ah brothers

[marycatelli]

Trebling can be fun when retelling fairy tales. You have the two older brothers who flub it. And then the third who succeeds.

Except that in a novelistic treatment, it helps to vary the failure a little to keep them awake.

So I have two different ways for the older brothers to fail. Except that I then have to harmonize it with how they acted earlier. And that's going to take some development.

Hmm. Maybe one can earlier make a claim it's that his brother has no sense of humor, and the youngest brother can note that the other is civil until thwarted.  It might work.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I like the way Diana Wynne Jones varied the "three siblings" trope in Howl's Moving Castle:

In the land of Ingary ... it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortune.

Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success.

[marycatelli]

Comedy can do rather more, at the price of having to be funny.