I’ve decided I hate Fairy Story.
The back story is sound I think, but I hate everything else about it. I hate the characters, I hate the story – it’s too girly, antithetical to my style. I hate that I can’t make it work – I can’t make it plausible that fairies have been existing in our world with no one knowing it until 2008. I can’t make a main character that I like. I can’t think of supporting characters that I like. I can’t think of an ending, a beginning, or any conflict. I can’t even write the part where everything is revealed, because I don’t know who it’s being revealed to or why. Yesterday I didn’t even try writing it because everytime I looked at it, I just got depressed. Like Bartleby at the Dead Letter Office.
So I’m scrapping Fairy Story. Shelving it really. Maybe someday I’ll come back to it, if I can think of an angle. I guess this is why I don’t hear too many stories where fairies and unicorns are the main characters. They’re supporting roles (Peter Pan, Black Cauldron, Willow). But I’m just not in the place where I can make a perky, flighty story. I wouldn’t mind handing off this story to someone I think could do it justice, but I’m a loner in the writing community. I play by my own rules. I don’t play by anyone else’s rules, including my own.
From this, I’ve learned that starting with the message and trying to weave a story around it is very hard. I don’t know if that’s because of the angle that I chose or not. I don’t think it would work with ogres or squishy aliens. Then it would just become satirical. Hopefully, someday I can pick it back up again, when I’m a better writer.
So I’m moving on to the White Mage story. I hope this will fare better since I’ve got characters that have edges and conflict and interest. Plus I’ve got a wealth of background information to draw from. And I’ve got a clear place to start. These are all useful things in a story.
