Letting the Wolf in: Storytelling Struggles

While I still haven't gotten my hands on Tolkien's 'On Fairy Stories', I did pick up another fairy tale research book called Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories by Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis.

It covered topics from the traditional to historical stories, the emotional aspects involved and the structure of story. Some of the book was too philanthropic for me, but all the same there was some interesting ideas. My focus was entirely on the traditional story, but I gained something else as I read the book.

First I have to say how much I enjoy the title; Inviting the Wolf strikes an instant cord with me. It makes me think of the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, though it that particular case the wolf was already inside when Red arrives. Werewolf and vampire stories seem to be everywhere lately. A movie came out last year called Let me In, about a boy who meets a girl and falls in love. The girl just happens to be a vampire. It's based on a Swedish movie called Let the Right One In. The titles relate to the fact the girl can't cross the threshold of a room unless she is invited inside.

In the book by Niemi and Ellis, letting the wolf in allows us to tell those really difficult stories. "We [ ] use story to shape the chaotic world through language and myth." I've always, always been drawn to a fantasy or fairy tales, rather than a real life or contemporary genre. I think it has mainly to do with metaphor and the power of language and storytelling. You know who is masterful at this, Diana Wynne Jones.

Her books always have fantastic settings and magic infused in the world and people, yet behind it all is a very real world problem. In her book Fire and Hemlock, the main character Polly has to deal with a broken family, her parents divorce and she can't live with either one of them, so she eventually ends up with her grandmother. Polly's real life struggles are beautifully expressed by her "second memories", which is when all the fantastical stuff happened to her. In Time of the Ghost a girl with an abusive father is haunting her family. Jones deals with divorced or separate parents, orphans, illness, illegitimate children, all really difficult subjects, she doesn't stray away from evilness or evil people. By using the fantasy, myths or fairy tale elements her books stay light and interesting, and that much more powerful.

Niemi and Ellis talk about the traditional story, and how when we try to tell a familiar story "such as 'Little Red Riding Hood' or 'Cinderella' we need to find the beating heart and emotional center of these stories that have too often become a sugar candy of plot without content. These stories did not survive by being weak or powerless to engage imagination and emotion at the deepest levels." They go into more detail later:

"Unlike real life, in the traditional story good and evil are easy to identify. The characters are broadly drawn. Often they do not have individual names; when they do, they tend to be names common to the cultures so that everyone can relate to them. The stories deal with themes, like death or evil, that reach across cultures and generations. These themes are present in metaphor, speak to the heart, engage the imagination, and have lasting universal meaning."

Of course, you have to realize Niemi and Ellis are talking about the short versions of fairy tales, not, like we're doing, retelling the fairy tales of the Goose Girl and the Golden Goose in as a much larger, expanded, novel-length version. But we're still trying to tell a complete story, with the same emotion, same themes and struggles as the original fairy tale. Rather than a Princess or a Simpleton, we have girls named Ange and Mirth.

What I enjoyed most about the Niemi and Ellis book wasn't their discussion on traditional stories or how to tell a difficult story, it was importance of storytelling to them. Both authors are storytellers, very good ones, Elizabeth Ellis is a professional storyteller, a job I didn't realize existed. When we write it's not just for ourselves, though the process can be very solitary, but we do it to tell a story to an audience, to have a reader. While I can easily get distracted by grammar and character development and theme and narrative structure - it's important to remember I'm telling a story. That's what matters most in the end, the story and the characters.

Since we exchanged letters to each other, initially we always knew who the reader would be. I knew you're read my letters Terrwyn, so I wrote them for you. What I love about the blog is now I'm fixing up the letters with the idea of sharing the story with everyone else.