Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is the return of one of my favorite writing assignments in school.
Shared Strategies
Some lessons and assignments are unique to particular teachers.
Others are old classics spread throughout the entire world of education.
Teachers who do not know each other can teach the same content in similar ways. One such strategy is my favorite creative writing assignment.
Writing a short story based on a photo.
In high school, this assignment led to my strange little dog story “Hobo.” In college, the assignment led to my chilling winter story “Tale of the Snow Siren.”
The Photo Which Grabbed Me
I remember well the picture hanging in Advanced Creative Writing that day.
It was a mere magazine photo. But it grabbed me all the same.
The image showed a young woman in a fine black and white dress. Her light, braided hair had only slightly more color than the snow around her.
She stood in a snowy scene within the forest. Surrounding her were a few dead trees along a frozen lake.
Seeing this beautiful woman in such a cold winter environment seized my imagination. She appeared unfazed by the cold, like it was where she belonged. Winter was her home.
She was a figure of life and vitality in a cold season of lifelessness and stillness.
The sight reminded me of the contradictions in the season of winter itself.
Winter contains the year’s warmest holidays. Family and friends gather together. Christmas is even meant to celebrate a birth.
But winter’s cold, freezing touch is brutal. Harsh conditions lead to countless accidents and tragedies. People suffer from all sorts of illnesses which plague the season.
The warmest time of year is the coldest. Life is celebrated during its most dismal days.
Although, one problem did arise when brainstorming my wintery new story.
I wanted to show the woman in the photo the same way I had seen her.
She needed to seize readers’ imaginations. Making her the story’s main character or narrator would have required defining too many specific things about her. The sense of mystery and wonder would be lost.
Then I remembered folktales.
Folktales were an early focus on my college American Literature class. Within this genre, the woman could remain a strange spirit. Her surrounding community in the story could make her larger than life. She could both be the story’s central focus and play with readers’ imaginations.
Inspiration from the Genre
Among folktales, my story’s two biggest inspirations were Washington Irving’s creepy “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Mark Twain’s humorous “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
Irving’s tale has always been a favorite of mine. I did not read the full story until high school. But the tale’s characters and settings were a big part of Halloween for me.
My first exposure was Disney’s Sleepy Hollow cartoon. That ridiculously lanky Ichabod Crane made me laugh to no end. Which is likely why I cared so much for his fate during the cartoon’s final chase.
The story’s legendary fiend, the Headless Horseman, often found his way into a few Scooby Doo cartoons too.
Twain’s story was something I first met in college.
An unnamed narrator was sent to interview the old bartender Simon Wheeler. The narrator wanted to find one Leonidas W. Smiley.
Instead, Wheeler discussed local gambler Jim Smiley.
This Smiley once trained a frog to help win frog jumping bets. Unfortunately, Jim lost one day when his opponent put a lead shot in the frog’s mouth to weigh the creature down.
Before Simon could tell another tall tale, the frustrated narrator left. He still had no idea where to find Leonidas.
The Siren’s Story Forms
And so, my story took shape as “Tale of the Snow Siren.”
The story begins with a writer researching the Snow Siren for a collection of folktales. He was disappointed in the previous tales he had found. They did not meet his own literary standards.
This character was named Joseph Crane after Sleepy Hollow’s Ichabod Crane. Both characters were perhaps more interested in spirits than they should have been. This interest leads to potential encounters with the spirits of their stories.
I also made Joseph a university professor to reference how Ichabod worked as a schoolteacher.
The Snow Siren’s tale is told by an old retired mechanic. I named this character Ed Simon after Twain’s exhaustive storyteller Simon Wheeler.
Ed was a bit more to the point than the other Simon. But the two do share some similarities beyond their roles.
Simon Wheeler worked in a mining camp. He was in a physical area, doing a job that needed to be done for the miners to enjoy life a little. I made Ed a mechanic. He did a dirty job and told stories to make life a little better.
Like Twain, I centered my story around an interview.
Ed shared details of the Snow Siren. Her habits, her appearance, her prey.
She lured men using their desires. Then she gave them brief bliss before freezing them cold.
Joseph started the interview disinterested until a few intriguing details caught his attention. For the first time in a long time, he felt an urge to write.
But he needed to know where to begin. He needed to know how the Snow Siren came to be.
Unfortunately, Ed did not have a certified origin story.
The story belonged to his community. He was just one good teller of the tale.
The Snow Siren could have been a vengeful fiancée, a runaway bride, a spirit of winter, or something else entirely.
Crane could not accept this answer. He left Simon’s house desiring to know the siren’s true origin. Unfortunately, this desire may have led him right to her.
The Reaction
“Tale of the Snow Siren” received much more initial praise than “Hobo” did.
My classmates loved the build up to the story’s title character.
My professor enjoyed the story alongside her usual comments about improving things here and there.
My mom jokingly shook her head. She said the story comes from the same part of me that loves the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
I tried sending the siren’s story to the college’s Writing Awards.
Again, I heard nothing.
This time, I just shrugged my shoulders. I was confident in this story’s quality. The only revisions build on what the tale already has.
Kotcher’s Call to Action
“Tale of the Snow Siren” has been added to this site’s portfolio.
“Tale of the Snow Siren” will also be one of the tales featured in my upcoming book Five Strange Stories, set to release on February 16. You can pre-order Five Strange Stories as an eBook on Amazon. A paperback version is planned. Five Strange Stories is enrolled in the Kindle Matchbook program, so anyone who buys the paperback can also get the eBook version for free.
If you wish to learn more about Five Strange Stories, check out my blog post One Stellar Success Story.
Finally, if you liked my content and want to make sure you read all my new blog posts, be sure to like my Facebook page and share it with your friends. I post a link there whenever a new blog post goes live each Friday at 5:00 PM EST. Liking and sharing is especially appreciated now when a new book is being released.