Hello, and welcome to the January 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be introducing you to three indexes of recurring motifs and plots found in folk tales. I'll also be providing you with a writing exercise extracted from Julia Cameron's excellent motivational book on the creative life, The Artist's Way. This dispatch has been released with the first of its companion Folklore & Fiction podcast episodes, and you'll find a link to that episode below. It's also the first in a two-year exploration of folkloric motifs and plots from around the world paired with writing exercises designed to help you make use of them as storytellers.
You might be wondering why an understanding of folklore indexing systems is important to storytelling and why I'm spending so much time on the topic. In truth, you don't need a folklorist's understanding of these systems, which you would likely find tedious, though it would help you to understand a bit more about their limitations than I'll be sharing here. What you do need, and what they amply provide, is a working knowledge of traditional story scaffolding. You also need the skills to build upon that scaffolding, and that's why each of the dispatches and podcasts in this series will include a writing exercise. Finally, I would add that while the first two of these indexes can be found online, the most recent of them (and the one I'll be referencing most often for various folkloristic reasons) is difficult to find in a library and expensive to buy, which is another reason I'll be sharing excerpts of it with you.
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