Narrative Strategies: Week 1

As a part of my course, I am doing Narrative Strategies with our lecturer Leonie which will involve posting up my progress every week as homework. This is my report from week one! (2/2/2010)

This week we had a really interested unorthodox lecture about Creation Myths--the stories that early cultures invented to explain the unknown phenomenon's of the Universe (how did we get here? What is our purpose? etc...) through observation.

We were split into four groups, each one becoming four unique "worlds". My group, consisting of Bryony, Claire, Jess, Vikki and Zara chose the red world. This turned out to be a desert world where it was burning hot in the day and freezing in the night. Meteors rained down every generation, wiping out any people on the surface, but later crystallises the sand into glittering crystals. Lizards provided food and the crystals created an underground lake to provide water.

Our people were "beamed" down onto this planet with no knowledge of anything else and it was our task to figure out how to survive, come up with a belief system, why we were there and finally to write a short paragraph on a person within our world that overcame a great difficulty and was proclaimed a 'hero/heroine'.

Between us we came up with this...

Our world is called Crand, we live in an underground lake the provides us with shelter and water. Lizards on the surface are hunted by our warriors during the day for food by using sharpened crystals. We believe that the great rocks that rain down on us from the stars in the sky are judgment from the "Sun God" that rid us of evil people. Those of us left behind are blessed with crystals from the "Moon Goddess".

We breed lizards to carry sleighs (husky lizards!) and to be ridden by warriors. Their iridescent skins are used for clothing and protection from the sun.

We use crystals for everything, weapons, tools, carving on the walls of our home, and later instruments and jewelry. But there is one crystal that is of particular importance and that is our sacred crystal carved into the shape of a snowflake. This signifies a moment of clarity from our heroine, Briane. A long time ago, a great grey blanket covered the sky, the meteors stopped falling, our supply of crystals declined and our lake dried up. The Sun God and the Moon Goddess were hidden from us. Our people were worried about staying underground where there was no water or food or traveling the surface where it was too hot by day and too cold at night.

After many days, white flakes fell from the grey sky and our people panicked, surely it was further judgment from the Gods! The white flakes were very strange to us and our people decided they must leave. But one of us, young Briane, saw that the flakes would melt into water and convinced the people that this "snow" was a good thing. Sure enough, it all melted, replenishing the lake and allowing the lizards to return. Thus, our people could continue living in Crand, thanks to Briane. She carved a snowflake out of a crystal to commemorate the moment.

---

After discussing our stories and ideas, we were permitted to 'explore' the other worlds. Claire (our scribe) was to stay behind to tell our story to any passers by. My fellow Crand people and I, traveled to the Blue planet where a hero named Dave with long golden locks saved a island from a volcano by riding a flying fish using his hair as a bridle. We traded husky lizards for miracle water and fish; a Purple planet where they live in a strange poisonous jungle and eat hallucinogenic pears (we traded husky lizards and crystals for some, as well as centipede armor to protect us from the sun); and the Red planet where a man with a large nose harnessed the warmth of fire by bringing it back to their frozen hometown where none and managed before.

During this time, the Red planet declared war on us to steal our sacred items and the Blue planet by playing rock, scissors and paper. We both lost and they took our sacred snowflake and the Blue's loc of golden hair! Bryone fought back to regain our artifact, but she lost also.

Beaten, we used the hallucinogenic pears to get over our loss and rebuild our home anew!

All in all, a very fun session that definitely taught us how easy it can be to write an interesting story from just an outline of a world, or basic idea and make it richer by bouncing ideas off of one another. I found it very enjoyable and hope to have more sessions like it! :)

 - Gemma