forum Kinda boring??
Started by @calellory
tune

people_alt 3 followers

@calellory

I've got this kinda fairy tale story going but it feels like the plot just… It's predictable. Like Princess runs away from arranged marriage, gets cursed to never find her way home, meets a bandit who is also cursed (to have super long hair no matter what she does to it) and this blind girl who was cursed to see bits of the future and they band together to get the curses lifted. And they go through a bunch of witches who are like "fuck no none of my business" and eventually they get back to the one who cursed the bandit (they don't know that) and she initially doesn't want to but she agrees after some sweet talking from the Princess.

there's a couple side plots, one with the bandit and the Princess's sister who ran away to live in a tower and the other with the Princess's ex-fiance, his older brother, and the Princess's second oldest brother.

But I feel like the main plot is really predictable so like any tips???

@Masterkey

I think the character arcs will make all the difference. What kind of morals or lessons do you want to teach the characters and the readers throughout the story?

@Lupout

I think it sounds like my kind of book tbh. Maybe write some scenes you have planned out already and see if you can suss out what's missing from there. If you post snippets on here I will do my best to figure out what kind of a story you're going for see if I can help you out :)

@calellory

this is what I got so far,,, thanks for wanting to help

Once upon a time there was a country called Larevalise, and in it, things were as good as could be expected. Relations with the neighboring countries Senter, Idrid, and Alory were peaceful, and inside the inhabitants got along, on a large scale. On a small scale, there were plenty of arguments, but they were generally petty disputes over property or animosity between neighbors, not anything that would affect the national security. In fact, the most pressing issue the royal family had at the moment was the upcoming wedding of Princess Tatiana Therese Tabitha Talis Thea, who was the fifth born child, hence her five names. It was a Larevalisian tradition for a child of the king and queen to be given the same number of names as they had older siblings, plus one, all starting with the same letter. This proved to be a quite ridiculous custom when it came to the youngest children, but since the only people complaining had names like Oliver Oswald Oscar Octavius Odell Obadiah Owen Oriel Otto or Anastasia Aida Annalise Arianna Adelie Alexandra Adrienne, nobody gave them much mind. The thought behind it was that the short names made up for some of the responsibilities the eldest children would have to bear later in life. Also, there was less chance of the Crown heir in question ending up in a duel with someone who had mixed up their name. (That had been an issue with many younger siblings in years past, and even, in the case of the Mad King Ronaldo Ryan Reginald Reuben Richard Robert Rogers Randy Ryder Raymond Remington, all out war. Technically, as the eleventh child, he shouldn’t have even had to be king in the first place.) For everyday use, however, all of the royal children had nicknames. Even Isadore, the eldest of this generation, who didn’t really need a nickname, was shortened to Isa.

Her younger sister, Princess Tatiana Therese Tabitha Talis Thea (generally called Tessie) was set to marry the second son of the Senterian diplomat within the week. There was some worry that she would run off like her sister Goose, but her husband to be was generally likeable and only a year older than her. (Goose’s intended had been his older brother. He had been secretly relieved when she ran away, since it left him free to sneak off and become a tailor in a nearby town without disappointing anyone except his father.) His name was Fabian Aziso and if she had married him they probably would have been very happy together. Instead, the night after the engagement banquet, both the bride and groom to be were seen climbing down the castle walls with makeshift bedsheet ropes. Actually, they saw each other, but at that point in time, they had met exactly twice and didn’t recognize each other.

The other person who saw them saw them both, figured out exactly what was going on, and then realized that this was probably a bad time to try and steal anything from the royal treasury. So she pulled the hood of her cape low over her eyes, gathered up her hair off the ground, and ran off into the woods as fast as her legs would take her.

Fabian had a plan for when he reached the ground. He would run away to live with his disgraced brother in the town of Dellory, change his name to Tobias Cotton, and live out the rest of his days as a tailor. Tessie had no such plan. She hadn’t even been sure if she was going to go through with it until she was about halfway down the wall.

If Tessie (or Goose, for that matter) had gone to their parents and told them that she didn’t want to marry someone she had met twice, they would have broken off the engagement, and/or figured out a way for the intended couple to spend more time together before the wedding. Her older brother Bran had done that, and his engagement had been broken immediately, leaving him free to court whoever he wanted. Unfortunately, Tessie had been too young at the time to know anything about it, and her closest sister had gotten out of marriage by running away to live in a tower with her best friend to keep out anyone she didn’t want to see.

So, in the middle of the night, she tied her bedsheets together, packed some essentials, and climbed down the wall of the castle, and ran off into the darkness in the same direction as the hooded thief. She didn’t know about the hooded thief. If she did, she probably would have gone a different direction, but she didn’t, and so she followed almost the exact path straight as the hooded thief, but where the thief had swerved, Tessie forged ahead into a very unkempt garden. If she had known it was a garden, she would have stayed away, or tried to find some way through without stepping on anything important. Unfortunately for her, it just seemed like an overgrown clearing in the trees, and she was getting very tired.

She should have known better than to just lie down under a bush and go to sleep. And she did, when she was in a normal state of mind. But it was the middle of the night, she had just left everything she knew and had nowhere to go for the foreseeable future, so she gathered up a pile of leaves to use as a pillow, curled up under a bush, and fell asleep.

Four hours later, she was rudely awakened by someone or something poking her with a stick. She rolled over and wrapped her arms around her head. When the poking didn’t stop, she groaned and sat up, getting an unexpected faceful of leaves and a twig in the eye. She yelped.

“Just WHAT do you think you’re doing?” asked a raspy, unfamiliar voice. “You uprooted half of my spearmint and disturbed the roots of my butterleaf bush so much it probably won’t ever grow again!”

“I- I’m so sorry,” said Tessie desperately, “I didn’t mean to hurt anything.”

“Didn’t mean to and didn’t are two very different things.”

“I’m sorry! I just ran away from home and I didn’t have anywhere to go and your garden just looked like a clearing in the dark!”

“Ran away from home?” the voice changed, becoming softer and more pitying, and a rough, calloused hand extended under the bush to help her up. “You poor thing! Just imagine how your family feels!”

Tessie took the hand and crawled shamefacedly out from under the bush. “I know. My sister did the same thing a few years ago.”

“Well, we’ll just have to put this right, now won’t we?” said the voice, and Tessie got to her feet, but before she could get a look at the person it belonged to, it turned harsh and sinister and something hard and knobbly stuck her in the back. “Get out of here, and may you never find your way home.”

Tessie stumbled forward and then broke into a run in the direction she thought she had come from, still feeling the knobbly thing at her back, even though she must have been out of reach of it by then. The person’s words hung in her head. “May you never find your way home.” They felt like a curse, and the feeling wasn’t helped when she finally stopped to sit down and catch her breath. It seemed like she had been going for longer than she had the night before, but she started out again at a brisk walk and kept on for several hours, pausing now and again to rest, but not fully stopping until she accidentally walked into a spot where someone was obviously camping. There was a tent set up and a fire going with what looked like a turkey set up roasting on a spit, but it looked empty.

Just to be safe, she raised her hands above her head and shouted that she was sorry for intruding, she just needed directions, and please don’t curse her again.

An extremely confused and mildly irritated little face poked out of the tent flap.

“What in the name of all the saints above are you doing?”

Tessie squeaked. “I’m sorry!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

@Lupout

Firstly, I didn't at all find this beginning boring. I really like the omnipotent narration style, and for such a short block of text it was upbeat and action packed. High fantasy can sometimes sound dry, but this really didn't. (The name thing was hilarious). I could see how, when you covered so much in that section you might run out of plot points, for instance, I think the narration should slow down once she goes to sleep. Everything before was an intro/recap, now you are in the present story so the encounters plot points that happen, the places Tessie goes, and the people she meets shouldn't be rushed over. Her encounter barely mentions how she feels in the situation, and if it did we could begin to derive more of Tessie's character. I think you have a set up for a great story, and while the plot isn't SUPER original, it is pretty heckin' good, and if you continue to narrate that well and develop the personalities and relationships of your characters I think you absolutely have the groundwork for a really funny and interesting book. Just keep writing my friend :)