Last month we brainstormed the initial story idea of a character piece about an older female educator and talked about how world building can influence the character and content of a fantasy story. We introduced the character of Fraessi, an Angeli woman of the Great Maze. This month I'm going to look at plotting.

Back to Ideas Again

One of the funny things about story planning and writing is the inter-relatedness of each of the elements. Everything connects to everything else. Here's a case in point: While musing on the plotting for this story, I decided that to make the story work a further main idea or theme was necessary. Quite often a story in planning will become stuck at about this point, with the writer unable to proceed. Maybe they've got a good beginning but they don't know how the story should end. Maybe they know what's to happen at the end but just can't find the words to start the story properly.

Often what happens is that the initial idea that they are writing about - an older female educator character and her life and ideas, in this case - doesn't prove strong enough by itself to support the "weight" of a story. In this case a story may be put away in a drawer for days, weeks, months or even years until another idea comes along. A lot of stories arise, not from one idea, but rather from the collision of two different ideas.

So, if you're stuck with a story, try throwing other ideas at it until you find one that sticks.

What I decided to do in this case was to add the second idea I mentioned before. Two heroines - one reserved and traditionally "feminine", and the other brasher and more "tomboyish" - interacting and, hopefully, learning to get on with one another. Combining this with the woman educator and role model figure, I decided to shift the focus from the educator to her students and make this a coming of age story, with the teacher acting more as a pivot than as the central character.

World Building Again

Having made this decision I revised my intention to have a male-dominated patriarchal society. Such a society would tend to squash this type of "feminine coming of age" story into the social background, and it would inevitably be intrusive on the story I want to write. It's easier for me to plot out this kind of story in a Matriarchal society, so that's the one I'm going for.

The fact that it's a right wing anarchy - with the largest continuous social unit being the family - will probably hardly impact on this story at all, except in that all of the characters will probably be related to one another.

However, reading an interesting story in Asimov's SF Magazine this month (The War on Treemon by Nancy Kress - Asimov's January 2003), confirmed me in my intention to have a Matriarchal, with the women as the property owners, householders and farmers, and the men as warriors. This seems an interesting type of society and it fits with what I've already hit upon for other reasons.

Plotting

So now we have three characters. Fraessi, the Matriarch, leader and teacher of her daughters and nieces. We need two more names, at least, so back we go to the Name Generator. Generating a few names and picking the nicest ones we have the following new characters:

Melith: The reserved, traditional type girl.

Caussa: The brash, bold tomboy.

Dreaw: Melith's younger brother, a trainee warrior with the ability to teleport.

Having chosen these characters with an eye to the plot I've got in mind, I can reveal that the story feels like it should probably go something like this:

Melith has a close relationship with her brother Dreaw, who is in some kind of trouble over a failing in his warrior training. Maybe he doesn't want to go out and fight with other Angeli men and get killed as most of the warriors in a society like this end up doing. Or maybe it's simpler than that, perhaps he's just stuffed up some task or mission he's been given.

Her cousin Caussa, the tomboy, is unsympathetic. She'd love to go into battle and win glory and honor, but she's not allowed because she's a girl. She says something to Melith and they end up fighting.

At this point they are discovered by their aunt the Matriarch Fraessi, who is pissed off. They are not behaving as proper girls and heirs should. Young women have to learn to work together if Angeli society is to function. She sets them a task to complete, knowing that they will need to work together in order to finish it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good tasks? Email me!

My own thinking is that they have to climb a rocky mesa-type spire that rises up in the center of the canyon. It's the nesting place of a colony of savage eagle type birds called, um, Nykoth. The girls will need to have one defend while the other climbs, but of course they will only learn this in the course of the story.

Writing

And that is as far as I have taken this story so far. It is time to actually begin writing. So next month I'll talk about the task and process of writing.