Creating, Imagining, Writing, and Revising YOUR Cindy Story

After studying the tale, reading a bunch of Cindy stories, watching movies, and talking a lot about what makes a Cinderella story you are now well underway with your own original tales.

Preparation

Here’s a recap of the Tale Tales we discussed:

• Type A is the classical Cinderella, the one you know from Perrault (and Disney based his movie on this type).  There is a mistreated main character and a shoe test.
• Type B is the one often called Catskin. Versions that I read to you include “Donkeyskin” and “Allerleirauh or the Many-furred Creature.” And we also watched the movie “Sapsorrow.”  In this type the main character has to run away from her father.
• Type C is one we called the King Lear type.  Some of the versions of this that we read (in addition to the graphic novel version of Shakespeare’s play that I showed you) were Moss Gown and The Way Meat Loves Salt.

Gearing Up to Write

When you began to do your own stories I read to you from Gail Carson Levine’s book Writing Magic. She made some excellent suggestions and included The Writer’s Oath that you all took. It was:

I promise solemnly:

1. to write as often and as much as I can,
2. to respect my writing self, and
3. to nurture the writing of others.

I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.

Revising

Once you have a first draft done (or even before that) you should think about revision. For authors (remember E. B. White?) revise, revise, and revise. And revising is NOT about checking for spelling, capitals and stuff like that.  It is about looking hard at your writing and thinking about what you can do to make it read the best it can for your audience.  I’ve now read what you have written so far and here are some things I recommend you consider.

• Are you doing too much telling instead of showing?
• Murder your darlings!
• Are you telling us MUCH more than we need to know?
• Where are you starting the story?  Does it have to start where you start it now? Maybe you want it to begin later?  Or sooner?
• What about the beginning?  You have to really grab your readers with the first few lines. So be sure they are interesting!
• Are you giving us enough description of your characters?  Can you do more by showing us rather than telling?
• Is your story confusing perhaps? If so, why?  What can you do to make it less confusing?
• Is your point of view consistent? (First person, third person, etc?)
• Do you need a narrator or another character to give some of the description?
• Think about your setting — keep language and description in line with where and when your story takes place.

Critiques

Tomorrow we will do critiques.  I will read aloud three (if there is time) of your works-in-progress (this is what writers call their stories as they work on them).  This will be done anonymously.  That is, the author is not known. (If you think you know who wrote it, you must act as if you didn’t.  It is important to consider only the story, not the author.)  We will read and then talk about what is working and what is not working in each critiqued story.  Even if your story isn’t critiqued, you will get something out of it, I promise. I learned how to do this in a writing class for adults and it was the best way I learned about writing. In fact, many well known writers were in the class and we knew, of course, when their work was read (for example Gail Carson Levine was in the class), but we pretended that we didn’t.