introducing you to the madness

Word Count: 30,586

Page Count: 56

Would you like to know what I’m actually writing about? I suppose I can wonder the same thing! Today is day twenty of the NaNoWriMo challenge, and I thought today’s better than never to tell you about the story that’s been on my mind all month.

I am writing a modernized fairytale. Before you roll your eyes at such a cliché move to make, I’m sure you haven’t actually heard of this fairytale: "The Wild Swans."

Thanks to my Danish heritage, I have an obsession for anything Danish—H.C. Andersen being top of my list. He’s the one who wrote “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” and “The Snow Queen.” Did you actually know that Disney’s new movie Frozen is based off of that story? You better read up before you go see it.

But back to this NaNo nonsense. I really liked this story, but like many other fairytales, I thought a lot of crucial details were missing. Here’s an excerpt of my book where my main character, Lotte, summarizes the story for you:

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little princess and she had seven—or was it eleven?—older brothers. Her mother of course died, and so she got a new one, an evil stepmother that didn’t like her brood of stepchildren. So much in fact, she turned the strapping young lads into swans and turned the little princess out—which sounds nice compared to almost killing her in a bathtub.

The little beautiful princess sure was sad, and all she wanted to do was save her older brothers. In a few dreams, she found out that in order to save her band of brothers, she had to sew them shirts out of the prickliest nettles growing in the woods and she couldn’t talk. How she got the dreams, I have no idea, but she of course went right to work on a project that took her years on years to accomplish.

And what happens to this quiet little teenager in the woods? Why, the king happens to ride by, and thinks she’s so beautiful, that he whisks her away to his handsome castle and she becomes his bride. Some first date, huh?

Well to make a quaint story short, the archbishop thinks she’s a witch, so she is sentenced to burn at the stake—and she obviously can’t vouch for herself; one word spoken would kill her swan brothers. Just in time before the flames rise up, a bunch of swans swoop down (the swans obviously the princes in disguise) and the little princess throws the shirts up at them, and they try the prickly shirts on for size and poof! they become princes again and the curse is broken! The princess is innocent and she gets to still be queen. The end."

For the non-snarky version of the story, click here. 

So how do I possibly write a modernized fairytale about a princess who sews little nettle shirts for her swan brothers? With lots and lots of imagination, no doubt.

Like my main character, Lotte, when I read this story, I wanted to know all the in-between details. Like, how do you fall in love with someone who can’t talk? And I mean, did the princess know how to write or anything? How was the king able to love a person he met in the forest without even being able to ask her name?

I decided to put those details in myself through a modern retelling of this story. Liselotte (Lotte) Nielsen starts out as a high school senior and she gets out of a complicated relationship with Chris, her ex. She breaks up with him because she’s tired of feeling like he’s being overly manipulative and condescending. He’s obviously not happy with that, but Lotte doesn’t expect that he would curse her for it.

The curse goes something like this: if she says a word, laughs, or even scoffs, her brothers grow feathers. And it hurts. She’s worried that if she talks too much something very weird will happen to them, so she stops talking so she doesn’t cause harm or discomfort for her five (yes count ‘em) brothers.

Throughout the book, she has to come to terms with the fact that Chris somehow has magic and she pretends that she lost her voice from an accident instead of telling people what really happened.

But she’s not about to spend the rest of her life writing little messages on her whiteboard. Her brothers help her figure out how to free them of the curse for good and in the meantime, Lotte goes off to college and tries to live without her voice. She takes it a step further and learns sign language so she can at least express herself somehow. During that time of learning ASL, she meets Dan* who’s in her class . . . and you’ll just have to find out the rest of it, of course!

I’ve had this idea for a couple of years now and it’s exciting to finally put it all down. Hopefully it fills 50,000 words! Anyway, have a great week and read up on some great fairytales.

 

*I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I like that name.