thats a great idea aljy!

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That which does not feel pain is dead.

I want to bump this thread. Does anyone have any stories they're brainstorming right now that they want some input on? Any crazy ideas you're not sure will pan out? Need that last push to get you started actually writing?

Come one, come all, and all that jazz. :D

Ok, I need some advice.

I'm currently working on a re-telling of the "Beauty and the Beast" story, and I'm running into a problem. Basically, my protagonist's parents are believed to have unleashed this terrible curse on a kingdom, and so as a result everything is dark, dim, and rather gothic or depressing-looking. The protagonist is meeting with the king, and he wants to kill her for what her parents did... after he sends her on a suicide mission to fetch him an important trinket. I know she's going to survive the mission, and this will kick-start the romantic relationship between the king's son and the protagonist.

But, here's my problem: I want to nurture the relationship between the "beauty" and the "beast" for a little while i.e. more than a week or however long it takes them to travel. So obviously the king isn't going to kill her immediately, but what is he going to do with her? What is going to keep the protagonist a prisoner in the prince's estate for a little while while the romance buds? I know I want her to return home for a brief visit and then return back to being a prisoner before the grand finale, but I'm not sure of the king's reasoning or his exact plans.

Any suggestions?





A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

The first thing that came to mind was that the king wants to make an example of her, and therefore keeps her prisoner until some event/festival/gatherig of people that's coming up.

And for getting home again, maybe the king's at least mildly impressed that she survived the first suicide mission, and sends her on another one, and it happens to pass near her home so she sneaks off to visit briefly?


That's the only suggestion I've got at this time of the morning.

Maybe the prince asks his father to keep her alive, purely because she's pretty and he's shallow (assuming you're following the general pattern re: their "defining" characteristics), and it's only later the prince starts to actually care about her?

Also, I just read an excellent deconstruction of this a little while back, I'll link it after work. It might inspire some ideas. :)



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 03/21/12 08:50PM by vareth in silico.

I don't think the example at the festival/gathering would work because of this world's demographics. The overwhelming majority of the population has been turned into demonic creatures who don't even realize that they're human, and any survivors are hiding in isolated towns and not bothering to venture out or acknowledge the king's authority.

As for the girl's trip home, she has to cross over into another world, and she can only do it at a specific location (near the prince's estate though right now she's in a city about a week away) and with a specific trinket of her mother's (which I'm planning to have the prince return to her at some point).

And as for the romance, it's not going to be based on physical, shallow attraction. The prince hates the protagonist and wishes she was dead. Even though she's the only person in this world with color (everyone else looks dull and bland because of the curse), she's not very attractive because her illness has made her skinny, pale, and tired-looking. And "beast" is far from attractive too, both in personality and physical appearance; and I'm not planning on making him drop-dead gorgeous after the Curse is removed either.





A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

Well, here is the link I had to the deconstruction of the original fairy tale. The author of the deconstruction also did her own rewrite of the fairy tale, but this is just an extra section in that book, not a part of it. Might give you some ideas. :)

Sorry my suggestion didn't help. Given the additional info you've posted, I'm curious as to why you're treating this like a rewrite...does it have a connection to the original story? Because from what you've described it seems like something wholly separate. Which is also fine, just, it might help us give better suggestions if we know whether your story has any similarities with prior tellings of Beauty and the Beast, and what those are, and what aspects you're playing with/focusing on.

It more or less started off as a rewrite but it (like most of my rewrites do) has deviated from the source material over time. The only connections between my version and the original are: girl stumbles into a castle where everyone's cursed, the prince has been cursed and so looks like a monster, the curse can only be removed by love's true kiss (though it's a little more complicated than that), and the girl gets to return home for a brief period of time.




A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

Ok, here's a general writing question for you writing peeps: how do you keep your plot lines straight with few deviations? Lately I've been noticing a problem in my story-writing: that my plots tend to be all over the place with nothing holding them down and that they don't really have a specific focus. How do you guys keep your plots focused without them flying all over the place?





A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

I don't.



But on a more explanatory note, that just tends to be the type of writer I am. I tend to hate writing outlines ahead of time, and if I do, the only ones that I can work well with are very general.

As in, the outline I had going into my last NaNo was something along the lines of:
-Kathryn gets recruited
-Basic training
(Meet main male somewhere in those first two points)
-Mutation
-Learning, missions, etc.
-Battle (death explosion, mayhem)

I didn't know until over half way through that I was going to be killing one of my main characters, and I didn't realize until like 10K from the end that I would actually be bringing back one of the main characters I thought I killed near the beginning. I didn't know there would be little children that could predict the future, I didn't know that Kathryn would end up pregnant by the end of the book. But it happened, and I think it worked.

For me, those few points were enough to keep my moving in more or less the right direction, and somehow my brain coalesces everything else that pops up into a story that actually works. Sure, after my first draft there's a few things that need to be trimmed or reworked because they don't quite fit. I just somehow manage to keep my general goals in mind and somehow write a story. And that works for me.

Sorry if that wasn't particularly helpful.