The Land Down the Well: What Lies Beneath the Surface

We've already discussed the origins of fairy tales and how they're full of archetypes and hidden morals and lessons.

Now that you've read the last chapter of The Land Down the Well, I can talk about that story without worrying about spoilers. Wait. You haven't read it yet? Go do that first! You can find the links in the library section on the left side of the page.

When I wrote The Land Down the Well, I based it on the German fairy tale of Frau Holle. I have some wonderful memories of listening to the story as a child and I loved sharing it with you.

Frau Holle is another one of those stories that is full of archetypal images and symbols and it instills a powerful lesson.

The Lessons Frau Holle Can Teach Us

An orphaned girl is abused and exploited by her stepmother and stepsister. When she falls down the well, she wakes up in another world. She faces a series of tests to test her character before arriving at the house of Frau Holle. She agrees to work for food and lodging, but she is welcomed with a warm meal and a soft bed.

Liesl is the typical hard-working, underappreciated damsel in distress. What I like most about her is that she doesn't rely on any prince to come and save her. When she falls down the well, you could conclude that she drowns and that the Land Down the Well is the afterlife. 

This image is further reinforced by the trials she faces. Inanimate objects speaking to her are certainly a clue to strange things afoot. The flowers and plants that don't seem to be bound to the seasons, flowering and bearing fruits all at once, are a symbol I added into the story to suggest the magical nature of the Land Down the Well. Ancient cultures believed that this was a symbol of magical powers. This was one of the reasons why they attributed such potential to the mistletoe. It grows without touching the earth and is not bound to the seasons, capable of bearing both fruits and flowers at once.

She works in the little house and she bonds to Frau Holle but she's still homesick. Not for her stepmother and stepsister, but for the house where she was born--the house that belonged to her real parents.

Frau Holle, to me, is the Scandinavian goddess Hel in disguise. She lives in the underworld and cares for the spirits of the deceased. Among other things. What we see here is definitely her more compassionate, caring aspect. But even the name variants we see appear are clues to this. Frau Holle, Mother Hulda or even Mother Helda. 

As the Goddess Hel, Frau Holle has the power to send Liesl back to the world of the living. But it's Liesl who makes it all possible. She wins the heart of the goddess of the underworld and is given a rebirth--a second chance.

Frau Holle sends her back with a gift of gold. Upon returning home, she finds the house in less than optimal condition and her stepmother and stepsister bickering. She faces them, discovers that she had power all along. She just had to recognise it.

This is part of Liesl's reincarnation. She returns with a sense of self-worth and a realisation that she can do more than she always thought. She's strong enough to stand up for herself. The gift of gold that clings to her when the stepmother tries to take it, only coming off when Liesl chooses to give it, is a further symbolisation of her newfound strength.  This is another detail I added to further reinforce the symbolism that is already present. The gold symbolises Liesl's new-found strength and her ability to forgive.

Rather than accept this new and strong Liesl, her stepmother and stepsister choose to leave, but the stepsister is thrown down the well by her mother in the hope that she too, will return with a gift of gold.

The sister, however, returns covered in tar that she can't seem to wash off. She fails the tests in the Land Down the Well and isn't interested in helping Frau Holle--only in helping herself. 

Liesl can wash it off though. This is another addition of mine and another symbol of Liesl's forgiveness.

The stepsister stands up for Liesl when her mother is about to slap her. When they leave, Liesl makes a final offer. They can stay but no longer take advantage of Liesl, letting her do all the work. Everyone will have to share the burden. The sister stays, but the mother decides to go down the well herself to find that gold.

The sisters reconnecting is a sign that people can learn to be better--do better. It, too, is an addition of mine. People are not the sum of their actions so far. They are redeemable as long as they want to be.

I have to believe that, personally

Anyway. This concludes the companion post for the last chapter of The Land Down the Well.

Thank you for sharing with with Liesl and me.

Hugs

Tiny

Bedtime Stories

I chose the fairy tale I worked with because of the fond memories I used to have for it. My sister and mother used to read it to me.

My dad didn't read to me a lot. He was a lorry driver and he was at home for two nights out of eight. But when he was there, it was he that read to me. It was an extra special treat. No one else could do voices quite like he did. But when he was at home, those nights he read to me before bed were extra special treats.

The Value of Bedtime Stories

So many of our children miss out on traditions like the bedtime story. I hear co-workers talking about their children. Some are allowed to have the tablet in bed for a last game. Some have a little television inside their room so they can watch an episode of a favourite show before bedtime. Some sit down with their children and read them a story. I can't help but feel how lucky those children are.

This is a habit that can bring so many benefits to your children, that I can't imagine not doing it if I ever end up having a child.

A Routine to Help Them Settle Down for the night

Making a habit out of that daily bedtime story provides your child with a pleasant part of their bedtime routine to look forward to. Something to look forward to among the drag of brushing their teeth and putting on those dreaded jammies.

Forming a Close Connection With Mum or Dad

This is a fun time. A moment to cuddle in Mum or Dad's lap with a book open in front of them. Try to engage their attention. Not just to your voice, but to the book at hand. 

If you're reading a picture book to a younger child it's the perfect opportunity for dialogue by asking them what's in the picture. Can they find the dog in the picture? What sounds can a dog make?

When you're reading to an older child, you have the perfect opportunity to boost their confidence. When I was older, and certainly old enough to read on my own, I still loved bedtime stories, only we moved onto longer works and read a few pages every night. It could be a Roald Dahl book--I loved Mathilda and The Witches--or an age appropriate fantasy novel, or a YA book. Pretend you can't make out a word and encourage them to help you. Or tell them you're too tired to read on and ask them if they can continue. I know nothing would make me prouder than reading to Mum for a change, instead of having her read to me.

A Well-Read Child is Better Prepared for Life and Education

Another gift you can give your children is the opportunity for growth, both mentally and spiritually. By reading stories to them from a young age, we expose them to a greater vocabulary and a richer, more complex use of language. Syntax and grammar are absorbed into their minds as they listen to the stories that help put them to sleep. If you try to find a good mixture of nursery rhymes and more elaborate, prose-style works, you can also help them develop an appreciation for rhythm, assonance and alliteration as well as a richer speech pattern.

You expose them to different concepts as well as the morals often included in stories and fairy tales and inspire them to use their imagination.

But Really

Do you need a reason to spend some time with your child in those precious minutes between waking and dreams?

I wouldn't.

Hugs

Jasmine

This is the fifth companion post to my serialised story, The Land Down the Well. Would you like to see what it's about? You can find the links in the libary section on the left side of this page. Hope you like it. I know I loved working on it.

The Benefits of Peer Review

At The Writers' Block, we have a peer review system in place. Each person who wants to get a draft reviewed can do so by submitting to a critique queue. We have around 700 members. Thank heavens they're not all prolific writers. At the moment, we have a team of about 10 regular critiquers who are more experienced and we try to work as quickly as we can.

However, we're all volunteers with jobs and we want to get some actual writing done ourselves too. That's why we implemented a process in different stages to streamline the critiquing and to encourage people to submit their drafts more than once before posting it online.

People now go through at least three rounds of editing with their draft but we have started to structure our process a bit more. We now work on the bigger issues first, fixing character arc and plot, and looking for a killer opener.

We make sure the big picture of the piece works, before exhausting ourselves looking for an overdose of adverbs and word echoes, trying to turn telling into showing etc on a piece of prose that may end up cut or pared down anyway.

In writers' workout, the group that joins us in our exercises is a bit smaller. We started out with five writers, and each week a few more start working on the assignments. These exercises are queued as well, and developed, nitpicked and polished to perfection. Or as close to perfection as we could get them.

The benefit of this approach is that you work on a draft and you look it over, make it as clean as you can and then you submit. Three, sometimes more people come in and look at your piece. Fresh eyes who haven't beaten those words to death yet. While it's in the queue, I try not to think about it--to let it rest. I trust my friends to tell me what works for them and what doesn't. Because the opinion of a reader has value. The opinion of an experiences reader who will have an analytical outlook on things, is invaluable.

When they're done ripping it apart for me, I go back in and fix what I can, not having looked at it for a day or two. That means I have fresh eyes on it once again. I've had time to let everything sink in. Sometimes I'll read everyone's editing notes and put it away again. For another night of sleeping on it and letting it all sink in, before I even think of implementing edits.

And we do this again and again.

Our process might not be perfect just yet, but with every submission to our queues, we gain experience. As readers. As writers. As editors.

The most important thing we all share is a desire to learn, do better, grow as writers. I can't think of a better place to sharpen my skills, and if I look back at the first things I posted, I can tell it's starting to pay off.

This is the fourth companion post that is linked to a story I'm serialising on the Steem blockchain at the moment. It was edited and polished through peer review within our Writers' Workout group, where we all worked on fairy tales over the last few weeks. I couldn't be prouder of the work everyone has put in, and the results they got from it. My story, The Land Down the Well, can be found by visiting the library section on the left side of the page. Feel free to have a look. ;-)

Hugs

Jasmine

The Origins of Fairy Tales

Who doesn't love fairy tales? We grew up on them. Our parents used to read them to us at bedtime. We can sing along to all the disneyfied songs. Well, I can anyway. Except Let It Go. I can't stomach that one. Sorry.

Anyway. These stories have been around for longer than we have. But they didn't always end happily ever after.

The Origins of Fairy Tales

The fairy tales most of us know started out much in a much more gruesome version. In the first version of Sleeping Beauty, she wasn't woken up with true love's kiss. A guy basically came in and raped her. When she was pregnant, she had no choice but to marry him. Because that's how they rolled in the Middle Ages. I never found mention of that in Snow White stories

Cinderella's stepsisters didn't simply try to wriggle their huge feet into the dainty glass slipper. The first one cut off a piece of her toe when the Prince wasn't watching to get the shoe to fit. He put her on the back of his horse, but on the way to the castle, blood started dripping from the shoe. So the prince returns her to her mother. The second sister tries a different tactic. She cuts off a bit of her heel. Again, the Prince sweeps her off her feet and onto his horse. Again, blood drips from the slipper and he brings her back. Meanwhile, poor Cinderella has had the chance to escape from whatever place they locker her up in, and manages to get to the Prince, to be taken away to his castle.

Some of this gruesomeness still shows. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are eaten by a wolf. Hansel and Gretel get caught by a witch. Hansel is about to be eaten when they manage to roast the witch and escape.

Did people really tell these stories to their children? I imagine they did. After all, a public execution, whether it be a hanging or a beheading, was considered to be amusement for the masses and people flocked to the town squares to watch people being sentenced to death. I doubt they'd care about a little murder or assault in the bedtime stories of their children.

The Question is "Why?"

It doesn't puzzle me that violence and horror wasn't an issue to our ancestors. I'm more puzzled by the fact that they bothered to make stories of it. Why did they make a point of filling the minds and the subconsciousness of their children with it?

Archetypes

My guess is that it has something to do with archetypal images. Each and every fairy tale is packed full of them. That's why we had such a hard time turning our fairy tales into believable Deep POV stories in our Writers' Workout. Because the characters we started out with lacked depth. Depth we had to create. 

A typical fairy tale character tends to be rather one-sided. You've got the evil witch, the damsel in distress, the heroic and handsome prince, the hard worker who prevails in the end.

A lot of these stories were written in a time when catholocism ruled Europe. Women didn't have a lot to say. They went from being the property of their father, to being the property of their husband. Widows and spinsters were frowned upon and often distrusted.

When you consider that, the violent and often dominant nature towards women that was exhibited in these stories is not so strange after all.

Let's go back and have a look at Sleeping Beauty.

• A young child is cursed by a witch--condemned to an enchanted sleep until true love finds her. Let's unwrap that achetype. The young woman is kept prisoner until a suitable husband arrives on the scene.
• The castle where she sleeps is surrounded by an impenetrable hedge of thorns and guarded by a fierce dragon. This could be interpreted as a girl who tries to refuse the confines of marriage and life under the thumb of a husband. The dragon and thorns are symbols of her resistance.
• A man comes, strong enough to cut through the thorns and slay the dragon. Instead of gifting her with true love's kiss, we already know what he would have done in the middle ages. Meaning as much as: Resisting your husband will get you a beating.

Now, I'm not saying every man alive during that time beat his wife. But it was accepted as a normal part of married life. And considering the stories they fed their children, this is no miracle.

Is This a Call to Arms Against Fairy Tales?

Most definitely not. I grew up on them. If I end up having children, so will they. The fairy tales we know now are much cleaner and more wholesome versions. They still carry a lot of symbolism and archetypes and they do have their worth. A lot of them are filled with morality--sometimes even spirituality.

But when reading a story, it never hurts to consider what lies beneath the surface.

This was written as the third companion post to my serialised fairy tale on Steemit: The Land Down the Well.

If you would like to read the story, you can find the links in my library section on the left side of the page, under Fiction Bookshelf.

As always, dear friends, thank you so much for sharing this with me.

Hugs

Jasmine

Disclaimer: This post came to be through my personal beliefs and observations, and an interest in archetypal psychology. It in no way represents an absolute truth, and I'm always open to discussions on the topic, as I am to each and every other topic I write about.

The Writing of a Haibun

In my previous post, I wrote about the last story I've written, The Land Down the Well. It's a Deep POV rewrite of a very old fairy tale. You can find the links to the different parts of the story at the bottom of this post.

I wrote this story in a bit of a different form than I usually do. My friend @dbooster, a poetry editor on The Writers' Block and a fountain of knowledge about Japanese forms and Japanese culture, told me about a form called haibun. 

It combines haiku with sections of prose. This form can be applied to any number of genres, from autobiographical pieces, diaries or travel journals, essays, short stories and prose poems.

History of the Haibun

As far as I can tell, the term was first used in 1690 when the famous Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō sent a letter to a student of his.

I found an excerpt from a haibun he wrote, called Oku no Hosomichi. It is translated as The Narrow Road to the Deep North or The Narrow Road to the Interior and can be found here. 

It's a prose and poetry travel journal he wrote as he journeyed on foot through 17th century Japan. It's considered to be one of the major pieces of classical Japanese literature.

I read the opening and proceeded to pick my jaw up off the floor. Mr Bashō has acquired a new fan. I'd already seen some of his haiku but I'd never read his prose. 

Of course he wrote other haibun as well, but this seems to be the most famous one.

Traditionally, haibun were written as short descriptions of a place, person or object, or alternatively of a journey or series of events in the life of the writer.

Contemporary Haibun

The haibun is no longer confined to its country of origins. We find examples as early as 1988, when James Merrill wrote *Prose of Departure*. I found an excerpt of it here and this is definitely going on my wish list.

The Form

A haibun can encompass a scene or a moment in time in a descriptive and objective style or it can be fictional or have a dream-like feel to it. The connection between the haiku and the prose can be either direct or subtle.

The haibun form in English seems to constantly evolve, as most writing does. Generally speaking, a haibun consists of one or more paragraphs of prose written in a rather visual style, accompanied by one or more haiku.

What About My Haibun?

I started out with the storyline and tried to get that right first. As I was writing, I'd come across an image that seemed to fit, I'd include a haiku. I then went over my first draft and tried to order the text so the haiku would appear to be spaced evenly but it didn't work. Some sections were more suited to haiku than others and @dbooster advised me to run with it and let it be as organic as it wanted to be. In the end that is what worked best, I think.

I applied the same philosophy to the haiku themselves. This is another lesson I learned from D. With the help of this article he taught all of us over at The Writers' Block about the structure of the haiku. It seems Japanese as a language has a structure and rhythm so different from English that translating to English and forcing it into that same structure is almost impossible to do.

A haiku should simply be as short as it can while portraying a complete image. We've started calling this the breath style haiku. I personally have really grown to like them.

So let's read this story, shall we?

The Land Down The Well

Part 1

Part 2

As always, thank you for sharing this with me.

Hugs

Jasmine

Sources, other than D's brain:
Wikipedia
Writer's Digest
The Writing Cooperative

What Is Writers' Workout?

Good question.

Writers' Workout is a program we started on the Writers' Block. A way to practice different aspects of story writing. 

Week 1

We started out with a characterisation exercise a while back. It took us about a week. We submitted a character sheet and also looked at the chosen character through the eyes of one or two other characters in the story. All the participants in that week's workout worked together to write an article. We looked back on what we learned from the assignment, and it includes some excerpts from some of the exercises.

The thing that surprised me the most is that it not only helped me characterise the main character I did the exercise for, but that it also gave me some great insights on the two characters whose POV I used to portray her. 

Week 2

The next exercise was meant as a Deep POV practice. We decided on doing a rewrite of an old fairy tale or folk tale but we chose a character to do the POV on. Having a story to work with, and just tweaking it into Deep POV sounded like a good idea. It would mean we could focus on the POV and not have to worry about building a story. 

It didn't quite work out that way. What started out as a one week exercise has now turned into a four week frenzy of drafting, reviews, and editing. Part of this is due to the fact that most fairy tales don't really have a clearly defined story arc. Here and there you'll find a plot hole the size of Alaska. And most fairy tales were written with an omniscient POV in mind. Portraying them from a Deep POV turned out to be hard as entire peaces of the stories had to be left out.

Add to that the fact that we're all a bunch of nitpickers who cannot let a story go until they're satisfied it's as good as they can make it. Most of these fairy tales have gone through at least 6 rounds of reviews, edits and resubmissions for more peer review.

Week 3. Well, Sorta...

Meanwhile, we've slowly rolled into the next assignment. That one is about story openers. We're to write three story openers of about sixty five words. Out of all the story openers we submit, one will be chosen as the prompt for the next workout. 

I'll be sure to keep you posted on that. ;-)

Wait! What About that Fairy Tale?

Well, it kept trying to turn into a novelette. It grew and grew and grew. Instead of posting it in one piece, I had to serialise it as it was too long to fit into one Steemit post. 

I posted the first part on my Steem page yesterday. I have a few companion posts for each episode planned right here. I think I'll have plenty of things to talk about.

Other than the Deep POV, which will also provide me with material for a TinyTeaches post, I'll be telling you all a bit more about the original story, the struggles I went through in rewriting it and the symbolism it encorporates.  

For this piece, I decided to experiment with a Japanese form that combines prose and poetry. That's another thing I'll be telling you guys all about.

For now, I'll leave you with an open invitation to go and read the first part of The Land Down the Well.

Hugs

Jasmine

TinyTeaches: How My Passion for Writing and Editing Keeps Growing

Last week, when I did a revision of my first ever short story, I was reminded again of how long five months can seem. Because that is how old that first story was. That was the one that got me into writing fiction.

I've always books--everything about them, really. The smell of them, the feel of a book in my hands. The idea of wandering into a world completely different from my own...

But to think of creating a completely different world of my own, now that was something I felt I wasn't up to. Until something made me try anyway.

After that--after rolling into The Writers' Block and learning not only how to be a better writer, but also how to be an editor, my passion for writing grew exponentially. 

I enjoy teaching people new things, helping them improve their skills and hone their talents. I always have. Words fail me when I try to explain how that makes me feel.

I also happen to think I don't suck too badly at teaching either. That's how my TinyTeaches series started out. As an active editor over at The Writers' Block, I found myself explaining the same thing over and over again. 

Hold Up, Jasmine

If you keep having to explain the same things again and again, doesn't that mean you're not too good at explaining?

Well, not exactly. You see, I keep explaining these things in the drafts of the writers I'm editing for. But we keep getting new members at The Block, and they make those same mistakes we all make when we start out. So we keep explaining to other people.

So Do Something About It!

I did. I picked a pitfall I came across a number of times and turned it into a non-fiction article on how to avoid that pitfall. I wrote Visuals in Writing, the first part of my TinyTeaches series. People on the Steemit platform--those that matter to me anyway--loved it and I remembered again how great it can feel to teach.

I wrote Visuals in writing, the first part of my TinyTeaches series. People on the Steemit platform loved it and I remembered again how great it can feel to teach.

I couldn't stop now. I followed that first TinyTeaches blogpost with Finding Your Way in the Land of Babel: Writing in a Second Language. As an ESL author myself, I know from experience how hard it can be to write in a language other than your native tongue.

Later followed the article Forget the Hot Glue Gun. Get the Scissors. It discusses comma splices and how to spot them. A week after that, I wrote That's What She Said: The Use of Dialogue Tags.

This very morning, I wrote the latest article in my TinyTeaches series, The Eye of the Beholder: Different POVs in Writing.

Will You Keep Writing TinyTeaches Articles?

Hell yes. Because I enjoy them a lot. I absolutely love seeing the feedback I get from people who understand something they didn't before. I also love how much I'm not only able to help others become stronger writers, but how much I'm learning from writing these posts.

They're making me think about a lot of things I've been doing instinctively. When an instinctive response works, that's fine. It really is. But I'm convinced that awareness and the ability to make a conscious, informed decision can only benefit our writing skills.

They're also just a lot of fun to work on. I'm having a blast looking for examples and thinking of jokes to insert into the articles to alleviate the dryness of the subject matter. 

So I guess you are all stuck with me and my online ramblings.

Please don't hesitate to visit the Library section visible to your left. It contains the links to most of my work in these most amazing and inspiring five months.

Looking forward to your next visit.

Hugs

Jasmine

Who is Tiny?

She's me, and I'm her. 

Tiny is the nickname I go by at The Writers' Block. I first joined that platform hoping to blog about my food journey and recipes. I lived in a tiny, little house with a tiny, little kitchen. The nickname Tinypaleokitchen was easily chosen. 

When I first joined the Fiction Workshop, which would later turn into The Writers' Block, I went by that name, but I was quickly shortened to Tiny.

Despite the fact that I'm not that tiny at all, the name rather grew on me and so–even though I now rarely write about food–I'm stuck with the name Tinypaleokitchen. 

Might as well own it, right? I ended up using it in the title of my non-fiction series with writing tips: TinyTeaches. The audioversions of my stories, that I have just started to record, are called TinyReads.

A friend of mine and a fellow mod at The Writers' Block, Shane or @swelker101, accidentally renamed me during his radio show when he had to write my name down in a list with some others. While reading off the list, he couldn't read his own handwriting and spoke the immortal words, "Wait... What... Who is Ting?"

I thought it was hilarious, and have every intention of never letting him forget it. That's why, when looking for me in the crowded halls of The Writers' Block, you'll find me as either Ting or Tiny.

See you soon!

Hugs

Tiny