Story time

Recently, in my writing classes we’ve been working on a creative writing unit.  The culmination of the unit is a group fairy tale writing project.  Students select at random two characters (such as giant and wizard), a location (such as castle or forest), and a moral (such as love triumphs).  They must take these elements and weave it into a story.  The unit allows students to use the flowery language that I’ve been trying to eliminate from their essay writing all semester.  Some of the stories are quite well developed, and I wanted to share one of the better examples with you here.  For this story, the two characters were a farmer and a beggar, the setting was an island, and the moral was humility.  Enjoy the story!

Once upon a time, there was an isolated island.  The island was covered with fear, and the sea made a horrible sound.  A crowd of crows were crying over the sky.  The rolling sea gave a spooky feeling to the island.

All these views reflected that the island needed some changes.  God also hoped a right person could alter these conditions. Sometimes God sent angels to look for the person.  At last, he chose a farmer and a beggar.

One summer evening, the farmer and the beggar took the same boat.  Suddenly, they met a fierce storm which was arranged by God.  The farmer and the beggar were rushed into the isolated island.  The next morning, they found that they were carried to a strange place.

The farmer and the beggar searched for people to help them. However, they searched in vain.  One day, there came a pigeon messenger.  The pigeon brought a letter which had God’s order.  They were very thrilled.  Then they opened the letter, but there were no words in it.  The couldn’t catch the God’s meaning.  Therefore, they felt very disappointed.  Suddenly, the pigeon took the paper into the water.  They hurried to the river, and they found some words.  It was God’s hint.

The letter wrote, “Go to develop agriculture and the person who has a better harvest will be sent back to his home.”  After they knew the hint, they felt very confused.  From that day on, the farmer and the beggar began to work.  The beggar learned some farming skills from the farmer.

At first, they made tools for planting and plowing.  The farmer was eager to succeed, but most of the time the farmer was lazy and arrogant while the beggar was diligent and warm-hearted.  Thus they formed a contrast, and the beggar got bullied and insulted very often.

Here we should mention that on the island, there were wild animals now and then.  The beggar had an idea, and told it to the farmer.  They began to tame the animals into livestock.  They enclosed cows, sheep, horses, pigs, and whatever they thought was useful.  All of the enclosures made contributions to both agriculture and their living standard.

It took a long time to see the result.  It was not only a time of developing, but also destroying.  During the hard time, thy more or less had some conflicts.  The farmer released his livestock to tread on the beggar’s crops.  The beggar didn’t care about these things.  What’s more, he still learned and helped the farmer with humility.

Eventually, the autumn was coming.  The farmer harvested a lot of crops, but the beggar had few.  One morning, God began to evaluate the achievements.  The farmer asked the beggar not to tell God all the facts, because he wanted to return home as soon as possible.  The beggar agreed with the farmer.

Finally, the farmer returned home and the beggar stayed on the island.  The beggar continued to work on agriculture.  In the twinkling of an eye, two years passed and the beggar harvested plenty of crops.  He changed the deserted conditions of the island.  One day God and his servants passed by the island to other places, and they found the island flourishing.  God knew the beggar was the real winner.

The beggar had nothing to say about the whole thing.  God decided to give the whole island to the beggar.  Simultaneously, God arranged a herd of people to live in the island to develop it with the beggar.  The beggar became the leader, and took a lot of effective measures for developing agriculture.  The whole island turned out to be a flourishing state.