My Fantasy Novel

My fantasy novel will include a map of the terrain. I'll try not to make the sea in the west. I won't mention anything about anyone going west as some sort of step-in for nebulous death. I won't have swans or giant eagles. I may have elves. If I don't have elves, I won't have radiant, wise, ancient beings of light. I'd rather just have elves than some race of frost people the reader will respond to with 'why didn't he just have elves instead of these non-elf elves ?'.
    The trilogy I'm reading now has too many near-misses of Tolkien and King Arthur. King Arthur makes sense because he actually makes an appearance. Middle-earth and all that show up as if there was no other template available to the author. Even the names echo names found in LOTR but without the cohesion.
    My fantasy novel will be a trilogy but a short one. I want kids to read it but I may mention stuff that school boards wouldn't like. There will be a map and there will also be something I found very helpful in the trilogy I'm finishing up now, a list of characters in the front of the book. Great idea. I need to go back and see who the Dark Lords' first lieutenant is versus the Ancient Power of the Forest.
    My fantasy novel will not have a dark lord that must be defeated by the end of the book. In fact, there will be no dark lord at all. There may be evil and darkness and a deep dark evil but he won't live in a tower in some barren land and he won't have slave armies of gross sub-humans that can easily be slaughtered without misgiving by our heroes.
    My fantasy novel certainly will not have characters, in a moment of sober reflection, face the sea and sing. No one will do any singing in my fantasy novel. If they do, you can bet your shiney behind that I will not include the lyrics. If someone wants to sing they better just sing and get it over with. Like so : "Ranoth, heading back to his chambers after his appointment as Second Guard to the Queen, went by way of the armouries. Through the quiet turns of the stone corridors, he hummed to himself at a volume that was sure to disturb no one."
    I probably won't have any ships in my fantasy novel because I don't know anything about ships and I don't need anyone to hoist sails or stand on the prow as opposed to the non-prow.
    Anyway, it'll be a fun book to read once I get around to writing it. So far all I've got is what I don't want it to be.

Building Blocks

What makes a story ? This question has been raising itself every so often, butting into my consciousness. I am never particularly satisfied with any of my attempts at an answer. I know a story when I hear one or when I read one or when I see one. I don't even think about it. When I try to think one up, though, it seems to be only a part of a story, like a word is only part of a sentence. If someone asks me to tell them a story, I freeze, go all formal, worry about beginning middle and end. I forget that a story can really be anything. A word, a sentence or a paragraph.
    Maybe even just a letter.
    A moment is only part of a day but a story can be built around a moment. This is where maybe I get tripped up, the fractal nature of story.
    Every word in any text can be a portal that leads to some other world. Imagine is every word here was a link leading to another page. And so on. We'd never get to the end of those thousand and one nights. We'd evade a beheading with sheer distraction. We'd also wear ourselves out.
    Story is one of those things that the world is made of. Our identities are stories we tell ourselves, stories other people slap on us, stories we can't shake, stories that tie us down or even liberate us.
    We tell our mate about our day. We tell our friends about the guys at work. We tell strangers about our secret affairs. We tell ourselves that we are cute or dumb or fat or poor or lonely or happy. We often are set on loop, repeating the same old stories about ourselves, about our parents. We lock people in with words describing them. We can rewrite history literally by changing words, by switching meanings, by making the good guys bad, by turning villains into heroes.
    I've rediscovered mythology. I took a long detour away from conscious recognition of how it underwrites the world. I got caught up in matters at hand, so to speak, in politics, in popular opinion versus the lone voice in the wilderness. I took sides, rooted for the underdog, scowled at the bully with his status quo. It took me a while but I think I may have returned home and I think the path there is paved with myths. Old old stories, told in poetry, told of the gods and the worlds and the animals and the ancestors.
    What makes a story ? Better to ask what the world is made of. The world is made of stories.