BREEDING GROUND – The Weaver Witch

Breeding Ground is a series of posts where I share sources of inspiration for my fiction, including research or articles that inspired my tales.

This month, I’m sharing details about THE WEAVER WITCH, the flash fiction piece in Issue Two of Frightmarish Zine.

I keep a running list of story seeds on my laptop. Tiny little fragments that I think will one day inspire a story.

For THE WEAVER WITCH, though, I came to this story in a new way. Wondering how? If you guessed oracle cards, you’re right!

I’m currently working on a short story collection and since I love the imagery on my Memento Mori deck from Black & The Moon, I decided to draw a bunch of cards to inspire the rest of the stories in the collection. One of the stories I drew was the knitting needles card.

But how did that one card turn into THE WEAVER WITCH?

LOOKING FOR KEYS

The first thing I did was consult the little booklet that came with my oracle cards. These are the keywords for the knitting needle card:

the grandmothers, following tradition, family lineage, the red thread, intricate, practice, honing your skill.

Right away, a few threads (no pun intended!) stuck out to me as potential for my story – namely family lineage. And because I want to set all of the stories in my collection in the same world, my constant character, the cunning woman (known in Europe as a folk healer or one who practiced folk medicine, folk magic and divination), was an obvious character in this tale.

VERY SUPERSTITIOUS

Next, I dove into my various books on folklore, superstition and old wives’ tales, reading up on strange beliefs surrounding knitting, thread, knots, yarn and other related topics. That helped me to flesh out how thread or knitting would play a part in my story.

NEEDS & WANTS

Now that I had a bit of a plot idea, I needed to populate my world. And by looking at my characters – their wants and needs – and more importantly WHY they wanted or needed these things, I had a decent idea on how I wanted my story to play out.

A CHANGE WOULD DO YOU GOOD

I did end up changing the ending of my story a bit from my initial idea. In one of the the workshops I took, we were encouraged to go beyond those first ideas we come up with. That sometimes, they aren’t the most original or the can use something of a twist. And when my initial ending felt a bit cliche, I took what I had and twisted it. Hopefully, I’ve given readers what they want but in a way they don’t expect it.

SHORT & BITTERSWEET

It’s interesting that even though I find flash such a challenge, some of my favorite stories I’ve written are flash in length. I know some readers want a story they can sort of sink into, stretch out and get lost in the world. But there’s also something to be said for a story boiled down to its core, with all that concentrated goodness on full display.

READ THE WEAVER WITCH

You can read THE WEAVER WITCH now in Frightmarish Zine Issue Two. And if you want a hard copy, you can always upgrade your Patreon support level or purchase a single issue on my website.