MAKING OVER STORIES
The average story must be cut and fitted to meet the needs of the
story teller who wants to make a direct and vivid appeal to her
children. Writing a story for the printed page and preparing a story
for children’s ears are two very different matters. In the former case,
there is no time limit set upon the story; the reader may lay his story
book down at will when he tires of the printed words, ready to take
it up again when he has the inclination. In the latter case, we have
to meet the mental and emotional needs of a group of children whose
attention must be held by the compelling power of an orally delivered
story. To meet these story needs as applied to oral delivery, a story
has, ordinarily, to be made over before it is told. It must be made
into a perfectly fitting garment for wrapping the child about with a
clinging cloak of imagination, full of colorful words and truth. The
story teller must do this story adapting herself. How can she bring it
about in the quickest, most effectual way?
A large percentage of the stories printed for children are _too long_.
The story that is too short and needs to be “padded” for telling
is very rarely to be found. In the case of the Fables of Æsop and
Bidpai the skeleton only of each story is given and here the problem
of adapting for the story teller is to find a way of filling in each
picture in order to make the story of the desired length.
But how shall we shorten the too-long story that we want children to
hear because of its compelling theme and _motif_, but which is, very
likely, two thousand or twenty-five hundred words long? This is the
average difficulty that the story teller meets in connection with
the average story. There is also the _time_ problem to be taken into
consideration, as well. While the story teller wants to spend as much
time as necessary in the preparation of a story, this time ought to be
reduced to a minimum. Is there a short cut to story adaptation and how
may the story teller find it?
One may almost reduce a recipe for making over stories. It is possible
to outline a pattern by means of which a printed story may be cut to
fit the needs of a group of eager, restless, wriggling children. Having
this recipe, this pattern, thoroughly in mind, a little practice in
applying it to particular stories that need adapting will give the
story teller power to apply it, quickly and effectually to any story
with little loss of time. Its use will give the story teller an added
power in her work. Knowing how to put stories in shape for telling will
help her to hold the attention of any group of children.
The first step in our rule for adapting a story that is too long is to
carefully _read the story_.
This seems too obvious a suggestion, almost, to put upon a printed
page, but reading a story having in mind making it over means reading
it to find out _what happens_ in the story, _what is its important
action, who are its necessary characters_, and _what is the climax_.
This first reading of a story for adaptation means an analysis of the
story plot. This kind of story reading may be developed so as to become
the story teller’s habit in reading any story, but it is the necessary,
preliminary step in all story adapting.
Our next step is to _find the pictures in the story_.
Suppose you were a stage manager with the problem of dramatizing this
special story to meet the interests of an audience, how would you
develop the different scenes in the story so as to make it into a
play that holds interest? Suppose you are a film maker. What are the
moving pictures in the story to be presented in their order of interest
through the medium of your film? We have much to learn from the stage
manager and the moving picture man. Their problems are identical with
those of the story teller in that they must strip a story plot bare
of details, unnecessary description and the opinions of the author.
They must give an audience the _naked story_. This is all the audience
wants. So it is with children. They demand story _scenes_, story
_pictures_ and nothing else.
The third and last step in story adaptation, is to _prepare our story
pictures for presentation to the children_.
This step depends a good deal upon the children for whom you are
preparing the story. If the children are foreign-born, you will need to
put each story picture into a frame of very simple language. If yours
are country children, you will need to put country images into the
picture canvas. If they are city children, the canvas may need a few
fire engines, parks and policemen to catch the children’s attention.
These will be, of course, quite subsidiary to the real story interest
which must be preserved at all events.
It depends, also, upon the person who wrote the story. If we are
adapting Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, Eugene Field or any
other master story teller for the special needs of our story group,
we must use the utmost care in keeping the _form_ of the author and
preserving his marvellous English. Too often the story teller ruins a
story in attempting to “tell it down” to children. It is possible to
shorten a good story and still keep it the author’s own. It depends,
most of all, upon determining the elements of _action_, _dialogue_ and
_description_ necessary to make the story picture a fixture in the
child’s mind. Children want to know “what happens” in each scene of the
story. This constitutes all their interest.
These, to sum up, are our steps in story adaptation:
_Read the story, analytically._
_Select its necessary scenes._
_Reduce these scenes to elements of action._
We shall find it helpful to apply these separate steps to some one
special story which we wish to present to children and which is too
long for our use.
There is no more beautiful story in all literature than Hans Christian
Andersen’s “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf.” It is full of the sensory
appeal, the colorful word picturing, the imagery, the ethics which we
look for in a perfect story, but as it stands in the best translation,
it is almost three thousand words long and so hedged about with
Andersen’s beautiful, but adult philosophy that it is quite beyond the
comprehension of children. As a result, it is seldom told to children
and is one of the least well-known of the author’s fairy tales. Let us
see if we can put it in shape for telling without, in the slightest
degree, hurting Andersen’s style.
We read the story analytically and find that it divides itself into
four scenes, all of which are necessary to preserve the story interest.
These are:
1. Inge’s sinning.
2. Inge’s descent to the abode of the Moor Woman.
3. Inge’s repentance and transformation into the bird.
4. The bird’s Christmas work and journey.
This analysis strips the story bare of detail. Each of these scenes,
in the original story, is elaborated, split up into minor scenes, and
they cover a very long period of time, which makes the story difficult
for a child to understand. But if we keep carefully in mind these four
separate pictures into which the story resolves itself and fill each
picture with as little description as possible and only the essential
action for carrying children by the quickest possible route to the
climax, we find ourselves equipped with a new, shorter story, told in
Andersen’s words and ready for retelling to our children.
It will be well to compare this adapted version of the story as it
appears here with the original story to be found in any translation of
Hans Christian Andersen’s stories to determine the omitted description,
action and detail. The method of adapting this story is a model for
other story adapting.
THE GIRL WHO TROD ON THE LOAF
The girl’s name was Inge; she was a poor child, but proud and
presumptuous.
With years she grew worse rather than better.
She was sent into the country, in service, in the house of a
rich people who kept her as their own child, and dressed her in
corresponding style. She looked well, and her presumption increased.
When she had been there about a year, her mistress said to her, “You
ought once to visit your parents, Inge.
“I’ll make you a present of a great wheaten loaf that you may give to
them; they will certainly be glad to see you again.”
And Inge put on her best clothes, and her new shoes, and drew her
skirts around her, and set out, stepping very carefully that she might
be clean and neat about the feet; and there was no harm in that. But
when she came to the place where the footway led across the moor, and
where there were mud and puddles, she threw the loaf into the mud, and
trod upon it to pass over without wetting her feet.
But as she stood there with one foot upon the loaf and the other
uplifted to step farther, the loaf sank with her, deeper and deeper,
till she disappeared altogether, and only a great puddle, from which
the bubbles rose, remained where she had been.
Whither did Inge go? She sank into the moor ground, and went down to
the Moor Woman, who is always brewing there. The Moor Woman is cousin
to the Elf Maidens, who are well enough known, of whom songs are sung,
and whose pictures are painted; but concerning the Moor Woman it is
only known that when the meadows steam in summer-time, it is because
she is brewing. Into the Moor Woman’s place did Inge sink down; and no
one can endure that place long. A box of mud is a palace compared with
the Moor Woman’s brewery. Every barrel there has an odor that almost
takes away one’s senses; and the barrels stand close to each other;
and wherever there is a little opening among them, through which one
might push one’s way, the passage becomes impracticable from the number
of damp toads and fat snakes who sit out their time there. Among this
company did Inge fall! and she shuddered and became stark and stiff.
She continued fastened to the loaf and the loaf drew her down as an
amber button draws a fragment of straw.
That was a never ending antechamber where Inge found herself. There was
a whole crowd of sinful people there, too. Great, fat, waddling spiders
spun webs of a thousand years over the people’s feet, webs that cut
like wire and bound them like bronze fetters. Inge felt a terrible pain
while she had to stand there as a statue, for she was tied fast to the
loaf. Her clothes had been soiled with mud in coming down to the Moor
Woman’s place; a snake was fastened in her hair and out of each fold in
her muddy frock a great toad looked forth, croaking.
The worst of all was the terrible hunger that tormented her. But could
she not stoop and break off a piece of the loaf on which she stood? No,
her back was too stiff, her hands and arms were benumbed, and her whole
body was like a pillar of stone; only she was able to turn her eyes in
her head, to turn them quite round, so that she could see backwards.
“If this lasts much longer,” she said, “I shall not be able to bear it.”
But she had to bear it, and it lasted on and on.
Her mother and all on earth knew of the sin she had committed; knew
that she had trodden upon the loaf, and had sunk and disappeared; for
the cowherd had seen it from the hill beside the moor.
And then she heard how her story was told to the little children, and
the little ones said that she was so naughty and ugly that she must be
well punished.
But one day when Inge was very hungry, she heard her name mentioned and
her story was told to an innocent child. The little girl burst into
tears at the tale of the haughty, vain Inge.
“But will Inge never come up here again?” asked the little girl.
And the reply was, “She will never come up again.”
“But if she were to say she was sorry, and to beg pardon, and say she
would never do so again?”
“Yes, then she might come,” was the reply, and the words penetrated to
Inge’s heart and did her good, and a tear of penitence dropped down on
the loaf.
Again time went on--a long, bitter time, but at last Inge heard some
one call her name and she saw two bright stars that seemed gleaming
above her. The little girl who had been sorry for Inge was now an old
woman and had gone to Heaven. She was calling to Inge. She was still
sorry for her.
And a wonderful thing happened. A beam of light shot radiantly down
into the depths of the Moor Woman’s place with all the force of the
sunbeam which melts the snow man the boys have built. More quickly than
the snowflake turns to water, the stony form of Inge was changed to
mist, and a little bird soared with the speed of lightning upward into
the world of men. But the bird was timid and shy towards all things
around; he was ashamed of himself, ashamed to encounter any living
thing, and hurriedly sought to conceal himself in a dark hole in an
old crumbling wall; there he sat cowering, trembling through his whole
frame.
Then, presently, it was the blessed Christmas time. The peasant who
dwelt near set up a pole by the old wall with some ears of corn bound
to the top, that the birds of heaven might have a good meal, and
rejoice in the happy, blessed time.
And on Christmas morning the sun arose and shone upon the ears of corn,
which were surrounded by a number of twittering birds. Then out of the
hole in the wall streamed forth the voice of another bird, and the bird
soared forth from his hiding-place; and in heaven it was well known
what bird this was.
It was a hard winter. The ponds were covered with ice, and the beasts
of the field and the birds of the air were stinted for food. Our little
bird soared away over the high road, and in the ruts of the sledges he
found here and there a grain of corn, and at the halting-places some
crumbs. Of these he ate only a few, but he called all the other hungry
sparrows around him, that they, too, might have some food. He flew into
the towns, and looked round about; and wherever a kind hand had strewn
bread on the window-sill for the birds, he only ate a single crumb
himself, and gave all the rest to the other birds.
In the course of the winter, the bird had collected so many
bread-crumbs, and given them to the other birds, that they equalled
the weight of the loaf on which Inge had trod to keep her shoes clean;
and when the last bread-crumb had been found and given, the gray wings
of the bird became white, and spread far out.
“Yonder is a sea-swallow, flying away across the water,” said the
children, when they saw the white bird. Now it dived into the sea, and
now it rose again into the clear sunlight. It gleamed white; but no one
could tell whither it went, though some asserted that it flew straight
into the sun.
_Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen._