{"id":29713,"date":"2015-07-30T06:30:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T18:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=29713"},"modified":"2015-07-28T20:34:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T08:34:41","slug":"writing-epic-heroines-the-princess-others-in-thornspell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/07\/30\/writing-epic-heroines-the-princess-others-in-thornspell\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Epic Heroines: The Princess & Others In “Thornspell”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thornspell<\/a>Last week I discussed Writing Epic Heroines<\/a>, mainly in the context of the Wall Of Night<\/a> series.<\/p>\n

But Thornspell<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, as a fairytale retelling, presented a unique challenge in terms of writing heroines.<\/p>\n

The fairytale, you see, is Sleeping Beauty, the retelling told from the point of view of the prince who breaks the spell—and I quickly realized that 21st<\/sup> century readers were just not going to \u201cbuy\u201d the traditional ending.<\/p>\n

You know the one: where the prince wakes the princess with the magical kiss, they fall instantly in love and live happily ever after. (And then there is the Grimm version, but Thornspell<\/em> is Junior fiction\u2026)<\/p>\n

At any rate, I realized that I was going to have to both generate other heroines within the story—and also find a way to focus on the princess a lot earlier in the book. Which I did …<\/p>\n

The other aspect of writing heroines in Thornspell<\/em><\/strong> arose from the fact that it’s a retelling from the point of view of the prince. Naturally, this means he has to be the main character. And since he is a boy growing up in the late-medieval era of this world, a number of the influential characters around him are also men, most notably his master-at-arms, the enigmatic Balisan.<\/p>\n

The arch-nemesis of the tale is the wicked fae, who although undoubtedly epic is also a villainess, the Margravine zu<\/em> Malvolin<\/a>. So I felt it was important to have some equally strong but positive female characters into the story—an impetus that dovetailed with the need to have a cast of heroines other<\/em> than the sleeping princess.<\/p>\n

One obvious choice was the good fairy whose magic converted the original death spell into the one hundred years’ sleep: Syrica, in this book. She was joined by Auld Hazel, the witch of the wood, and two serving girls: a mute called Rue who becomes one of the prince’s more unexpected allies, and a childhood companion, Annie. And then, of course, there’s the sleeping princess who has to be present, rather than absent, in the story …<\/p>\n

As I wrote last week<\/a>, “<\/em>listening to the story and being open to possibility are always key to developing characters.” <\/em>In developing Thornspell<\/em><\/strong>, the process of listening involved being open to the needs of the story as it evolved, while being guided by the classic story without rigidly adhering to its form–which allowed both the cast of heroines, but also other characters such as Balisan, to evolve and step forward naturally, taking their place on the page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I discussed Writing Epic Heroines, mainly in the context of the Wall Of Night series. But Thornspell, as a fairytale retelling, presented a unique challenge in terms of writing heroines. The fairytale, you see, is Sleeping Beauty, the retelling told from the point of view of the prince who breaks the spell—and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29713"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29726,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29713\/revisions\/29726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}