What are some story ideas for magical realism? (English paper)?
486023
Magical realism is basically when wacky, unrealistic and magical things are incorporated into a story as if they're part of every-day life. For example, you can describe someone casually walking down the street, waving to his friends giraffes, who are selling fresh fruits and vegetables to feed their baby elephants. It has to be crazy, and unrealistic, but told in such a way as if it was a normal life. A great movie exmaple of magic realism is Big Fish. Maybe you could do a review of that?
482857
The story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, a"blind," "cold ... .. silent" street where the houses "gazed at one an-other with brown imperturbable faces." It is a street of fixed, decaying conformity and false piety. The boy's house contains the samesense of a dead present and a lost past. The former tenant, a priest,died in the back room of the house, and his legacy-several old yel-lowed books, which the boy enjoys leafing through because they areold, and a bicycle pump rusting in the back yard-become symbolsof the intellectual and religious vitality of the past. The boy, in themidst of such decay and spiritual paralysis, experiences the confusedidealism and dreams of first love and his awakening becomes incom-patible with and in ironic contrast to the staid world about him.\n\nEvery morning before school the boy lies on the floor in thefront parlor peeking out through a crack in the blind of the door,watching and waiting for the girl next door to emerge from her houseand walk to school. He is shy and still boyish. He follows her, walkssilently past, not daring to speak, overcome with a confused sense ofsensual desire and religious adoration. In his mind she is both a saintto be worshipped and a woman to be desired. His eyes are "often fullof tears," and one evening he goes to the back room where the priesthad died. Clasping the palms of his hands together, he murmurs, "0love! 0 love!" in a prayer not to God, but to the concept of love andperhaps even to the girl, his love. Walking with his aunt to shop onSaturday evenings he imagines that the girl's image accompanies him,and that he protects her in "places the most hostile to romance." Inthe mixed symbolism of the Christian and the Romantic or Orientalmyths Joyce reveals the epiphany in the story: "These noises con-verged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore mychalice safely through a throng of foes." He is unable to talk to thegirl. Drifting away from his schoolmates' boyish games, the boy hasfantasies in his isolation, in the ecstasy and pain of first love.\n\nFinally the girl speaks to the boy. She asks him if he is going toAraby. He replies that if he does he will bring her a gift, and fromthat moment, his thoughts upon the mixed imagery of the saintly lightupon her hair and the potential sensuality of "the white border of apetticoat," the boy cannot sleep or study. The word Araby "cast anEastern enchantment" over him, and then on the night he is to go tothe bazaar his uncle neglects to return home. Neither the aunt noruncle understands the boy's need and anguish, and thus his isolationis deepened. We begin to see that the story is not so much a story oflove as it is a rendition of the world in which the boy lives.\n\nThe second part of the story depicts the boy's inevitable disap-pointment and realization. In such an atmosphere of "blindness"-the aunt and uncle unaware of the boy's anguish, the girl not con-scious of the boy's love, and the boy himself blind to the true natureof his love-the words "hostile to romance" take on ironic overtones.These overtones deepen when the boy arrives too late at the bazaar.It is closing and the hall is "in darkness." He recognizes "a silencelike that which prevades a church after a service" but the bazaar isdirty and disappointing. Two men are "counting money on a salver"and he listens "to the fall of the coins." A young lady, bored withhim and interested in two men who are flirting with her, cheapensand destroys the boy's sense of an "Eastern enchantment." His love,like his quest for a gift to draw the girl to him in an unfriendly world,ends with his realizing that his love existed only in his mind. Thus\n\nthe theme of the story-the discrepancy between the real and theideal-is made final in the bazaar, a
618663
This is a great story that says it all...The Velveteen Rabbit.\nTHERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming. \n\nThere were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten. \n\nFor a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse. \n\nThe Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it. \n\n"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day,  "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" \n\n"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When someone loves you for a long, long time, REALLY loves you, then you become Real." \n\n"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. \n\n"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." \n\n"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" \n\n"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." \n\nIf it is real love..........it does not matter!
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Realism and Naturalism were written in backlash against the previous Gothic styles.\n\nTheir purpose was to portray real life as realistically as possible without the unbelievable plots twists of earlier writing. The problem with this was that purely Realist and Naturalist books would be unreadable (see character of Harold Biffen in "New Grub Street" by George Gissing as exemplifying this)and so often the plots were just as unbelievable as their predecessors'. "Therese Raquin" by Emile Zola is a good example of how a Naturalist piece can become hysterically Gothic.\n\nAlso, Realism mainly dealt with modern, Bourgeois life rather than looking at Lords and Ladies. See "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert - at Realist fiction in which the lead character is obsessed with Gothic novels.\n\nNaturalism particularly was associated with the idea that writing could be a "scientific experiment" whereby the author was all but absent from the process and the characters behaved in a manner much like real people would if placed in the same situation.\n\nThis is the fatal flaw of this school of writing, as clearly a novel is entirely subjective and as a figment of the author's imagination it is impossible that it could be objective or impartial.
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I liked it and thought it was quite good and imaginative.  The only thing I didn't think was plausible about it was the name for your mother, as it does not fit in with common names of Roman or Greek goddesses.  Sorry.  Other than that, here are just a few editing suggestions for you.  Feel free to take them or leave them, as this is your story, after all.  \n\nedit: (I had anger issues at the time).\nreplace with: \nI guess you could say I had some anger issues at the time.  (makes it sound more playful)\n\nIn the sentence after that, reword it so that it doesn't use the words "many different plagues, many different disasters" repetitively.  \n\nedit: I also tried to destroy the world, but my mother brought this curse upon me first"--you should just change it to brought *A* curse upon me first (flows better).  \n\nedit: "Unfortunately for me, I always cause some sort of trouble in each of my lives, whether I'm using my magick for evil, or just being naughty and mischievous."  replace it with that, because it'll flow better.\n\nedit:  As many people know, it's forbidden for a goddess to love a mortal, but I still went to down to earth, pretended to be human and tried to make him fall for me. \nreplace with:\nNaturally it's forbidden for a goddess to love a mortal, yet I went down to earth anyway so that I could pretend to be a human and make him fall for me.  (flows better)\n\nSorry, I get very focused on editing.  Good luck, and it's very creative.  I enjoyed reading it.
923509
I'd recommend:\n\n+Naruto-the story of a Ninja with a powerful fox demon trapped inside him.\n+Dr. Slump-If you like Akira Toriyama's stories, you'll probably like it, character deisngs are very similiar but its a comedy tale.\n+Bleach-The story of Ichigo Kursaki, a soul-reaper.\n+Rurouni Kenshin-The 'man slayer' a great tale based on many actual events.\n+Flame of Recca-Similar to Yu-yu-hakusho, only with ninjas.\n+Vagabound-Warning, it has suggestive themes, but its a great manga, a lot more realistic than Kenshin.
1148824
Read "Brainwave" by Poul Anderson. That is the basis of the story.
1003551
There is a good collection of Pagan symbols on Google Images. Lots of good historic books in the library, look at American Folk Magic. I hope your class work is positive, young people should be introduced to the old religions and rituals.
1120652
You could try castles and medieval stuff. It IS a little cliche, but done just right you'll get the attention\nFocus on rough, tough knights with disturbed pasts (battles, persecution, etc) rather than some pompous punk prince with perfect hair and blush. The "knights" theme could project a story of betterment, vindication, honor, and fighting for what's right.\n\nYou could also write a story about personified animals... NOCTURNAL animals. Kinda like Disney-ish, but the night-time ambience provides a rarely elaborated setting for a story to develop. Plus, if it's a story for kids, it'll help them feel a little easier about the night and darkness.
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how about concentrating on stories of the 'little people'.  ordinary, everyday folk who aren't famous or infamous, just folk doing what they know to do.  like a teacher, a baker, a grandmother, a street sweeper?   try to find beauty in the ordinaryness of life and tie it in with a faint reference to new york.  write your paper so that it is up to the reader to decide the 'value' of the life or dynamics of the person / place interface.  i think too many people are obsessed with ideas about ' dark', 'funniest', 'best', 'worst', . . . it is boring and meaningless.
102667
Try the plot-o-matic, it helps in just this type of instance.\n\nGood luck with your story :-)
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By 'frame' story do you mean, I assume you mean like an outline of what happens?\nWell basically somehow this English guy ends up back into the 15th Century, in King Arthur's Court. And he describes how Medieval they are.  For he is speaking is the "Queens English" were they are all talking "Old English" with 'where for art thou' language.  ONe unforgettable instance, is his meetings with Merlin.  He describes the wizard to somewhat of a con-artist, wowing the masses with simple magic tricks.  And there is 'battle of magicians' between them.  The English man predicts an eclipse (which he has known of previously) and dares Merlin to reverse his spell, which Merlin is of course unable.  The english man is then made into a kind of knight, and we see him take a wife and live out his life in this 'backward' world.  He even helps in a big battle at the end, in which he brings in battlefield tactics from the future.
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I think I have just the greatest idea for you. Here is the game you can design. This is a story in which a black magician turns the world totally up-side-down. Creatures living in water would swim in air. Bird would fly under water (their biological system would not change but they will be able to breath perfectly ). Rain water would shoot from the ground instead of falling from the sky. Only the chosen one (and he is no one but YOU, just modify the character a little so that no one can notice ) can rectify everything and bring peace an harmony to the world
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How about a story about how Peaceful Pink Pixies travel to all the war torn countries, poverty stricken places and fix the world and the state it's in all in the name of PEACE.\n\nPeace out!!\nxxx
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you can try fictionpress.net and search for it and then ask the author if you can use it, most of us on there would be delighted someone wants to read or use or work hope that helps
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Decide what your story is going to be about.  Choose a topic about which you know something.  Quite often, an event in your own life as c child can be used as the core basis of your story.  \n\nHow old will your readers be?  This will determine how large your vocabulary is. (If they are very young, important words should be repeated in the telling of your story.)\n\nChoose your characters.  Often one stands for good, and the other one creates problems.  \n\nWhat is the must exciting secion of your story?  Choose a clever title.  You must have colorful pictures. \n\nPicture yourself climbing a mountain.  Imagine what happens as you climb up the mountain.  When you get to the top of the mountain, you are at the most exciting point.  What do you see and feel as you come down the mountain?  Your last paragraph should sum up the story and give the reader "good all over feelin".   You write your story with your points or examples in the story in the same order as if you were climbing the mountain.
852986
Sure, why not. Sounds like that would be something with magical, wondrous powers of overcoming hardship and living to tell about it!