How the Wives Restored their Husband: I thought it was sort of strange how he had three wives, and basically picked the most honorable one by eating from her pot of food...when none of the wives could control their gift (dreaming, guiding, resurrecting). And it was odd that other villagers suggested he mixed the food and just ate it like that, so he wouldn't have to chose. Why does he have three wives in the first place?
How Gazelle Got Married was pretty lackluster. The conflicts (constantly forgetting the girls' names) the characters run into is pretty trite and... well, lame. And throughout the whole story, the readers don't know what the antelope is doing, or if it's doing anything at all. Then at the end, the "main" character, the Gazelle, gets what he wanted from his dog (the names of the girls) and marries the girl, happily ever after, basically easy as pie. Then the antelope gets mad and he kills him, the end.
I know it's just a folktale, and the plots and characters are always simple, but this didn't even seem to have a moral, or a twist at the end like some do. I didn't see the point of the story at all, and now I want to take extra care to make sure my stories are compelling and surprising. Maybe I'll rewrite this story with a different ending, and different conflicts, since I hate it so much. What good is it to complain if you don't do anything about it, right?
(Antelope: "I have no real part in this story, so I'm just gonna eat some grass...")
The Vanishing Wife: "Two brothers lived in a certain town." Make up a name, at least, if you don't want to limit it to one real town. "A certain town," throws off the rhythm of the story, and makes readers wonder why you don't want to name the town.
I do like the element of the man having a dream where he does a few things and meets a beautiful girl, then he does the things in real life and magically has a beautiful house. I may want to use something like that.
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