Storybook Brainstorming Styles

Image information: Siren by John Dotegowski: Source: Fantasy Fiction

Topic Brainstorming:

As a tribute to my sister who is currently very far away from me due to college, I’ve decided to go ahead and focus on the mythology of mermaids/sirens. I want to focus on the duality of mermaids/sirens in literature and how some are portrayed as inherently good or inherently malicious. I think that I am going to begin with the stories “The Mermaid or Siren” from Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art by John Vinycomb and “The Mermaid” by Kreutzwald.  

Bibliography:

            “The Mermaid or Siren” by John Vinycomb. Website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca66.htm

            “The Mermaid” by Kreutzwald. Website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/hoe/hoe2-24.htm

Style Brainstorming:

1.     Journey: I think that it would make a lot of sense to write a storybook from the perspective of an adolescent going on a journey around the world to discover whether or not her fate is sealed as it is told in the stories, or if she is the master of her own story. The frame could be she ran away after some ceremony where she was to become an adult. So now she is traveling the seas to find stories of others who did not share the same feelings as her culture on mermaids and finding herself in the process. Would be written in the third person, and each story could be told to her about a mermaid who shirked the “normal” life of mermaiddom.

2.     Bedtime Story: A bedtime story arc wouldn’t be too bad of an idea either. It could be a mother tucking her children into bed and telling her of the two types of sea creatures: the mermaids and the sirens, and how each child will have to chose a side as a coming of age. She could be a storyteller of ancient stories, all of which show her children what the life of a mermaid and the life of a siren entails. She could even go into her own story and her own past and tell of what forced her hand into her own personal decision.

3.     Quest: Instead of good/malicious being a choice, in this story arc it could be a decision that is made for you based on a quest each merperson has to go through at some point in their development. Each chapter could have a theme outlined by a mythology text, and the merperson would have to make choices in each one that would dictate whether or not they became a mermaid or a siren.

4.     Anthology of mermaid culture around the world: This one would be a cool idea to do as well. It wouldn’t be a connected story as my other ideas were, but instead would just be an amalgymation of stories from different cultures about the moral origination of mermaids. I could compare and contrast how each culture viewed mermaid tales and speculate on what that implies their feelings are on the human condition.