write your own urban legend assignment

SLAP HAPPY LARRY

Lesson plan: write your own urban legend.

AIM: Students will create an original story as an homage to a classic urban legend.

Teenage girls really enjoy this one. Make sure you pick the right group of kids to do this with. (And the right school.)

Note: It is tempting for students to rewrite the same old legend. You may find it works better for students to write a short excerpt only, as practice using language rather than practice structuring plot. Or you may specify that the ending must be different. Even better, the more creative students will come up with their own, original legends. That’s ideal. The others, at least, have somewhere to start and can’t moan about not having any ideas.

2 HOURS + HOMEWORK TIME or 3 HOURS IN CLASS

MATERIALS : A class set of urban legends.  (About 10 different legends for a class of 30.)

A short urban legend of the horror genre. These are readily available on the web. See Snopes.com for some great examples. These are American, and may need to be picked more judiciously outside America, as some are more popular internationally than others. I like:

• The Vanishing Hitchhiker
• The Babysitting Urban Myth
• Phonecall From The Grave

Like any good writing teacher (!), I have done this exercise myself. I wrote a short story based on The Vanishing Hitchhiker . It was published in Eclecticism ezine, Issue #11, and is available for free here . During the rewrite, I took out the supernatural elements. I also rewrote The Babysitter urban legend with an Aotearoa-New Zealand setting .

You might also use Jeffrey Archer’s “Never Stop On The Motorway”. I’m not sure if he wrote that story based on the Killer In The Backseat urban legend, or if the urban legend came about because of Archer’s short story.

A short excerpt from the horror story

Creepy background music. I like Creepy Music Box , Creepy Dolls , Creepy Organ Music , Behold the Darkness , A bizarre jingle bells remake ,  O Willow Waly , the sound of rain and thunder , Sounds of Horror . (I’m sure you’ll find your own favourites on YouTube.)

Teacher reads a short horror story.

Class brainstorms what sort of things scare them.

Individuals may share any experiences they have had where they felt scared.  (Teacher start by talking about own experiences).  Talk in pairs.  Share the best ones as a class.

Show on an interactive whiteboard an excerpt from Horror Story.  Teacher leads a discussion of the language (short sentences at point of climax, emotive language, structure of an urban legend).

Near the end of the first period, teacher distributes Urban Legends to individuals.  Individuals read in silence without talking to next door neighbour.  They are given guidelines about how to write a short story based on the legend:

• You can rely on as little or as much material in the urban legend given to you as you like.
• You can change any detail and add any detail to make it a better story.
• You can choose to make the ending positive or funny but it must aim to make the readers scared.
• You may like to include experiences you have had yourself.
• You may like to make the setting your own part of the world – not America or elsewhere.
• Include at least one scary character.
• Decide before you begin whether you are going to write in first, second or third person.

While listening to atmospheric music (or not) students write their own story.

Related Links

For indepth discussions of all things supernatural, you might try listening to the Mysterious Universe podcast , produced by two guys in Sydney who are on the zeitgeist of urban legend creation. Bear in mind that their podcast is completely unscientific and made for entertainment. (Many of us continue to find ghost stories entertaining even though we don’t actually believe in ghosts… an interesting phenomenon in its own right.)

The creators Benjamin Grundy and Aaron Wright get so caught up with their research at times that they freely admit to half-believing their own spin. Anyway, there is more than enough material out there upon which to base a modern urban legend, and Mysterious Universe is a collection of the most bizarre in any given week here on Earth.

My favourite podcast of theirs is the one about the ‘Greys’: aliens who are actually robots programmed long, long ago by a highly evolved species in a distant universe… Anyway, have a listen to that if you’d like an hour of mind boggling entertainment. Their expert, Nigel Kerner, is the most eccentric interviewee I’ve ever had the privilege of listening to.

And then, after this is all done, you might want to listen to the Skeptic Check series of podcasts produced by SETI as part of the Are We Alone? series . These podcasts include a healthy dose of skepticism, and revel in scientific geekiness.

This lesson would lead very nicely to a unit in Advertising, I always think. And much discussion about skepticism and hype and spin and email hoaxes and refusing to believe everything you hear. As part of this discussion you might actually go back to the Mysterious Universe podcast, for a very interesting (and scientific) discussion with Professor Christopher Bader and Professor Joseph Baker, authors of Paranormal America , about why humans continue to believe in paranormal stories, even today.

I hope you have as much fun with this as I did.

CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)

On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.

Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:

1. Get a pet dog

2. Find a friend. Just one. Not too intense.

KINDLE EBOOK

• Literary Terms
• When & How to Write an Urban Legend
• Definition & Examples

How to Write an Urban Legend

The most basic way that people create urban legends is essentially by starting elaborate rumors. They can begin with a small tale, and as they are passed on by word of mouth, the internet, and other outlets, they usually pick up more details that work to make them seem true and believable. Likewise, those same methods may help to disprove them, but the legends can still continue to reach new audiences.

If you’re trying to create your own urban legend, remember these key things:

• It should be based on real life events, people, or circumstances. Without any foundation in reality, and urban legend won’t have any real power or support.
• People only want to believe things that could be real, so if you just make up stories completely, it usually won’t be as popular as one “based on real events.”
• Usually, a believable but unusual tale will get passed on, and like a game of telephone, the information will warp and change as it is passed from person to person.

When and Where to Share an Urban Legend

Traditionally, legends were passed on through oral tradition and storytelling, and sometimes took years to spread or become widely known. Nowadays, however, it’s easy for these tall tales to spread via the internet—social media platforms, blogging, and even news sites can quickly get  a story and share it online with thousands (or millions) of people. So, social media and popular blogs are the best place to release your story nowadays, as they have the furthest reach and the greatest potential to spread.

Since they can spread so quickly via the internet and other resources, stories may be quickly believed, or quickly dismissed. For instance, some urban legends may start as rumors that are easily disproved (like the death of a celebrity who hasn’t actually died), while others last for generations (like the idea that it takes 7 years to digest a piece of swallowed gum), while others may continue to grow and gain details for years. So when you’re going to share an urban legend, make sure it is somewhat believable, and has the potential to last.

If shared at the right time, urban legends can gain a permanent place in modern folklore. So, you should generally share your urban legend when it is relevant (when people care about it). For example, a time when vampire literature and culture is popular is a great time to share an urban legend about a vampire. The more interested people are in a particular subject, the more receptive they’ll be of stories or rumors concerning it.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
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• Cliffhanger
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• Deuteragonist
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• Red Herring
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• Rhetorical Question
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• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
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Urban Legends Lesson Plan

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• Categories : Lesson plans & worksheets for grades 3 to 5
• Tags : Teaching grades pre k to 5

Introduce the Topic

Explain to your students just what constitutes an “urban legend”. You may start by asking them if they’ve ever heard the story about the Kentucky Fried rat, or the dog who was choking and was found to have a burglar’s fingers stuck in his throat, or perhaps the woman who tried to dry off her poodle in the microwave. You could also include a more contemporary variant, introducing the topic of internet hoaxes - i.e. the little boy dying of cancer who needs to have one million people forward a certain email.

Whether your students have heard of such legends and hoaxes or not, you will need to read a few examples of the different types of urban legends to make sure they have a good understanding of just what types of stories are being discussed. A good source of print urban legends are the series of books by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, including “The Choking Doberman” and “The Mexican Pet”. You may also, if you are web-savvy, go online to print out examples of urban legends that have been transmitted via email, on websites or in newspapers.

Discuss the Similarities

Many of these urban legends have similar elements. In many cases, ranging from the oldest of orally-transmitted tales to the newest forwarded emails, the story is said to be guaranteed true because it happened to a “friend of a friend” of the narrator. Another element many urban legends have in common is a sort of a morality element, i.e. the Hook Man who only targeted couples who were illegally parked (and engaging in other naughty activities) up in a “lover’s lane” of some sort. Another element is that of warning the listener (or reader) of some terrible danger that may befall them - a claim which, in nearly all cases, proves to be entirely without basis in fact.

Select Urban Legends

You may have the students choose their own legends, either from print or online resources, or you may (for younger students) choose to assign legends or provide a short list from which they may choose. Again, depending on grade level, you may supply the print or online resources you’d like students to use, or you may ask the students to discover what they can find out on their own. Either way, you should ask students, individually or in small groups, to select one particular legend that each will work on.

Research The Urban Legends

Ask the students to research the background of their legends. Have them describe the history of the legend - is it a recent one, or does it date back decades into the past as many do? Some urban legends may even have roots that go back centuries, while others are as modern as (and often connected to) the latest headline news. Have students gather as many details about their particular legends as possible, including any possible evidence that the legend is in any way true or proof that it is entirely false. One particularly good resource for this is the website snopes.com .

Present Findings to the Class

Have each student or group of students present their findings on the chosen legend. If you wish to incorporate a technology element and you have the resources to do so, you may encourage them to create PowerPoint presentations. If you have an insufficient number of computers, inadequate software, and/or no overhead projector, you may, instead, choose to have them add a visual element to their presentations via the use of posterboards. They may create their posters illustrating various elements of their legends or create collages using newspaper headlines (real or simulated), copies of emails, photos, etc.

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Urban Legends Creative Writing Unit KS3/4

Subject: English

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

15 September 2022

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This relatively short unit of work is designed to inspire pupils how to write their own urban legend. There are 2 PowerPoints which together takes the pupils through basic creative writing conventions: Characterisation, Setting and Plot structure, with a number of tasks to do along the way. I have also attached a compilation of some popular (but brief) urban legends for consideration - this correlates with a task within the PP, as well as a copy of the short story “Baby by the Roadside”. There is also a short RUAE passage with questions based on the topic of… you guessed it: Urban Legends. It’s a nice change from Halloween writing and the kids really buy into it! ( planning sheet included)

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Wednesday, February 8

14 tips on how to create your own urban legend.

The Ingredients of an Urban Legend:

1. fear of strangers. the bad guy is a foreigner, an outsider, a stranger., 2. importance of ritual and rule-following., 3. the author is anonymous., 4. vague. no specific examples are given, nothing that can be definitely traced., 5. electronics don’t work., 6. the protagonist is alone., 7. it is said to be a true story., 8. event is said to have happened locally., 9. event is said to have happened recently., 10. the event happened to someone the teller knows. or a friend of a friend., 11. the event is macabre, horrific, sensational., 12. give it a moral., 13. i say this tongue-in-cheek: it helps if a blurry photograph is involved, 4 comments:.

Thank you for this. I really enjoyed this :)

there is only 13 tips

lol That's right! I deleted one at the last minute during editing and forgot to change the title. Well spotted. Though ... now, I think I'm going to leave it as is. I like the tension.

Because of the number of bots leaving spam I had to prevent anonymous posting. My apologies. I do appreciate each and every comment.

Anthony Cockerill

| Writing | The written word | Teaching English |

How to use urban legends to teach students to write compelling narratives

What can we take from urban legends and their cinematic equivalents when teaching those elements of great stories and narratives.

As a university student in the late 1990s, I was fascinated by what was, in hindsight, an early example of viral marketing, for the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project . The film’s use of found footage alongside the producers’ efforts to purport the events of the film as factual was something that felt completely new. I liked the fictional ‘backstory’ the production team devised as part of the promotion of the film, which they explored through a mock documentary, the distribution of ‘missing persons’ posters and, with uncanny prescience, a website documenting the legend of ‘The Blair Witch’.

The production team capitalised upon the idea of the ‘urban legend’, a story often rooted in something mythological, folkloric or supernatural, usually apocryphal in origin, and existing in several forms. Inspired by my own fascination with The Blair Witch Project,  I wanted to explore how the appeal of the ‘urban legend’ might help students to learn about the compelling elements of narrative, providing them with an imaginary space in which to work and an understanding of genre at ‘text level’ but also in the sentences and words they would choose. As part of our thematic curriculum, Year Nine students explore the role of myths and monsters in story-telling as part of a scheme of learning that encourages them to begin to make connections between stories and society at large.

Students usually arrive at Key Stage Three familiar with the idea of story structure at some level, perhaps having used terms such as ‘opening’, ‘build up’, ‘main event’, ‘reaction’ and ‘ending’. But exploring several ways of opening stories – such as scene-setting , establishing conflict , in media res  and developing back-stories which follow with a switch back to the immediate present of the narrative – can help students learn how narrative is ‘framed’ . It can also help them to work through other tricky issues around storytelling, such as establishing clear narrative perspective and handling confidently the passage of time .

In class, my Year Nine students and I began by exploring the idea of the ‘urban legend’. Students enthusiastically became engrossed in researching these themselves, mixed up with one or two screenings of YouTube’s various takes on ‘top urban legends’. This initial research was then followed up with a whole-class discussion about the various elements that the urban legends had in common. For example, many urban legends exist in multiple versions. They often have a familiar, suburban setting and work as a kind of cautionary tale to the young people who become drawn into the events of the story’s antagonist . This discussion was very much about form and genre . It helped us to establish some of the codes and conventions of the urban legend and its relationship with the horror genre, as this great blog post on digital media website Mashable explores.

One of the elements the students agreed was most important was the setting . As they observed, this is usually something very familiar, suburban even, with an ominous mystery lurking somewhere close at hand. They also noted the importance of the apocryphal ‘back-story’. I asked my class what a town where something really bad had happened many years ago might be called. I first suggested ‘Deadwood’.

‘Too obvious’, they said.

‘Ravenswood’, a student suggested.

‘Why Ravenswood?’

‘It sounds like a bad omen. Something bad is going to happen there.’

‘But these kinds of towns are usually really happy on the surface. It’s not until later we realise bad stuff happens there.’

‘How about River Wood?’

Having voted as a class for River Wood, I used the preview tool at a free fonts website to create some ‘logos’ for River Wood , pitching it to the students as perhaps the name of a new Netflix series in the style of  Stranger Things . I asked which typeface would work best. A discussion around deliberation and the intricate effects of the way we construct creative artifacts was really helpful in establishing from the outset with the students the integral importance of the decisions we make in our writing and how genre is constructed.

We then began to imaginatively build  the town of River Wood. I presented a series of images of the ‘town’ as it ‘is today’, then some ‘archive’ images of the town from many years ago.

I shared with the class a story I’d written as a sort of ‘here’s one I made earlier’. I’d pre-highlighted the text to guide a discussion around structure for after the reading. I chose to go with a scene-setting opening , followed by a back-story , trigger , building toward a climax , climax then a resolution . The back-story element, I surmised, would allow the students to establish some of the conventions of the urban legend, and provide an opportunity to practise control of their narrative voice and to experiment with how they show passage of time.

Having established a narrative structure , we worked with my descriptive story opening and back-story and focused on what worked well and what might be improved. The focus here was ensuring students establish a clear narrative perspective ( first-person works best as students are familiar with this mode of writing, although more confident writers might choose third-person limited ) and helping them to manage the shifts in time from scene setting to back-story, to immediate present.

Students then wrote their first drafts in their exercise books. Throughout this process, I kept on returning to those features we had established as clearly being essential parts of the urban legend genre – and my attempts to exploit them in my own story, making sure the students were able to apply them to their own work.

Initial feedback was focused around allowing the text to achieve its purpose; to be a truly compelling piece of narrative:

Students annotate an extract from the opening of Stephen King’s  It.

The opening sentence of the story alone provides a lot to discuss, and rightly so, as King is a writer who spends a long time crafting his opening gambits :

‘The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.’

I asked the students: why the precision of ‘twenty-eight years’? Why the juxtaposition of something epic with something as mundane as a newspaper boat? Why the personification of the gutter as ‘swollen’? What might this suggest? What is the effect of the various parentheses ?

What works so well about the first chapter of It , which I pre-annotated before teaching,  is the  in media res opening and the gradual exposition of character and setting throughout the chapter. The setting, we establish, is crucial. One of the most gratifying things about reading Stephen King is the evocation of place and the details he chooses to focus on. This allowed us as a class to establish some aspects of language and style which we felt would not only embellish the writing but actually be an integral part of it in terms of genre .

As students were redrafting the stories in Google Drive, I gave feedback as part of the process. This was sometimes geared toward working through issues of narrative structure, exploiting features of the genre and working out what was going to happen next. This was a difficult process at times. One of the most important things I took from this as a teacher was just how difficult writing can be. But these struggles and challenges and the solutions we seek to overcome them are very much part of building writing resilience and showing the students how writing is a craft as much as an art-form. Sometimes, the feedback was concerned with the mechanics of sentences. Here, I found it useful to talk about the students’ work in equal terms to those which we’d used to talk about Stephen King’s writing. This is a great way of ensuring that grammar is taught implicitly, by which I mean as part of a process of writing, rather than in cold isolation.

Part of Stephen King’s genius, of course, is elevating the horror genre to something more profound. Unlike many urban legends and horror films, which function often crudely as a cautionary tale against moral transgression or subversion, King’s young protagonists clearly occupy the novel’s moral high ground. The true horrors of the novel are the inhabitants of Derry, the fictional Maine town in which the novel is set, and the abuse, neglect and trauma experienced by the young and innocent. Pennywise the Dancing Clown is a proxy for real world fears. I didn’t feel  that this sequence of teaching narrative writing necessarily allowed the students to engage with that particular discourse, as it wasn’t a study of King’s oeuvre per se.  But as well as providing an imaginative resource to learn about – and apply – knowledge of form, genre and narrative craft, the material allowed the students to discuss the collective fears of our society and the different ways that myths and monsters can shape-shift, evolve and assume a familiar guise whilst still connecting us to the traditions of oral narrative and psychodramas of those who have gone before us.

Some of the writing produced by the students in response to this stimulus can be read at www.confictionarium.com .

Featured image: Photo by sebastiaan stam on Unsplash

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Build Your Own Urban Legend!

October can be a spooky time of year, with ghost stories and urban legends told around a bonfire at night. Are you stuck for a story to tell? Never fear (okay, fear a little), The Charles County Public Library is here to help you create your own DIY spooky urban legend! Just click below to get started!

Would you like to read more about spooky legends?

Maryland legends : folklore from the old line state by trevor j. blank.

Discover a wide range of fascinating lore from the state of Maryland”– Provided by publisher.

The demon car of Seven Hills Road, the ominous Hell House above the Patapsco River, the mythical Snallygaster of western Maryland–these are the extraordinary tales and bizarre creatures that color Maryland’s folklore. The Blue Dog of Port Tobacco faithfully guards his master’s gold even in death, and in Cambridge, the headless ghost of Big Liz watches over the treasure of Greenbriar Swamp. The woods of Prince George’s County are home to stories of the menacing Goatman, while on stormy nights at the nearby University of Maryland, the strains of a ghostly piano float from Marie Mount Hall. From the storied heroics of the First Maryland Regiment in the Revolutionary War to the mystery of the Poe Toaster, folklorists Trevor J. Blank and David J. Puglia unravel the legends of Maryland.

Weird Maryland : Your Travel Guide to Maryland’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets , by  Matthew Lake

Call it the Free State or the Old Line State, but after reading this guide to the odd, bizarre, and unexplainable, Maryland will be officially titled the Weird State. Follow a transplanted Englishman (himself a curiosity) as he journeys through a giant cider barrel, maneuvers down Satan Wood Drive, visits the Presidential Pet Museum, says hello to the Pig Woman of Cecil County, and more. Tip: If you see the Bunnyman on your journey, move on-fast.

Haunted Maryland: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Old Line State , by Ed Okonowicz

Part of the Haunted series

Tales of unexplained phenomena in Maryland, including vengeful ghosts and sea monsters.

Haunted Southern Maryland , by David W. Thompson

Part of the Haunted America series

Southern Maryland is one of the most haunted spots in America. From pre-colonial settlements to modern times, the tales of every era of its history are often dark and sometimes bloody. Brave readers will meet the many otherworldly specters that loved the area too much to leave, like the spirit of the witch Moll Dyer or the nun reclaiming her ancestral home. Learn the haunted history of Sotterley Plantation and the stories of the ghosts that remained after the Civil War. Author David W. Thompson takes the reader on a spooky journey through Southern Maryland’s long history.

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Urban Legends For Writers

In this post, we look at urban legends (and their use in fiction).

Have you heard the one about the medical student, who was pranked with a human arm in their bed? The story says that they were found the next morning, laughing hysterically, chewing on the arm.

How about the legend about the video game, the one that drove its programmers to madness? You must have heard about it.

Legends like these are viral. We all know one or two. These are called urban legends.

Here’s what urban legends are (and how to use them).

1. What Are Urban Legends?

According to Britannica , an urban legend is ‘a story about an unusual or humorous event that many people believe to be true but that is not true.’

Urban legends are stories that are told from one person to another, and they’re usually untrue. Classic urban legends can be scary, disgusting, horrific, funny, or rooted in conspiracy theories.

While they aren’t true, these legends spark emotion (and the urge to repeat them).

The internet has made old tales popular again, but also created new ones.

Slenderman and ‘creepypasta’ stories are examples. ‘Cursed video tape’ stories like Koji Suzuki’s The Ring are another.

2. How Urban Legends Spread

Why do urban legends go viral?

Emotion is what ties these stories together. They work because they can trigger thoughts and feelings, whether or not they are true.

These stories also evolve as they are told again (and again).

An urban legend has a core element (the storyline), and might have many versions. The ‘medical student’ tale is told at many medical universities, from Canada to Southern Africa.

The acronym ‘FOAF’ or ‘friend-of-a-friend’ identifies likely legends. Stories, with research, will never bring you first-hand accounts – but always vague, faraway retellings.

It always happened ‘to someone else’ or ‘this guy’. Urban legends are fun to tell, but scary to believe.

They make news, but that does not make them more true. It just means that a writer decided to write it down – and either failed in their research, or reported about what someone had heard for the paper’s interest.

A legend can also become true with time. Originally, the story of ‘needles in Halloween candy’ was a myth. When copycats did real-life harm, this legend turned into truth – and yes, this happens too often.

3. A Legend’s Classic Elements

There’s always a hook or thrill to legends, which feel sensational from the start.

When you feel that jolt that stories are too strange, too weird, too crazy, investigate that feeling (and it could be a legend).

A legend can also have a lesson, like a cautionary story. Don’t go out to the woods, don’t feed sharks at midnight, there are hundreds (but they all feel the same). Stories like these have elements that unsettle, like Slappy the Doll from the Goosebumps universe . Creepy dolls? We’ve heard about one somewhere.

Legends can be funny too. For a while, there was a story about chicken restaurants and tube-fed, lab-grown mutant chickens. It was absolute hogwash. That didn’t stop its spread.

If you have read hundreds, you will learn to see one. The Rabbit In The Thorn Tree by Arthur Goldstuck is a favourite collection.

4. How To Use It (& Not Steal It)

Fiction can borrow this ‘core’ story from urban legends, and rewrite the finer points. However, fiction cannot steal anything. There’s a difference between ‘inspiration’ and ‘you stole my story’.

Clive Barker’s ‘ The Forbidden ‘ is a great example. It takes from the story of Bloody Mary, the name you don’t repeat in a mirror, but changes most of the legend’s elements. Still, without doubt, the legend is there in the story.

Can you see what he did there? Adapt the elements, but keep the core.

Vampire stories also do the same: while some things are kept, each story that says ‘vampire’ is more different than the last.

5. Using Twists & Turns

Urban legends are great as pop culture references, but can be like writing prompts . The key is that the core can be recognized, but the rest of the story is not (and never!) taken from someone else’s.

Urban legends in fiction only work when they’re a writer’s own.

Twists, turns, and these fun legend-based ‘elements’ are your playground. Remember that other writing rules, including the need for proper characters will still apply.

The Last Word

In this post, we looked at urban legends and their use in fiction. We hope that you’ve learned more about their use.

By Alex J. Coyne.  Alex is a writer, proofreader, and regular card player. His features about cards, bridge, and card playing have appeared in Great Bridge Links, Gifts for Card Players, Bridge Canada Magazine, and Caribbean Compass. Get in touch at  alexcoyneofficial.com .

If you enjoyed this, read other posts by Alex:

• 8 Common Phrases We Actually Got From Shakespeare
• Here Be Dragons – In Fiction
• Bad Business: 9 Words & Phrases To Avoid
• Dissecting Zombies in Fiction Writing
• Dirty Journalism: How Journalists Can Keep Research Legal
• How Writers Can Research Settings Remotely
• The Use Of Real People As Characters In Fiction
• 8 Proofreading Tricks (That Save Valuable Time)
• 7 Techniques Of The Faustian Story
• Famous Rejection Letters & Their Lessons For Other Writers

Top Tip : Find out more about our  workbooks  and  online courses  in our  shop .

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Assignment #2: Urban Legends of Community College of Philadelphia

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How to Write a Myth

Last Updated: April 1, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 429,880 times.

You might know the stories about Hercules and Zeus , or stories from the many other mythological traditions around the world. These stories explain reasons behind natural events or cultural traditions, or the characters in them are examples or counter-examples of how you should act. Whether you're creating a serious mythology or writing a silly story to entertain people, myths fuel the imagination of both writer and listener.

Brainstorming Ideas

• Why does the moon wax and wane?
• Why do vultures have bald heads?
• Why do people prepare and eat foods in certain ways, or on certain holidays?

• The hero succeeds only when he follows the advice of elders or gods — or alternatively, only when he is self-reliant.
• The hero must be clever to succeed, solving problems in creative ways.
• Some myths even teach that luck can be more important than skill. It can be fun to hear about an "ordinary" person who gets rewarded, or entertaining to hear about a complete fool who somehow becomes king. [1] X Research source Meletinsky, Eleazar, ed. F. Oinas and S. Soudakoff. <i>The Low Hero of the Fairytale</i>. 1975.

• If you're having trouble coming up with a mythological explanation for the topic you chose, write down a list of words that remind you of snow. If you want to explain how snowstorms happen, write down "cold, wet, white, snowman, ice cream, clouds." Maybe snowmen live in the sky and sneeze snow down to earth, or maybe the clouds try to give us ice cream that melts on the way down.

• Is the hero super-strong, super-intelligent, or incredibly talented in one area? Some heroes have "superpowers" such as shooting a bow with perfect aim, or the ability to knock people over with the wind from their breath.
• Why does your hero have these special talents, if any? Did the gods bless the hero, did the hero train hard, or was the hero just born that way? Which kind of person would you admire, or which do you think matches the real world best?

• The hero is overconfident, and ignores advice or turns down an offer of help.
• The hero is greedy or lustful, and tries to steal or take something that doesn't belong to her.
• The hero is arrogant, and thinks he's better than everyone else, or even better than the gods.

• If you're out of ideas, try reading collections of actual myths, or modern books that use mythological characters. Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a good example

Writing the Myth

• This tends to make the plot move pretty quickly. In one version of the Herakles myth, the hydra is introduced, tracked down, and killed in just eight sentences. [3] X Research source

• Use iconic symbols. These vary between traditions, but often include the numbers 3 and 7, animals like the raven or the seal, or characters like the prince or the trapped faerie.
• Use the same structure for several sentences in a row. For example: "Seven days he went up into the sky, and seven days he walked down to go to Xibalbá; seven days he was transformed into a snake ...; seven days he was transformed into an eagle." [4] X Research source Florescano, Enrique. <i>The Myth of Quetzalcoatl</i>. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. Print.
• Give people a short, descriptive epithet. This is especially popular in Greek epics, which often use epithets that refer to other stories, such as "Dionysus the wolf-repeller" or "Apollo, carrier of the bay branches."

• Set the myth in the distant past, or a distant land. Think of all the stories you know that begin "Once upon a time," "Far, far away," or even "A long, long time ago."
• Describe the kind of hero people expect in myths. For instance, a youngest brother, a king, or a woodcutter are all common heroes in folk tales. For more epic myths, start with a famous hero or a goddess instead.

• Coyote notices people shivering in winter, and they plead for a way to warm themselves.
• A queen ignores her suffering subjects. The gods send a plague to her daughter, and the queen must learn to help people in exchange for their assistance to cure her daughter.

• Introduce a new character. This can be a god, a spirit, a talking animal, or an elder. The character might describe the next challenge to come and how to overcome it, or give the hero a magical item that he can use later.
• Create a new challenge. Just when everything is looking good again, have the hero make a mistake, or send a monster to undo the hero's good work. This is useful if you want the story to go on longer.

• "And that's why the sun gets hotter and bright every summer."
• "And ever since then, people brush their teeth to a shine every night, so the tooth-stealing goblins are scared by their own hideous reflection."

Fill in the Blank Template for a Myth

Community Q&A

• There are many great sources of inspiration online, where you can read about Chinese legends, Slavic folk tales , Aztec mythology, the Norse Poetic Edda , and myths from many other traditions. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Playing video games can actually help with writing! I was playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus and was wondering why people in the Pokémon universe worshipped Arceus. That gave me the idea to write a myth/origin story for Arceus. So, video games can give you ideas as well as broaden your creative sense.
• When you're first starting out, try writing a myth about a natural mystery, like how planets were made or why leaves change color. It can also help to draft the myth from a third-person perspective (he/she/they).
• If you need some inspiration, I would recommend reading books that are inspired by classic myths, like Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan.
• Have a pair of heroes rather than just one. That way, they can rely on one another throughout the myth.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Meletinsky, Eleazar, ed. F. Oinas and S. Soudakoff. The Low Hero of the Fairytale . 1975.
• ↑ https://www.museums.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/CopyofDesignyourownGreekmyth2.pdf
• ↑ https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Apollod.+2.5.2&fromdoc=Perseus%253Atext%253A1999.01.0022
• ↑ Florescano, Enrique. The Myth of Quetzalcoatl . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. Print.
• ↑ https://penandthepad.com/stylistic-elements-legend-10020604.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/

About This Article

Since myths tell how or why something in the real world happens, the first step is to decide what your myth will explain, and decide what kind of moral the story will have. Then, make sure you include some things that could never happen, like a tree that grows spaghetti. As you write your myth, make it sound more mythical by re-using the same type of sentence structures or giving characters short titles, like “Fido, fetcher of sticks.” Finally, remember to set up a problem for your hero to solve by the end of the story! For more advice, like how to give your hero specific attributes, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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