Fables

I read a couple of pages of a book on fables last night... it was a collection of aesop's fables, it had a really long introductory section and gave the context and explanation for each of the stories.

A fable is a short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral. There's always a moral. Historically the morals were presented at the beginning of the story, such as "In this story you will see the importance of taking things slow and easy" etcetera, though for the last two hundred years they have appeared at the end, as the concluding remarks. It's a little insulting for a story and its message if the message needs to be made explicit and the readers or listeners don't get it right away, but that's where things have been.

In any case I love the fables because they're quick reads, have become such fundamental parts of our social understanding that they've been deeply ingrained in our language and culture, all the cultures.

I have another book of tales, sort of fables, it's called The Long Path to Wisdom: Tales from Burma, and it's got hundreds of these short fabulistic tales with a moral of sorts at the end, somewhat like the Jataka tales, it's all Burmese Buddhism and most of these stories involve monks or guides or some sort of deeply ingrained cultural aspects.

Such stories are short, self-contained, don't waste thousands of words on chaff and 'worldbuilding' make their points as quick as is literally possible, and get the fuck out as soon as their point is made. They are no longer than they must absolutely be, they're that tight. They have to be or the readers or the listeners would get bored and would not care for them anymore.

I wonder the reason my stories and tales are so boring meandering pointless and clearly not going anywhere is because I don't have an audience I need to keep captive, I don't have a goal really besides the fact that something needs to get written so I'll shit all the things I can on the electronic paper without an ounce of concern for the reader's time. Since there are no readers, I get no feedback and I keep on barfing unnecessary details character portraits and superfluous details.

Something to think about.