Day Ten - The First Annual 12 Days of Christmas Write Christmas Challenge

FIRST, sorry for the late posting of this (also). As many of your know, I am a full-service Travel Agent who also specializes in Disney Destinations, among other things. Disney did a promotion drop, so the last few days I've been blown out of the water and no time for blogging! Happy to be back to my Blog Pond today, even if just for a little bit...

FANTASTIC PORTALS

With winter weather weighing heavily on most of our minds, think about other forms of weather like, say, Dorothy's twister. This weather phenomenon plays an important role in the story.  The eye of the twister serves as a portal through which Dorothy travels to get to Munchkinland and ultimately, the Land of Oz. As a result, the book evolves from a story about farm life in Kansas into a wonderful, captivating portal fantasy. 

For a more classical definition, a portal is a “wormhole.” In physics, a wormhole is a “hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is fundamentally a 'shortcut' through space and time.” Portal fantasies utilize one of two methods of transportation. Either the main character steps through the frame of an object (perhaps a door, window, gate, or even a wardrobe), or stands alone and the portal appears in a vortex of energy (as in Dorothy’s twister). Portals can link two different spots in the same universe, different planes of existence, parallel worlds, past and future, heaven and hell, this world and the afterworld. This technique of connecting two worlds is common in science fiction and fantasy fiction.  Besides “The Wonderful Wizard…” some popular examples of portal fantasies are: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis, Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series,  the “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling, and “His Dark Materials Trilogy” by Philip Pullman. 

Choose your portal. Then, then spend some time devising a unique object through which your main character can travel. Let this object give rise to a character and situation in which the character could stumble or have it thrust upon him/her. Give some thought to the worlds you will link together and create the circumstances of a FANTAST-ic story.

BONUS *WORD WEAVING* CHALLENGE:

Write a picture book story using as many words from this list as possible. Give yourself bonus points for using all of them. If this practice becomes a project, feel free to discard any words that don't serve your story. They will have done their job by inspiring something new! 

PIXIE
HANDS
WORLD
JUNK
GOOD
KIND
LOLLIPOP
KIDS
BAD
WOODS

Today's Word Weaving exercise inspired by random words I encountered. 

*.*.*.*.*

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Lynne Marie is the author of Hedgehog Goes to Kindergarten - illustrated by Anne Kennedy (Scholastic, 2011), Hedgehog's 100th Day of School – illustrated by Lorna Hussey (Scholastic, January 2017), The Star of the Christmas Play -- illustrated by Lorna Hussey (Beaming Books, 2018), Moldilocks and the 3 Scares -- illustrated by David Rodriguez Lorenzo (Sterling, pending) and Let's Eat! Mealtimes Around the World -- illustrated by Parwinder Singh (Beaming Books, 2019). You can learn more about her at www.LiterallyLynneMarie.com. 

To order the Star in the Christmas Play, click the title.