First Draft: Fishtrap Story Lab Presents

Published 3:31 pm Monday, March 11, 2019

Fishtrap Story Lab inspires youth throughout Wallowa County to share their stories creatively, confidently, and playfully. Beginning with a focus on narrative craft, the program provides students with a host of multimedia tools—from video and animation equipment to music production software and beyond—to hone their skills as writers and producers. Story Lab emboldens students to explore themselves and the places they inhabit, encouraging personal growth and thoughtful participation in community conversation. The result is a generative program as rich and lively as Wallowa County itself.

The following are from two sixth grade students in Enterprise:

Anna walked down the the old orphanage’s wood stairs, moving toward the piano. Nobody had played it since the year 1921. It was dusty and some of the keys were broken. The whole city thought that the oprphanage was cursed, all because one girl named Elizabeth disappeared after playing the same piano.

Anna played the first note she saw, and with a quick white flash of light, she found herself walking on a snowy path in the woods. Ahead of her, was a huge steep hill that had a castle at the very top.

All of a sudden she was not on a snowy path, but a bright sunny spring path, with the same castle on top. She started jogging with the dog and suddenly thought of her family history. About how one day she went to school and when she came home her mother had disappeared. Her father had died the year before so, she was sent to an orphanage.

She kept walking and then there was another flash of light, and she found herself walking along a cloudy beach. She looked up again, and there was still the same castle, except she was so close, it felt like only a few feet away.

As she came closer to the castle, Anna smelt fresh baking pies.

If you hold your breath long enough underwater, you can hear the sounds of sirens. Gently move past the small of low tide and into the smell of salt. Walk a little further, as the third wave hits you and your feet can no longer feel the sandy bottom of the ocean, DIVE as far as you can go down!

As soon as you can taste seaweed down under, try breathing, you will see the incredible world that awaits!

Cora the mermaid was lying down on her water bed, watching the light beams from the sun, shine through the water down on her. Suddenly thousands of jellyfish covered the underwater world! As the biggest one came down, disguised as a old woman, Cora realized that they were shape shifting jellyfish!

In the world of shape shifting you can be anything you like. The hero of this story is disguised as a peasant boy, but underneath the old tattered clothing was a heroic dog shark! His only problem is that he will do anything for a belly rub. I know what you are thinking, we are underwater in this picture, but we are in the mess hall in the underwater world.

The evil jellyfish have been shape shifting into people and fishing for my cousins and making the world population of fish decrease! Next on his list was mermaids and I was on the top of the list!

To stop him, me and my sidekick Peggie the sea horse (disguised as a dog), set out to keep the jellyfish underwater, so we kicked him into the water never to be seen again…

The End

Writing prompt: Write a fantasy story in honor of Ursula K. LeGuin, this year’s The Big Read Author.