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Fantasy - A retelling of the Arthurian Legend
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Pitch: My idea is to re-tell the Arthurian legend. Starting with both Arthur and Merlin as young children. How their friendship develops and evolves into what we believe became a mythical tale. I will attempt to write it, tying in all the mythical elements; Arthur, Merlin, Morgan la fey, Lancelot, Guinevere, Ygrayne, The lady of the lake, and the Excaliber. Logline: During the medieval ages, Arthur encounters an enchanting boy in the woods. Uthyr, his father, fears witchcraft and protests the relationship that grows between the two.
Dramatic Question: Will Merlin's magic come between the two boys or will Arthur's father finally overcome his fear of sorcery?
Main Characters
Merlin is the son of Balinor and Hunith. He is a prodigy at his age, full of life and curiosity. His father has hid them in the Brecheliant forest after Uthyr Pendragon lead a purge against the local Druids. Young Merlin lives an enchanted life however solitary as it may be. Until one day when he chases the wind and discovers a young boy named Arthur.
Arthur is the son of Uthyr and Ygrayne. He is a sickly boy whose father blames his condition on the devil worshipping sorcerers whom he sought to purge from the world. Arthur is coddled and sheltered because of his weakened state. Ygrayne however, begins to notice an increase in Arthur’s health during the appearance of a new friend.
Guinevere is a beautiful princess surrounded by political misfortune. Fearing her counsel and former regent are forging false alliances for selfish gain through her marriage, she seeks the aid of Balinor. Balinor rescues the princess by enchanting a sword in the court, stating, only one of pure love for Guinevere may remove the sword from where it lies.
Andres, I like the descriptions you have of your characters here. Nice conflict between Arthur's dad and Merlin's people. And the fact that Merlin seems to be helping change Arthur's health is a nice twist. Are you planning on tying this to the actual legend? I'm curious as to how you'd work that.
I will give your first chapter a read after I post mine sometime this weekend.
Yes, unfortunately I haven't read 'le mort de arthur' or any of jack whytes books. So, i'm going into this with a large amount of ignorance lol. I'm hoping that because this is a legend rather than written history the fans of Arthurian Fables will accept my work and not become too angry with me lol. I am trying to tie in Arthur, Excalibur, the lady of the lake, sir lancelot, and tales of Morgan la fey.
Andres wrote: "Here is my first chapter. https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-..."
Andres,
Okay, so I like the opening you got going on here. The relationship between Merlin and the owl is good. And I liked how you gave us a little back story with the tale of the sword. The idea of catching the wind is cool as well. It gives Merlin a short term goal.
One of the things I noticed is that sometimes you change from past to present tense in the pages. For example, the paragraph about chasing the wind is past tense but the next paragraph, talking about Merlin's father, is present tense.
I suggest you stick to past tense. I was taught past tense is for books and present tense is for screenplays. I'm a screenwriter so I'm finding it hard to transition but I'm getting better at it.
Also, some of the paragraphs can be broken down into smaller paragraphs. For example, the first paragraph could be broken into three. One describing the forest, one about the air, and one about stream.
Smaller paragraphs help your writing because the more white space on the page, the easier it is to read. There's less of a chance the reader will lose thier place when reading a four line paragraph than an eight line one.
This world is very detailed which you show by Merlin's studies of the spells and the elemental books (Fire, water, etc...) This chapter is a good way to immerse the reader into your world. Nice start.
M.R.
Andres wrote: "Here is a link to my prologue.https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/..."
First of all, here are some small comments I picked along the way:
Caliber vs Calibur – inconsistent spelling
Him licking the blood? Did he recognise that the blood is Vivienne just by the taste of it?
Did the red stain disappear? So not just healing, but blood getting cleaned?
Don’t feed me your lies witch -> there should be a comma before witch
It energetically slapped itself against her gorgeous face – don’t know why exactly but I found this energetic slapping somewhat comic, doubt that’s the effect you wanted
The dogs in the back begin – begun
Overall, I enjoyed the prologue and the looming feeling of unavoidability somehow. I've read and watched a bit on Arthur and Merlin, so it did hit my pleasure nerve when I managed to link all the names to people.
I'll admit, I was a bit sceptical a bit at first, because Arthur's tale was told so many times, but you managed to secure my interest. I like when prologues start a bit before the story, unlike when they start in the middel of a battle (lol), so I do think it begins the story on the right note and sets the mood. Well done c:
@M.L. Thank you! My biggest weakness is tense's. I think maybe because I have native blood in me and they were always mixing up their tents. I've never heard of past tense for books so thank you for that, i'll try to stick to past tense from now on. Thank you so much.
@Maria Thank you for catching all those errors. I really need an editor I know, hopefully amazing community members like yourself will stick around =D. I try to tell myself that someone with a better eye like yourself can pick out my mistakes rather quickly. It's more important that I try to get my story on paper. I'll go fix those mistakes right now, I greatly appreciate your help.Admittedly, I'm not very knowledgeable about the King Arthur tale so I am learning a lot about these characters and the different variations of the legends as I skim through the information i'm mainly gathering from Wikipedia. I think the extent of my knowledge is from Disney's sword in the stone lol. So if I have your interest, well that's a huge compliment! I will try my best to not disappoint you =D.
I mean my own knowledge mostly comes from Merlin the tv show and from a story I read a long time ago by Geraldine McCaughrean about Arthur. I once wanted to read the Death of King Arthur but the language was difficult so I just... put it down lol
@Maria lol. Okay well I'm on a quest for Camelot. I'm going to try and do the story justice however, with more of a YA romance borrowing heavily from the Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes modern version of Shakespeare.
I reviewed your first chapter on coursera, well done!
Thanks for the feedback Liavali, I'm going to add something in chapter 2 (Arthur) for creating the smoke that Merlin sees in chapter 1 (Merlin)
It is exciting to get pointers as to where to improve and move things around. I'm on a bit of a slump, health wise, so am not as excited about re writes as I know I will be, when it passes!
I just noticed that coursera ends on chapter 20. I just rough drafted 16 and don't feel as though I am that close to ending it in 4 chapters lol. Guess I'll just submit the work and continue until I feel it has a more appropriate ending.
I am not worrying about the coursera structure so much anymore as I have over 50 thousand words now and it is not finished, so...Not going to worry about the coursera. Just hoping to continue managing to review and get reviews with others here honestly.
Andres, Liavali, you guys are funny. I nearly collapsed getting 19,000 words for our little swap and read. I honestly believe my book will be just a little over 150 pages. But, I am writing a trilogy. This is book one. How long have you guys been working on your books by the way?
I reviewed chapter 4. I'm really loving your story, is close to my heart. Keep it up :)
M.L. wrote: "Andres, Liavali, you guys are funny. I nearly collapsed getting 19,000 words for our little swap and read. I honestly believe my book will be just a little over 150 pages. But, I am writing a trilo..."You really should't worry about the amount of words so much, my way of writing is always to write too much.
In writing course a teacher said there are people who write too little, then have to add, there are people who write too much, then have to cut a lot.
I write in a lot of scenes that end up being not necessary for the story, but all the possible little detours one takes in the mind about the characters, I often write at least half of those down as scenes anyway as I cannot tell if they will be
I have been writing but never managed to finish a story, for the last 10 years.
Don't freak out, but this one, I just started it this July and then in August decided to join the course to hopefully get me to the finish line...
Starting and getting a lot of word count is not a problem, it is finishing and surviving to do re writes...
I started writing this novel when I joined the course in April I believe. I'm going on 4 months in the course but I only write for an hour when I'm at work. Weekends, vacations and holidays are for family time.
No matter what the weird course tutor says, you write as it suits your time, and just keep going and hopefully it gets done!
Liavali wrote: "No matter what the weird course tutor says, you write as it suits your time, and just keep going and hopefully it gets done!"@ML Exactly. Who knows, next year you might have out 3 books while we only have 2. =D As long as we can keep helping each other out for years to come our community can help us put out the best versions of ourselves regardless of our pace. Excelsior!
If we manage to keep going we all deserve cookies. And maybe when we all reach chapter 20 we should all buy ourselves our favourie cookies and eat them and describe them here in forum.
And by chapter 20 I man finishing our manuscript, at whatever chapter it may be.
I will do that but replace cookie with whiskey.
Replace at your will, I will probably replace cookie for sushi.
Hmm. I will probably have both.
Sushi and cookie or sushi and whiskey?
A whiskey soaked cookie shaped like sushi.
Just read your chapter 5. I love your stoy. Review mine if you have the time :)
Hey, Hello, I finally finished chapter 5. Review if you'd like:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
The google drive document, anyone can comment.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Awesome, will do. Thank you!
I'm going to tell this tale through my point of view and hope to do justice to the Arthurian readers. If one of my chapters lacks reviews I'll be posting it here.
Prologue
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Chapter 1
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 2
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 3
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 4 (week 5)
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 5
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 6
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 7
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 8 (Week 11)
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 9
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 10
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 11
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 12
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 13
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 14
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 15
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 16
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 17
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 18
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 19
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...
Chapter 20
https://www.coursera.org/learn/write-...