LIT BITS

Narrated & Illustrated Short Fiction

Okay, so I made a story here just to show you all the type of thing I’m looking to publish on this page: “Kid Penicillin & The Escape From The Amoebius Strip”. Maybe you watched it and you’re wondering “Nat, your example is settin kind of a low bar here.” First of all, ouch – this was mostly just for fun, and ouch – the example is to show the type of thing I’m looking for, not the quality. It’s always safe to assume that I’m looking for stuff that is better than my own, like I said in GenPox’s mission statement I really just want to collect and amplify the cool things that other people are doing.

One of my most favoritest things about human beings is story telling. I love how many forms it takes across cultures, across time, across stages of life, etc, etc. And one of the things I love about story telling is precisely how human it is, how we express who we are and who we want to be (as well as who we do not want to be, those are important stories too) through the stories we tell and retell. And in the telling and retelling there are patterns that emerge. The patterns are what’s important here, let’s see:

Folklorists have come up with ways to categorize stories based on different types of patterns (there’s a lot of types, and sub-types etc – humans have been telling stories for a very long time), one of which they call “motifs”, which is just a general narrative pattern like “Cinderella” as a story of a poor kid gaining the attention of an elite through magical intervention; the elite notices how special the poor kid is and brings them into the world of the elites while leaving the people who failed to notice how special the poor kid behind in poverty. This is a general pattern of stories from all over the world – and it’s just one pattern among hundreds and hundreds.

I made the story “Kid Penicillin & The Escape From The Amoebius Strip” to fit a specific motif, in this case the “grateful dead” motif, where the hero is down on their luck and comes across a corpse out in the wilds somewhere and gives it a proper burial (or whatever form of respect that particular culture the story is from pays to their dead) and the spirit of the corpse is so grateful that they grant the hero some sort of boon that will help them out of their current dire situation.

Submission Guidelines

So yeah, this is just an example of what I’m looking for, questions of quality aside lol. But before we bake these brownies, let’s list some of the important ingredients:

• First, and I really wish I didn’t have to say this, but no AI generated shit. I am interested in human stories and the different ways that humans tell them. If there’s something you can’t do without the aid of AI, find another actual human being to collaborate with. End of discussion on AI as far as I’m concerned.
• I’m looking for stories that clearly fit into a motif – it doesn’t matter which one(s) so long as you are explicitly choosing one and using that motif to mold your story. If you don’t know any, do a little research – and if you don’t know where to start, instead of asking google, jeeves, or any other search engine you should ask a real life librarian first. Stories are their expertise. And so is helping people. So, do a librarian a favor and ask them for help about stuff that has to do with stories, or really research in general, which coincidentally is also part of their expertise.
• I want them to be narrated – again, if you can’t do this your self or just plain don’t want to do this part yourself, do not use AI generated voices please. They suck (for the world, doesn’t matter the quality of the voice either – it’s the act of using them to create “art” that sucks. Don’t do things that suck, simple as.). Find someone, anyone, who can narrate it for you. It’s pretty easy to make a recording of your voice and send it to someone these days, so it honestly shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
• I want them to be illustrated. It can be by hand and then uploaded onto a computer, or original photos, or made on a computer like I did (hopefully it doesn’t look too much like I did it, but I’m doing my biggest, I’m sure you understand) – that much doesn’t matter so much as the fact that a human created the imagery. Again no AI crap.
• I’m looking for videos that are 10 minutes or less. Shoot for about 1000 words max. Shorter is fine, too, of course. I’d love to see some good flash fiction that fits the prompt.
• It needs to be a self-contained narrative: beginning, middle, end. How you tell that narrative is up to you, it just has to be there so that your audience could easily identify it. Beginning. Middle. End.
• Lastly, no fucking AI.
• You made it to the end of the list, here’s your prize: [email protected].