Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Daily Word Count Check In

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Word Count: 583

Phrase: "Erik, that doesn't matter. You should not have taken it. You could have fallen and hurt yourself, or Victor could have woken up and seen you. They'll know what happened, Erik," Arlie said as she sat down on his bed next to him.

2 comments:

Raspberry said...

Ok, so do we have a summary that we can go off of? Just so we have an idea what kind of genre/etc?
Sorry, I'm just slow that way.
:)

Kellie said...

I hadn't included a summary or anything like that. I was debating it and just hadn't gotten around to making a decision on it. A little writing exercise I did the other day was to write the back of the book blurb. This is what I came up with, but I don't know how much of it will be accurate by the time I'm finished. I really need to do an outline.

"Arlie doesn’t love the prince, but she does love her country. She wants what is best for it, even if it means marrying someone she doesn’t love. Then she meets Josephine, one of the four other hopefuls that have come to the castle in an attempt to be chosen as the prince’s bride and future queen. Josephine doesn’t know a lot about politics and barely passes the first princess test. When Arlie and Josephine become friends, Arlie learns Josephine knows the prince from boarding school and loves him. Arlie realizes even though Josephine doesn’t already know the duties of a princess or how a country works, she is a fast learner. Arlie is determined to help Josephine to the throne, but to succeed she has to pass the King’s princess tests and stay in the running for the princess-ship while promoting Josephine at the same time. What will happen when she inadvertently discovers plans that will keep the prince from marrying and taking the throne, allowing himself full control over the kingdom?"

Ok, so looking back at this, there is a lot that has actually changed already. The prince and Josephine don't meet at school, she, along with the four other girls (not Arlie), were hand-picked by the king.

The problem I'm facing is that the main story is centered around the fairytale The Princess and the Pea while the rest of the story is grounded in actual Swedish history and my imagination. The story is Swedish (not Danish, like many think) and King Charles did actually hand pick four young women to compete against each other for the title of princess.

I'm using a lot of factual information and grinding together other facts into nonfiction to make the story fit together better. I'm not concerned with it fitting history, because obviously, it won't fit perfectly. I'm just using really cool coincidences in the story. It started when I was looking up Swedish names online and saw what King Charles had done with the four girls, I thought it was perfect.

My main character, Arlie, will either be thrown in there with the four girls as another option for the prince, or will be in the castle for another reason, not sure yet, but it has something to do with her trying to get the oxen back.

There are still a lot of things to work out, but I'm having fun discovering the story.

Hope that helps!