As
part of my participation in My
500 words, I am posting what I write each day.
The theme of the story is the
truth that if proves. Even fiction proves some kind of truth. It can be
something as simple as “good triumphs over evil” or “love conquers all”. When I
am serious about writing something, I want to have a theme. When it was time to
start developing my novel for this November, before I thought too much about
what it would be about, before I even really tried to think of an ending, I
felt I needed to know what I wanted to say. I needed my theme. And from what I
had of the story, the theme revealed itself, innocence.
The theme of The Snowdrop
Princess is going to be preservation versus loss of innocence. The little girl
in the story, from the beginning I have now, is innocent to anything in the
world. She will be brought up by holograms, probably run by some central
computer system. She will have one hologram, maybe created especially for her
that will be her best friend. That best friend hologram will be The Snowdrop
Princess, representing innocence.
But what if prisoners of the
state are incarcerated at this fortress? The government thinks that it’s empty
of real people. They don’t know there’s a single little girl living there who
was mysteriously dropped off as a young toddler, who spends her days running
and playing with a hologram resembling a girl her age. I see conflict.
For the past two days I’ve
alluded to something else. Several years ago, I had a vision of a little girl,
perhaps school-age, wandering around a smoke-swept battlefield littered with
bodies. The girl isn’t disturbed by death. She closes the eyes of some fallen
soldiers and searches them for any provisions. So I sat down and wrote
something, first just pen and paper, where the girl is finally frightened off
by wolves. Then I took a few days to sit and type up what I could.
It was an exploration. The girl was looking
for food, but I learned that it was to take back to someone. Someone was
holding her father hostage, compelling this girl to go and search dead soldiers
on the battlefield. My story began the day she found a handgun. Acting on her
father’s instructions, the girl took a single bullet and filed it down near the
primer. (I asked an ex-policeman if this would happen). The girl took food and
the gun back to where her father was being held prisoner by another man. This
“bad man” as the girl thought of him, seemed to me some fugitive from the war,
desperate enough to hold a father and daughter. The father was injured, sick
and dying. The girl gave the pistol to the desperate fugitive, and later
provoked him into shooting it. With the altered bullet, the handgun misfired, seriously
injuring this bad man. He soon dies of blood loss. The father also passes away. The girl, on her own in
some dystopian wilderness, moves on.
That snippet came to me the other night. What
if I could incorporate that into my story? I’ve been keeping it on hold for years,
it’s not like I’m desperate to use it soon, ideas don’t really expire. But will
this idea work for The Snowdrop Princess? Who is this girl? She’s too old to be
the one dropped off at the fortress unless I change things up. Does she make it
to the fortress years or decades earlier only to live and die and eventually be
resurrected as a hologram?
Is she one of the criminals who is sentenced
to the fortress?
There’s lots to think about and ponder. I’ve
got just under two weeks to figure at least a few things out. There’s a chance this
November novel could be little more than a convoluted mess. But with enough thought
and planning, I might create something that shines.
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