Meredith Mansfield is commandeering my blog today to shout out about her fun new book, The Bard's Gift.
And hop down to the bottom of the post to enter to win cool stuff!
And hop down to the bottom of the post to enter to win cool stuff!
Where do story ideas come from?
Many of the seeds of my stories go so far back that I can't put a finger on just
how they started. THE BARD'S GIFT is not one of those stories. I can trace its
development very clearly. Here's how it happened.
Back in February of 2010, a
writing challenge was issued on one of the writers' forums to which I belong
(Hatrack River Writers' Workshop). This isn't uncommon. We have several
challenges a year. I've only entered a few because they're almost all for short
fiction--often very short--and, well, I don't write short well. The last thing
I started that was intended to be a short story or maybe a novella is now
almost 90,000 words long. However, if an idea comes to me, I will give one of
these challenges a try, mostly just to stretch myself.
Some of these challenges have a
trigger or writing prompt. The trigger for this one was "Slave to the
flame" and I came up with a story about the first dragon to learn to
breathe fire, initially titled "First Flame." It was written as a
fable.
My story didn't do very well in the challenge,
partly because I killed off the main character (a dragon). There was nothing
else I could do in the word-count allowed for the challenge (3,000 words). The
voters also didn't think he was really a slave to the flame.
Freed from the constraints of the challenge, I
added some more to the ending which allowed the main character to survive,
although badly wounded. But, it was still a fable. So, I created a framing
story, about a girl with the gift of telling the exactly right story at the
exactly right time. I put her in a desperate situation and let her tell the fable.
This version was 5,000 words long, 4,600 of which was the fable.
But, it left me with a lot of
questions. How had the girl come by this ability? How had they gotten into this
desperate situation? And, of course, what would happen next?
Some of the things in that
framing story made me think it was meant to be in a Norse setting, but not in
the Norse homeland. So, I did some research and eventually, in 2012, I wrote it
as a young adult novel. That original story is still there. It makes up Chapter
36. Here's a taste:
Excerpt:
Astrid drew a deep breath.
"Some dragons can breathe fire. Did you know that? They couldn't always
breathe fire, though. And while some dragons, like Fafnir, are known to be
smart, they weren't at one time.
"It all goes back to the
time of Wyreth the Wise. Now Wyreth was small for a dragon. He could do well
enough on his own, but he only survived the dragons' mating season because he
was quick and because he was smarter than the other dragons. And maybe because
he was stubborn, too.
"When there were many
dragons together he was always last for everything. Dragon society is built
entirely on who can bully everybody else. If you're bigger or stronger than the
others, you eat first, you get the best and sunniest sleeping spots, and, if
you're a male, you get most of the females come mating season." She stole
a quick look at Torolf under her lashes, here. "Wyreth was the smallest
dragon. So he always ate last, had the worst and coldest sleeping spot, and
none of the females even looked at him."
"Whenever Wyreth killed a
deer or a pig--cattle were entirely too big for him--one of the other dragons
swooped in and stole it from him. The worst offender was Zilthss, Wyreth's egg
brother and the bane of his existence. Zilthss was big and strong, more than
strong enough to kill his own prey, but he preferred stealing Wyreth's whenever
he could.
Because he was big and well-fed,
Zilthss slept in one of the best spots and his scales were a beautiful
burnished copper. All the females turned their heads when Zilthss flew by, even
out of mating season. Wyreth's scales were an unremarkable dull metallic
red."
Several of the children stole a
glance at the shiny red scales behind Astrid.
"Because he was quick and
smart, Wyreth usually dragged his kill into the dense brush, where the other
dragons wouldn't easily fit and gulped down as much as he could before they
powered their way through to steal his meat. Bolting his food like that gave
Wyreth indigestion, but it was better than starving.
"Now, at the time of this
story, Wyreth had had a particularly bad week. Mating season was about to begin
and the male dragons were more than usually belligerent. Zilthss had trailed
Wyreth around like a hound on a scent and stolen everything he killed--even the
pitiful little rabbit--before Wyreth could get so much as a bite.
"After losing the rabbit,
Wyreth flapped off feeling sorry for himself. He had learned long ago that if
he flew up the steep slopes of the cone-shaped mountain, the others wouldn't
follow him. There was nothing of interest there, certainly no game to hunt.
These dragons were creatures of
mountain forests and no trees grew on the glassy slopes of that mountain, but
at the top there was a round, rocky valley where the stones themselves were
warm, even at night. Since Wyreth couldn't get any of the warm, sunny sleeping
spots in the rookery, he'd taken to coming up here. The sun was strong, but the
heat from the ground was stronger still and comforting.
"That is, it was usually
comforting, but not today, because Wyreth's stomach was so empty. Even the warm
rocks and the sun on his spread-out wings couldn't ease Wyreth to sleep when
his stomach growled so loudly. In desperation, Wyreth chewed on the yellow
rocks. The yellow ones were much softer than the shiny black ones; a dragon
could break his teeth on those. Some pieces of the yellow rock were small
enough to swallow. Not exactly nourishing, but at least it filled up that
hollow feeling inside for a while, though Wyreth suspected that they would be
the very devil to pass. Well, that was tomorrow's problem. Wyreth stretched
himself out on the heated rocks and slept.
"He woke with a mighty
belch. That wasn't unusual for Wyreth. What was unusual was the gout of blue
flame that leapt from his mouth along with the burp. Wyreth back-winged in
surprise."
Several of the older boys
laughed at this. The younger ones giggled uncertainly. The oldest boy essayed a
burp of his own and that sent the little ones into gales of laughter. Astrid
glanced up from the children. Several of the men had looked over at the sound
of laughter. Torolf was watching her. Astrid smiled and went on with her story.
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