Tag: Folktales

Work In Progress!

Work In Progress

My WIP saw actual progress over the last two days. It’s Spring Break here for the kids and they were already crying they were bored by lunchtime yesterday. Today, I further taxed their powers of self-entertainment by taking them with me to get the tires on the van looked at. The guy told me, “I don’t usually say this to customers, but that’s a really dangerous tire to be driving on. Good thing you came in when you did.” Yeah, duly chastised and a thousand bucks poorer thanks to extended warranties, new shocks & struts and there better be some gold plating under there too! Noted. I’ll be back every 3-5 months to get them rotated and aligned now. Aye-aye.

Anyway, I managed to fill out my outline spreadsheet based on Dunne’s Emotional Structure and Vogler’s take on the Hero’s Journey, as well as a few other things I’ve tossed in by now. I finished Act I and Act II’s outline yesterday and finished up Act III today at the tire place. If they’d had a decent table to work on and I hadn’t had the kids, I might have been REALLY productive during the three hours we were there.

I also worked a bit brainstorming on names for characters and the like that I’ll need before I can really sit down and write this thing, but I’m so close that I’m starting to feel annoyed when I can’t take a chunk of time and devote to it and get it out of my system. This is a good thing. There’s a sense of urgency that I need to work on this and get the story told. I’d missed that feeling lately.

All I have to do now is strap myself into my chair and get writing! I’m sure I’ll become a regular feature in the RD chat room again. (Sorry Bria, no nifty anaolgies today. I’m too braindead from smelling the rubber in the showroom/waiting room and a FOXNEWS overload.)

Puzzling It Out

So, I’ve been fiddling with a new idea to go with this game-like approach I’ve been thinking about (I haven’t forgotten, Jodi!) while being offline most of last week to spend time with my mom, her friend, and the kids who were out of school.

I found a great resource Folktexts where they have collected a ton of Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. I spent a lot of time looking at folktales Wikipedia as well. The English Wiz site also has a very cool section on The Etymology of First Names.

So… I decided I wanted to try to write something around “The Flower Queen’s Daughter”. I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but it’ll be an interesting excercise. DH said it sounded long, but that was probably just my mangling of telling him too many details along the way.

So, yesterday while the kids were in martial arts class, I sat down with my clipboard and started planning. I’ve gone over the story several times to get a feel for what all needs to be included, but beyond the plot sequence, I hadn’t done much else with it yet.

If I was truly going to turn this into a section for a game, I’d need to go into much more detail in mapping out where all the different settings were located and deciding what connected them together that could be interesting or at the least useful. Instead, I came up with 8 locations that can be used and reused during the story.

The Flower Queen’s House
The Hero’s House (more likely his father’s)
The Ditch along the Road
The Road where he’s searching (generalized location here)
The Dragon’s House
Salon/Receiving room
Ball Room
Stables
Meadow
Garden

The characters required seems a large and unwieldy list just now. And they’re not going to be literal representations of how they’re referred to in the book. I was thinking of having the animals/flowers/etc represented in their coats of arms/crests and let it be more metaphorical.

Hero – Alexander
Heroine – Anthea
The Flower Queen/Gyspy — Flora, I’m conflating these two characters
The Dragon Mother — Rosalind
King of Eagles — Arnold
King of Foxes — Todd
King of Fishes — Dylan, Marvin, Morgan, or Meredith
The Dragon’s brothers —
The Dragon — Drake
Hero’s Father —

There are also some items that play roles in the story that will need to be mentioned: a bell, a mare and her foal, and three cloaks (copper, silver, and golden).

I’ve already worked out which characters/items/locations are needed for which of the 16 plot points I pulled directly from the synopsis so far. My next plan is to take those note cards and write Dunne’s Story points on the reverse. I think I’ll also need a few more scenes so that this isn’t completely in the hero’s POV. The heroine needs some reason why she’s just going to waltz off with a man she barely knows instead of staying in what appears to be a cushy place.

So my next step is to lay out the plot points on my handy plot diagram and see where they fall and where I still need answers and ideas.