ah, inspiration
Jun. 25th, 2014 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatellithe real delights of inspiration are the half-ideas. The ones that even on the face of it aren't going to make a full story.
Take, for instance, that which I have stumbled on in my recent forays into fairy tales. One, which is not going to fit in my current work in progress is The King of the Golden Mountain -- which you may want to read since the important point is the ending -- because it starts out with a boy escaping the Devil as a girl does in "The Girl Without Hands" and then rescuing the heroine a la "The Raven" -- the Brothers Grimm version -- or "The Blue Mountains." But he arrives at the end to find the bride marrying again, and his reaction? Well, since he has a magic sword, he orders it to cut everyone else's head off, and so he's all alone and King of the Golden Mountain. (Depends on exact translation. Others say, "he alone was master," but then since he just cut everyone else's head off.)
And that would be a good backstory for a villain in a fairy-tale world. But the rest of the tale? Like, who's going up against the king? Or what to get from him? Muse is less interested in that.
Or an experimental story I was working on. It revolves about a ball -- no, Cinderella doesn't go there -- and odd and magical things that happen there. And in the events leading up it, the point of view swoops over the city, never doing a scene break but switching to nearby events to keep the action moving. (If I could pull it off. Looking again makes it clear that the segues would need a lot more than I put in.) This does not, however, provide the events before hand that would climax at the ball in the best style. . . .
Take, for instance, that which I have stumbled on in my recent forays into fairy tales. One, which is not going to fit in my current work in progress is The King of the Golden Mountain -- which you may want to read since the important point is the ending -- because it starts out with a boy escaping the Devil as a girl does in "The Girl Without Hands" and then rescuing the heroine a la "The Raven" -- the Brothers Grimm version -- or "The Blue Mountains." But he arrives at the end to find the bride marrying again, and his reaction? Well, since he has a magic sword, he orders it to cut everyone else's head off, and so he's all alone and King of the Golden Mountain. (Depends on exact translation. Others say, "he alone was master," but then since he just cut everyone else's head off.)
And that would be a good backstory for a villain in a fairy-tale world. But the rest of the tale? Like, who's going up against the king? Or what to get from him? Muse is less interested in that.
Or an experimental story I was working on. It revolves about a ball -- no, Cinderella doesn't go there -- and odd and magical things that happen there. And in the events leading up it, the point of view swoops over the city, never doing a scene break but switching to nearby events to keep the action moving. (If I could pull it off. Looking again makes it clear that the segues would need a lot more than I put in.) This does not, however, provide the events before hand that would climax at the ball in the best style. . . .