Stories explained (not final text - just to make sense of the structure of them)

Here's a brief outline of the timeline of each story so that some of this makes sense before I post the real words. scary

So theyre 4 stories - each explaining the origins of a different type of weather, they all connect to the next and happen in the order of layers so rain is underground, wind is on land and in the sky, thunder is up in the clouds and sun is at the top, the last story.

In folktale tradition each carries a moral:
Rain- kindness, sharing
Wind - greed
Thunder - freedom
Sun - bravery, community

The way I'm writing the actual words for the book has been a culmination of poem exercises involving chopping up different magazines and making poems with different words from different magazines, the idea being that folklore can't be traced back to one origin, its a mix of different voices. I've then mixed snippets of those poems with bits of my own writing to make the stories - each is told in 10 parts and each (hopefully) (tries) to reflect the rhythm of the weather its referring to .

anyway heres the framework of the actual stories and what happens in each :


RAIN

1. First page, explain the dry weather-less world. Ice trapped underground

2. Introduced to the wise old figure that lives underground

3. He's a kind craftsman, he learns how to craft the ice into individual carefully made rain droplets

4. He pushes them up to earth as a gift to the world

5. Birds carry them up and drop them down

6. Description of rain fall

7. Plants and flowers grew

8. Abundance of veg etc, reward for his kindness

9. 'Water cycle" continues. But when he sleeps = no rain

10. Wake him up with rain dances


WIND

1. Introduced to the greedy wind woman and her pet chicken (they were 2 of the rain dancers on previous page)

2. Wind was once visible

3. They discovered how to catch the wind

4. Used it as thread to sew

5. Sewed beautiful folk dresses

6. But got greedy, stole all the wind

7. No wind = no more plants

8. Greed punished, her wind dress carries her up into the clouds

9. Condemned to become the wind - blowing gales down below

10. Pet chicken becomes a wind vane


THUNDER


1. Horses were held captive in the sky

2. One big cloud, they couldn't move so clouds couldn't move

3. As wind woman is brought up she breaks apart the clouds

4. Horses are freed

5. They begin to run as a pack

6. Rumble thunder is created - stampedes

7. Hooves hit the floor = lightening

8. As the horses move the clouds are dispersed across the world

9. They occasionally come back together as a group = stampede = thunder

10. Cycle continues - freedom !


SUN

1. Peeping glimpse of the sun as the clouds part

2. She is shy and doesn't want to be seen

3. the characters needed sun so needed a plan

4. Talked to wise underground man , asked for help

5. He came out and rallied the community to form a pyramid

6. He climbed to the top

7. Talked to her about bravery, encouraged her out

8. Realised no-one could look at her anyway she was too bright

9. Let down her sunbeam hair

10. Sun is out ! Dancing joy! Happy ending

fin