The White Snake and Some Personal History

Where last we left our heroine, we hadn’t met her yet. We were marching to the beat of a different drummer, walking beside a man we’d all met before. He was capable, resourceful, and looking for a place to lay his loyalty. This man can be found in a wide range of genres, appealing to almost every demographic. Except, perhaps, young children.

You have to learn a little bit about loyalty and its value before you can read about its loss.

A soldier of fortune could also be called a mercenary, but this has negative connotations. When you say “merc”, people think of pirates and Hessians and lots of sadly failed coups across the world. Rightly so. But a soldier of fortune has left that business. For whatever wonderful reason, the human mind is more forgiving of and receptive to someone who is looking for a new start in life.

Point number one in favor of “The White Snake”—it’s about a former servant. Servant, farmer, soldier—the man who wants his new life has already had one. Unlike fairy tales about younger sons (a topic for another story, surely), soldier of fortune stories are about men with pasts. Grown-ups. They may not mature or change on the page, but their previous experience tempers their reactions to the fairy tale’s adventures.

Point number two is that this IS a new life. This story isn’t a young prince looking for a new kingdom to take over. Instead, we read about someone whose old life doesn’t necessarily fit with his new ambitions. Some of his old skill set may apply—attention to detail, responsibility, his well-honed ability to delegate—but new aptitudes and talents must be uncovered. Or our hero will die.

Nice and melodramatic, that.

Point number three is this soldier of fortune’s commitment to his new quest. While he comes with a past, it isn’t a past that ties him down. Having served faithfully before, he is now free to commit himself wholeheartedly and with full knowledge of what he’s doing. He might not have every answer for every situation, but he isn’t a man who will abandon his honor.

When we take a look at other soldier of fortune stories, there will be other aspects to ponder. These three from “The White Snake” are relevant because of how often we see echoes of them in modern stories. Heroes, looking for homes. Champions, in search of a cause. And (to paraphrase the immortal Jane Austen) husbands, in want of wives.

These soldiers of fortune are men with pasts, but these pasts fuel their drive to find a future.

As writers, we can get so wrapped around a character’s backstory that it takes up more of the tale than the actual adventure. In “The White Snake,” the servant’s quest to become a king and a husband is the latter third of the tale. Not the bulk of it. One of the side benefits of oral stories—plenty of time to soften the audience’s sympathies toward a favorite character.

The problem of backstory, illustrated with this fairy tale, is one of determining your goal for the story. Because the servant’s history before the kingdom contest is so much of the story, all the author has room for is the conclusion of the quest. We’ll see other soldier of fortune stories where backstory is not provided, and as such the reader can devote much more emotional energy to the “happily ever after” of the characters. Countless how-to books will tell young authors when and how much backstory should be applied, but you must consider the weight of it. If there is so much of it and it is so essential, as in this case, perhaps the story should be more about the backstory than the final quest.

M.M. Kaye, who I mentioned in an earlier post, grew up to write a few other novels. One of which (a personal favorite) starts with five chapters of backstory on one character. Then anywhere between a paragraph and three pages of backstory for each character she introduces. Small wonder The Shadow of the Moon weighs so much. And yes, she does have soldiers of fortune in her stories. Margaret Mitchell, who wrote in a similar vein a generation prior, didn’t dwell as much on the character’s backstory in Gone With the Wind, but she does provide copious historical backstory all throughout the plot.

It’s a style that’s discouraged today, but the problem never goes away for writers. To tell, or not to tell—and how much.

But that’s a question for another day...

The Six Swans and the Good Guys

Where last we left our heroine, you had her pinned up a tree and were preparing to deconstruct every bit of fun out of her. All without her saying a word. I hope you had fun.

You may have come up with different character traits than what follows. That doesn’t make you wrong. With any written work, a lot of different ideas can be extrapolated from a character's words or actions. Not all of them can be reasonably supported by the whole text. But just because one person presents an argument, that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a different, equally sensible one.

Because the readers meet the princess first, let’s begin with her. As a protagonist (another ancient Greek theater term, meaning “one who plays the first part” or, more simply, “the chief actor”) is the character that the author most wants the reader to identify with, it makes sense to give more of the princess’s back story. Of course, since she will not have a speaking part for most of the story, the reader needs good reason to cheer for her.

First off, she is good. Modern audiences often put down the “old-fashioned” idea that a main character must be a good guy. This princess, however, has words and actions that support this label. In the beginning, when she knows something bad lives in her home, she flees. Fear is a perfectly good reason to run, of course, but we would think her foolhardy and craven if she stayed. There comes a time, both in stories and in life, when a good guy must get out of a bad situation.

But she isn’t just running away. The princess is looking for a way to save her brothers. This is important, because what she’s not doing is looking for a way to defeat her stepmother. She’s not dwelling on the evil that has infiltrated her family—she’s just focused on rescuing the innocent. To obsess over the stepmother would allow that toxic woman to have power in her life. No, thank you. All of these actions and choices demonstrate her goodness, and set a foundation for the reader to like her as she foregoes speech.

Second, she is diligent. The princess searches for her brothers until she finds them. Then she takes up the very difficult task of making cloth from nettles. (The full-grown weeds have a woody stem, filled with long fibers that can be dried and woven like linen. It makes a cloth that is thinner than silk.) And she sticks to her task until she finishes. Someone reading this can simply scoff at the idea of setting a heroine to an impossible task (like silence), but this girl is persistent. She keeps at the work until it is done. In Germanic culture, industriousness is a very valuable character trait. Making it praiseworthy in a story is a natural part of a fairy tale.

Lastly, she is faithful. This ties in with both her goodness and her diligence, but it is demonstrated more the further into the story we read. She does not have to choose to save her brothers. Having taken up that cross, she tells no one what she’s doing. When she marries the king, she could abandon her project. But she doesn’t. When her mother-in-law brands her a witch, a few words would free her. But she stays the course.

And her husband, to whom she has never spoken, seems to recognize these qualities without knowing her back story. In a lot of the well-known fairy tales, the hero and heroine are not well-matched. The reader knows a lot more about one character than another, and what is learned of these characters isn’t always detailed or particularly deep. Not in this case.

First off, the king is honorable. This is not a given in fairy tales. Some princes are not as charming as we assume. However, this time we have a winner. When the king finds the girl alone in the woods, nothing suggests she is a rich princess. He never looks for her family or father, so we can assume he had no reason to do so. But when he takes her home, he marries her. No one is holding a gun to his head on this decision. He could have locked her in a tower somewhere, without marrying her. (Yes, that happens in some fairy tales.) She did nothing to encourage his pursuit of her in the forest, but he gives her a home and the protection of his name. This indicates he has a deeply ingrained code of ethics that help make him a worthy leader. 


Second, he is just. This is also a quality that shouldn't be assumed. Plenty of people, be they leaders or small fry, will duck responsibility if they don't like the consequences. When his wife is accused of witchcraft, the king puts her on trial. He's not doing this to punish her for her silence. The law of the land demands it, and this king is not going to ignore the law or abolish it just because he doesn't like it. There are a lot of modern...let's call them "celebrities" (some hold elected office, some are appointed by elected officials) who do not exhibit this character trait. Whether by choice or by ignorance. However, here we have a king who serves his laws, rather than a man who uses the law for his own gain. 


Lastly, this king is loyal. This element of him is more personal and complements the princess's character very well. When he imprisons his wife and puts her on trial, he sits with her in the dungeon every day, asking her "What happened?" Nowhere in the text are we given the idea that the king believes the charge of witchcraft. But he does not abandon his wife just because she's in trouble. He has chosen a wife whose history and priorities he doesn't know, but he doesn't leave her when her loyalties are tested. 


Like I said, this fairy tale is one of my favorites. (Clearly, I can blather on and on about it ad nauseum.) If you're going to read fiction, it should leave you better than when it found you. Later on, we'll dive into bad guys and other modern conventions, like making bad guys protagonists or writing flawed characters. Useful, realistic even, but not always uplifting. 


But that's a story for another day...

The Ordinary Princess and an Overload of Detail

Where last we left our heroine, we couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The whole story hinged on the smallest of details. Without which, we have no story. We had to keep track of what made Princess Amy unique and all the tiny cracks in her universe that serve as proof that it’s all real.

So at this crucial moment of terrible strain—what could possibly be worse?—we as writers should ratchet up the stress of the story and throw in another unexpected twist.

Please, no.

Let’s all calm down, take a deep breath, and step away from the crazy muse beating your head in. I say “yours,” because mine is just fine. I never get sucked into too many details.

 Wait. I’m a writer. Who am I kidding?

As authors, details are one of the biggest pitfalls we face. We can become so fascinated with the level of detail we put into our stories that we can’t tell the story straight. Of course, the other danger is to allow the details to keep you from finishing your story. (And no, for those of you who know who I mean, this is a gentle nudge of encouragement. Not a cattle prod of shame.)

M.M. Kaye, the author of The Ordinary Princess, once said that she first wrote the story in a hurry. Princess Amy, she said, was in a rush to get it told. This is a wonderful example of two things. First, the writer letting the character have a voice. (Which we’ll cover in more detail when we talk about characterization.) Second, the writer allowing the story to have its own speed.

Now, The Ordinary Princess is not a frenzied story. It skips along at a nice pace, completely in keeping with the nature of the fairy tale and the particular charm of the characters. Which is that Princess Amy and King Peregrine love simple, normal things. They are not fancy people who take four hours to dress. They rescue wounded birds and know the names of their servants’ children and love to give presents they made with their own hands.

You see, the details do not have to be repeated over and over, or written in such painstaking terms that their sincerity is unmistakable. The details, however, must be consistent. Find the one thread in all of a particular character that makes him (or her) valuable in your story, and let your details grow naturally out of that character trait. Be it simplicity, or humor, or willingness to sacrifice for others, that most important thing should be the source of all the fun little details. 

Don’t worry. Your readers will connect the dots. You don’t even need to leave a thick trail of breadcrumbs. Just drop a single white stone every few paces.

When the readers turn around, lost in the wonder of the forest you’ve written for them, they will easily see the path home. But that is also a fairy tale for another day...

The Ordinary Princess and...

One of the wonderful aspects of fairy tales comes from their unexpectedness. When we refer to “fairy-tale endings” in the modern context, then we generally comment on how so many of the commonly known fairy tales end the same: Happily Ever After. That’s how we’ve come to understand fairy tales. It’s what we usually take away from the story. A simple, happy ending.

But in between “once upon a time...” and “...they all lived happily ever after” exists uncharted realms of possibilities. A castle, or a hovel? A prince, or a soldier? A good horse, or a bad dwarf? Forest, mountain, desert, sea? Until we start to read, we don’t know for certain.

Surely, we will find characters we know. Boys who want to grow up (or refuse to). Girls who need to be rescued. Good parents. Bad ones. Not every damsel in distress is a weak woman, and not every younger son has the sense the good lord gave him. And on very rare occasions, step-mothers are not all bad. The surprises come in the small details, it’s true, but they give us plenty to think about later.

Which is often the point.

If all the reader takes home from your story is the Happily Ever After, what do you need all the in-between stuff for?

A favorite fairy tale of mine was written as an original almost a hundred years ago. The author was twelve, though she grew up to write historical biographies and contemporary murder mysteries—and a couple historical novels for which she’s still reasonably famous. But The Ordinary Princess was her first, and extraordinarily well done. The fairies in the fairy tale don’t dominate it—they set in motion events that the characters must handle on their own. (As all good fairy tales ought.)

When Princess Amy finds herself in a chilly, lonely forest a long way from home, she summons up the fairy who blessed her with ordinariness and asks, “What shall I do for shelter?” The fairy gives the best sort of answer we can expect from a dear old curmudgeon: “Get a job, just like everybody else.”

Now, once Amy finds a job, she finds a home, and a friend, and eventually her own “fairy tale ending.” What she doesn’t find is an easy way out. That wouldn’t suit any sensible fairy. Neither is it the general intent of fairy tales. Amy isn’t saved from a life of drudgery or a wicked family—she is blessed to find someone who values her for what makes her unique. Her compassion. Her cheerfulness. Her courage. This fairy tale is less about escape and more about discovering how to live honestly.

Like Snow White (among others), Princess Amy doesn’t meet anyone worth following home until after she’s left her own home. So these fairy tale heroines have some things in common. But this time our girl interacts more with her “prince”—specifically about the small, unexpected details that make each other unique.

How many details are too many? What about unexpected twists? Is there a limit, or is it okay to have none at all?