an evil man, a crow, a bald eagle, a buffalo, and a flea. Or maybe it the bird was always a parrot… right?
Right.
And the tiger was not just a fearsome beast, but was a tiger with a long scar running from ear to maw. And it was white and black, not the normal color. And it used very few words. Yeah.
The point is that that’s what a fable, in my sense of the usage, is. (too many ises, man…)
Fable, fairy-tale, folk-tale… they all share it. There is a basic story, but from there, you can embellish it to no end.
Here’s my little pseudo-draft of my fable. The fable-or folk-tale, you could call it-was for my American Sign Language class, and the languages are way too different to directly translate. I’ll explain what I did afterwards
*copies and pastes*
Long, long ago, a very strong, very evil man went into a forest and declared that the forest belonged to him, and he was the ruler of it. The bird he told this to decided to tell Tiger about it, so that Tiger would get rid of his ‘rival.’ Tiger, upon hearing of the man, ran off and attacked the man. The man was really strong, and after a brief struggle, he beat the tiger with a club, and killed it. The bird was shocked and horrified, and set to thinking up a new idea. It decided to go tell Elephant about this threat. Elephant agreed to kill the man, and charged the man. The man grabbed the elephant’s trunk, swung it around, and threw it into a tree. Elephant died. The bird was shocked and horrified, and tried to figure out how the man could be defeated. The bird had an idea, and flew off. The bird flew through the forest, searching and searching. Hours past, and the bird was still searching. Much later, the bird spotted what it was looking for, and landed on a branch. It asked something what if the thing could help it. The thing agreed, and the bird flew off. What was the thing? A flea. The bird landed on the man’s shoulder, and told the man that Flea was challenging it. The man thought it was silly, but when the bird asked if the man was scared, the man decided to fight Flea. Flea hopped from the bird onto the man’s face, and the bird flew off. The man, who, while very strong and very evil, was not very smart, wound up and gave the flea a mighty punch… the flea hopped up higher on the man’s head, and the punch hit the man instead. The man teetered, and then collapsed, and the Flea had won. The end.
Okay. It sucks. Give it a rest. I was working for good ASL, not meaningful story.
Now, ASL is a visual language, but it still was a live story-telling. With that, I gained the latitude to do some things that would never work on paper. For instance, every time the bird was trying to figure out what to do, he would turn to the audience and ask “What should I do?,” then think a bit and have an idea. Try having a character address the audience is a story at some point. It doesn’t work that well. I also went deep into telling them what the bird was talking to: “You all must be wondering who bird was talking too. I’ll tell you. Flea.” - made a whole big deal of it, too, and impressed the importance of that into everyone: I acted like it was very important and interesting, so everyone else wound up doing the same.
I cut out the elephant because I didn’t think I had the time (I did, which is why had the bird complain to the audience about how long he had been flying, lengthened the flea’s intro, and made bunch of dialogue between the bird and the man, as the bird tried to convince the evil man to take the flea seriously.)
So I moved a few things around. The written version lacks the dialogue and some description.
Here is the start of the story again:
Long, long ago, far over the endless ocean, far over the black mountains, there was an ancient rainforest. Thousands of animals lived and played in the forest, all ruled by the mighty tiger. The tiger was a fearsome king, quick to anger and terrible in his fury, but was otherwise just, if still a bit severe.
This was long before the forests became the battlegrounds of today, and tiger had many friends - the strong and wise Elephant, the cunning python, and the regal peacock, among others. All the animals loved their king, so long as they hadn’t broken any rules(and believe me, they didn’t dare).
Now, on the other side of the black mountains, there was a village of Men. They fished from the endless ocean, took fruits from the surrounding lands, and lived a simple, yet bountiful, life. They were happy.
So happy, in fact, that the Demon of the Deep Waters was jealous. They ate fish, just as he did, but they were all so happy. The Demon of the Deep Waters wanted to find out, and he clothed himself in the skins of drowned fishermen, and, thus disguised as a man, walked out from the waves.
He walked to the village, and met a villager on the way, who was carrying dried driftwood towards the village. He asked the man, “How is it that you are so happy?” The man laughed and called the Demon silly, then told him that there was a festival that night. The Demon smiled, thanked the man for telling him such, and then slew the man for having called him silly.
He walked further into the village, and beheld a great bonfire being built. Fires did not exist in the realm of the Deep Waters, and the Demon was disheartened. “Is this fire why you are happy?” he asked a young woman who was dreaming off into space, with a full smile on her face.
The woman turned to the demon, and shook her head. “Don’t you know? I am being married to the most wonderful man in the whole coast… he just left to get some driftwood for the fire, and should be back any moment…”
The demon realized who she was talking about, and was again disheartened. If they were happy because they were going to be married to insulting men, it certainly would not help him be happy.
I could go on. I could carry the listener through how the Demon of the Deep Waters found a boy and the boy told him that he was happy because of fruit, which eventually - after the Demon eats all the fruit on the coast causes him to go to the forest. I would have to do something about the Demon’s intelligence, so I could use the old trick of giving him some kind of fruit wine. I could make him really terrible, since he is a Demon. He could have ten faces and twenty arms, with grey skin like a dead person and burning eyes like the embers of a fire that should have been put out, but is rather going to get blown into a hapless Boy Scout’s tent, leaving a whole in the plastic that would make the next user of the tent rather miserable since it rained the next camp.
But yes, that is how a village story-teller spends the entire evening telling a tale that can be signed in less than five minutes.
You can see this elsewhere, too. Disney used to do this well - it would take some old folk-tale, and turn it into a movie. Let’s take Cinderella as an example:
A noble-girl is forced into servitude by her evil stepmother. There is a ball where all the girls in the realm are invited, but she’s can’t go without proper clothes. Her fairy godmother casts a spell that gives her clothes and retinue, with a warning that at the twelfth stroke of midnight, it will all turn back into what it was. The girl goes to the ball, and she and the prince fall in love. They dance late into the night, but the clock start to toll midnight, and the girl has to flee, leaving one fur slipper (it got mistranslated into English as ‘glass’). The prince seeks out the girl who the slipper fits, and thus finds the girl, and they live happily for the rest of their natural life-spans.
How does that become one hundred minute of feature film? Embellishment. The little animals, for instance - they appear in some tellings, but were chucked into the movie as a major part. The characters of the sisters and the stepmother, were made major. Same with the king and his advisor. They were given a major part, even if they rarely showed up in tellings. More was done with the embellishment of the stepmother trying to stop Cinderella from putting on the shoe, with a surpise ending there. While the normal stories have the wicked sisters trying to cut/stretch their feet to fit, the was little on the mother’s slyness, let alone the oddessy that Disney turned it into, with having to get the key, bring it up the stairs, fend off the cat, awaken the dog to kill the cat, then come down only to be foiled by a delft trip by the step-mother.
Embellish, embellish, embellish. If your audience asks for details, give them what they want and much more. Embellish, embellish, embellish. Renew that story, so you can tell a fortieth rendition.
Unfortunately this only really works for folktales, and other stuff with a relatively simple plot. Try doing that with the lord of the rings, and you have all manner of troubles, because the details really count. You could have Frodo and Sam be captured by the easterners, and wind up in their lands and go into Mordor from there… but then what of Farmir? What of the challenge at the gates? Would it matter? (To his credit, Peter Jackson did a good job of messing around with things, especially if you watch the director’s cut.)