Tom Poakes & Russian Fairy Tales

I started working on a new drifter map today, this one about Tom Poakes, a drifting storyteller in rural New York State. Unlike the last one, this won't go into his personal life or anything like that. Rather, for each stop on his circuit there'll be the story he told in that town.

I've written two of the stories already, out of the ten or so I'll probably do. Lots of the story ideas and themes come from old folk tales, particularly Russian.

Years ago, back in mid-90's, I got this thick-ass book of Russian Fairy Tales and I was blown away by the stories in there. I mean, look, I'll readily admit I don't understand the finer points of Russian culture, but some of those stories are just flat-out weird.

I can't even think of a proper example because they all run together, but here's a short representation of pretty much every story:

A man and his new wife are farming one day when the wife decides to get rid of the man's daughters so she will have his inheritance all to herself. She captures Baba Yaga in a sack and forces her to conjure a bear to come at night and steal the daughters one by one on three consecutive nights.

Each night for two nights the bear comes and steals a daughter. On the third night the last daughter somehow contrives to switch places with the mother so that she gets taken instead.

The morning after, the man suddenly realizes what's been going on and he rejoices that he has his one daughter left. Then the bear turns into a prince and none of them ever have to work again.

And that was from the chapter called "Humorous".

So a lot of the stories I'm writing now are in that sort of vein. They're actually surprisingly difficult to write. You can't just write a regular story where stuff happens and there's a resolution. You have to purposefully write something amibiguous and anti-climactic.

On top of that, you need to constantly be on the lookout for an abrupt and hard-line ending. That's probably the hardest part.

"Well, the frog is about to get eaten by the fox. Man, if only he had some sort of magic shoes that he kept in his mouth; ones I'd never gotten around to mentioning but are integral to the outcome. A-ha! Done!"

The best thing to do, I've found, is once you've written the story, read it out loud doing your best Ivan Drago impersonation. Works every time. Try it with the example a few paragraphs up. Friday night fun at its best!