Help me make up my mind! My story is stuck!

[AphroditeMSC]

Okay guys, let me give you a bit of backround on my story.

Imagine a large, square maze. This is the city. There are four layers - from the slums just inside the first walls, to the royal palace nestled in the very heart of it. The city is safe, if not exactly thriving. Outside the city walls a person can survive, but probably not for long. There are "things" out there, in the dark, in the shadows...

Mayla is a slum girl who should have been a wealthy merchant's daughter instead. Her father lost the business and everything through bandits etc.
Her father, for an as yet unknown reason has killed the king (he did get enough money to look after Mayla for many years though, but that's not the only reason). Nobody knows this. Not even Mayla. On the morning the king is found dead, Mayla finds her father dead too, apparently of natural causes.

Five years later and Mayla is struggling to find a niche she fits into. She's tried all sorts of jobs from serving girl to seamstress and none of them are working out. Then she's sent to the house of a Lord and Lady who have commissioned several garments. The Lady wants a fitting, etc.

This is where I'm getting stuck on repeat. There are three ways my story can travel from here. And they all evolve from the near-rape of poor Mayla.

She's returning from the Lady's home when someone (toying with the idea of a cruel noble, probably from the same Lady's home) tries to rape her. In sheer terror for her life she unleashes a power she never knew she had, and kills the noble.

Does she flee into the wilderness beyond the city walls?
I'm thinking of scary moments, confronting the "things" finding new villages, travelling, finally meeting someone who can teach her to control her power.

Does she get found out and thrown in a dungeon, to be rescued by someone who knows what she is?
I'm thinking a death sentence, a visit from the king's son and heir, who she immediately feels an overwhelming attraction for, finding out the king plans to use her power for his own means, a dramatic rescue from who she fears are going to kill her, or worse, ecoming a student in magic.

Does she return home, frightened and freaked out, hoping she doesn't get caught?
I imagine days of living on the edge, wondering if every knock on her door is the king's men to arrest her, finding out that strange people are overly interested in the way the noble was killed, realising these people are looking for her, and they are no king's men.

So.... help me out?

 

[2ndchance]

I'd go for fleeing, new adventure, new villages, opens up all sorts of opportunities...

Maybe she could return with a new army and give the poor a chance. Bit red flag, he he.

Sounds good though, and it ain't my genre, I'm into fantasy, girly stuff... No, before anyways suggets pink underwear!!!! (he-he, well not on a day with a Y in it, and that's not Y NOT?)

Steve

 

[BookStop]

Oh, I like the 3rd possibility...living on the edge of reason, the stress would be horrible! And who are the men? Are they evil? Are they trying to help her, assuming they can find her? You could easily combine 3rd choice with one of theo ther two after a few days of fearful hiding - muwaa-ha-ha

 

[Pyan]

Third one, definitely - running away and finding someone who can teach her is a bit hackneyed, and meeting the heir and falling for him is rather Mills and Boon, to say the least...

 

[The Judge]

Doesn't it depend on her character? Is she the type of person to run away without thinking of the dangers which might be out there? Or is she the type to run home and cower beneath the bed? Has she friends whom she doesn't want to leave? A pet canary she can't abandon? Having taken her through the agony of her father's death and five years of struggling to make a living, you must have an inkling of what she would do, as opposed to what you would like her to do for the benefit of the story.

If you're undecided about her, then I'd also suggest you go for the third option, on the basis you can move from there to one of the other two after a few days/week/months of tension - which itself might give you a better idea of her inner resources and how she should react.

My problem with the second option as it stands -- apart from it being a trifle cliched that she falls for the King's son! -- is that she is too passive. Things happen to her. If she is your heroine, she has to make decisions, even if those decisions are faulty ones, from which later difficulties arise. In this respect options 1 and 3 are far better -- though as I say, you could move from 3 to 2, since her arrest would then have arisen because she didn't flee the city when she had the chance.

 

[Interference]

The wilderness, definitely. Allows you to explore a few other ideas about the societies outside the central society and maybe even examine the validity of a nobility and royal ascendancies.

I wrote a Judge Dredd story set in the badlands outside Mega City One and had a whale of a time introducing murder mysteries, vampires, and anything else my imagination could throw at him. Don't let this next bit put you off, though: The story didn't get published

 

[Oxman]

Option 3 then Option 1!

The tension of hiding at home could really be cranked up - then when these men come looking in every home, she has to make a decision and flee.

As pyan says though, I'd not be too keen on her meeting a cliched "mentor" figure. Let her discover her powers herself and do something about trying to control them (this affects the "too passive" comment as well!).

Finally, I don't know how important to the story your "shadowy things" are outside the city, but what if these things didn't exist and the purpose of their invention was to keep people - certainly from the slums - in the city? That way, there could be a whole, sprawling world out there that nobody but the highest tier of city folk know about!

 

[Interference]

The tension of hiding at home could really be cranked up - then when these men come looking in every home, she has to make a decision and flee.

Brilliant. And she could run because it is to protect the people she's hiding with, maybe there's a "If you're found to be harbouring her, your entire family will be put to death" edict.

On the mentoring, I agree she might be more powerful if she discovers her powers and controls them herself. Then there'd always be the wuestion of exactly how powerful is she. I had a flash of maybe, after a battle, being poisoned in the battle and being delirious while the poison works through her body and in her delirium she finds some of the answers to how to control her power. It would be a good jumping off point for her to discover her true nature. Maybe the mentor should be a guru, more than anything else. After all, why would anyone know how to teach hr to control her power? A guru might teach her to control herself.

 

[dustinzgirl]

What would you do if you were her?

 

[Interference]

Scream and hope a man would come and help me. Sorry, that's probably only me

 

[chrispenycate]

If it's the girl I just did the commas for, she would definitely run home to the supposed 'safe' territory. However, in five years people can change, particularly five years round then.

I'm going to make what might seem a very silly suggestion – and if it does, please ignore it. Get to know your character by writing some of the miserable incidents in those five years. This won't be her first contact with sexual assault, not in a society like that, so get into her head when she is talking to someone else it has happened to (I know she's pretty antisocial, but she can't be totally isolated without being autistic; a city is too small for hermits). When you've written enough that you've learnt what she'll think, feel, do, write the important scene, and find out what she does. You might discover she finds a fourth option that you hadn't even considered; my characters take a sadistic pleasure in doing that to me. When she becomes real enough that you can concentrate on the writing because the characterisation's taking care of itself, you won't have to ask what she should do; she'll decide, and probably, in a violent situation such as you've described, straight away, with no hesitation, and you'll be left trying to cach up with the text.

 

[dustinzgirl]

Scream and hope a woman would come and help me. Sorry, that's probably only me

Fixed!

 

[AphroditeMSC]

All brilliant suggestions. Thank you guys. I believe I will take Crispen's advice and explore those five years of existing, if not living, in these awful slums. Even if I don't write it all down, I'll have it in my head; it's a vault!

Maybe she'll just go flip-flop-stone-cold-mad and kill the entire city. A lot of repression will do that to a gal lol

 

[Interference]

Fixed!

Sorry for the hi-jack, but I had to LOL this.

Thanks

 

[Toby Frost]

For one thing, I agree that the eventual decision your character makes has to come from her, which means as Chris suggests that it ought to be a logical extrapolation of her backstory and personality. The decision is ultimately yours and we can only suggest, but I think it's got to make sense given the person she is and has been.

Personally I rather like the idea of her starting a resistance. There's a lot that could be done here beyond making rallying speeches: it's an unusual role for a woman, and she could be seen by people as a warlord, prophet, philosopher or any other selection of roles. I'd also be inclined to have her accused of theft rather than nearly raped: it's easier to write and, whilst perhaps slightly more original, is the sort of thing that could very easily happen to a servant.

However, as The Judge says, I would be wary of making her too passive and heaping too many troubles on her. Perhaps I am an unusually callous reader (!) but I find that if a character spends too long as whipping-boy without any progression of story and ideas I lose interest quite fast.

 

[Window Bar]

All three choices are good. Just remember the tension: Ramp it up, up, up.

 

[poisonoustea]

Uuuuu dark wilderness, horrible things lurking! I'd go with that!

The King's men, or whoever is set on finding the girl, might have to face their own challenge by venturing outside the city; that would make for a good chase.

And you can always return to the city later in the novel.

 

[AphroditeMSC]

How about all three? I've been thinking...

What if she woke up at home (with a blank spot where her memory of what happened should be), and something belonging to the man in her possession, only to find out through the grapevine the next day of the man's murder. I can see her waiting nervously to see if anyone would connect her to it, when she finds out these people are looking for her, forcing her to flee...but...a gal can't flee with just the clothes on her back, can she? She has to have food, bedding, provisions for the wilderness beyond. So she sets about trying to gather money together. I'm thinking she either has a gold dagger from the would-be rapist, or she tries to steal something, gets caught, thrown in prison, with a death-sentence on her head for the murder (if found out), or a mutilation (amputation of her hand, for instance?) for stealing. Waking in the dead of night in her pitch dark cell, she hears the sound of a struggle. Her cell opens - it's one of the men who has been searching for her - once again, in fear for her life.....she wakes up at dawn beyond the city walls, on the outskirts of a dead forest, her only companion a vulture circling over head.
She can't go back now. Both the garrison and those strange men will be tearing the city apart searching for her. Her only hope is to lose herself in the wilderness, and hope she survives the journey to the next city, where she knows her father's sister still lives...

 

[Interference]

Taking her back to the prison seems to dampen the rhythm a little, whereas if she is stealing and caught and escapes or is rescued there and then, it would put her on the run straight away and keep the beat of the action racing.

Just a thought, otherwise it reads very, very well for me.

 

[J Riff]

Go to the wilderness and befriend a large number of magical wolves. Return to the city and pillage all and sundry. Set Mayla up as the Queen of the city. Then write a huge trilogy about her slow descent into blahblah...all ending happily when she kisses one of the magic wolves and he turns into a Prince, who had been changed into a wolf by an evil sorcerer.

Or not. )