The Queens: Introduction

Hello and welcome to my writing experiment.

For the past few years I’ve posted first drafts of numerous stories. They’re all still findable here, but only Queen of the Garden of Girls and Sisters of String and Glass have their own pages (you can find them under Writer’s Lounge). It’s now April, and I haven’t posted any of my writings yet so far. I’ve been planning on it, but have found myself busy with other things despite having a short story about Hades and Persephone sitting and languishing. That one still as a slight problem I’m dealing with, so I’m holding off on posting that until I’ve figured out how to resolve the problem.

Anyways, as though I didn’t give myself enough to do this year, I decided it was time to post another first draft, but with a twist. Previously, I’ve worked on quite a bit of the story before posting it so I could give myself some breathing space, and even then I only posted each part 2-3 days a week. This one is completely unwritten at the moment and is designed to be posted at night Pacific Standard Time Monday-Friday, unless my kids have the day off or I have certain appointments after which I’ll be almost completely useless.

So, what’s the plan? I’ll be spending somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes Monday-Friday, with some exceptions, and then will post whatever I wrote that night, my time. Sometimes it might be a lot, and sometimes I’ll probably struggle and it won’t be much. I fully expect to struggle with this one.

I’ve discovered, after doing it twice, I really like taking a first draft and then making a reverse outline. It makes tackling edits feel a lot more possible. It also makes me feel like I can take more complicated ideas, write an entirely nonsensical first draft, and then make sense of it. So that’s what I’m going to do here: write that messy first draft with the idea that I don’t have to have everything ironed out and figured out; I’ll have that opportunity once the mess is out.

The Queens is a story idea that’s been sitting for many years. I haven’t done anything with it because it always felt too complicated and overwhelming, and I don’t feel like my writing skills are quite up for that challenge. But I love the idea every time I look at it. Now that I’ve figured out how I like to do reverse outlines and am working out how to create a new outline from it, I think it’s time I try tackling this.

This is about four women, four Queens who are supposed to rule the world to create harmony across the five lands. But they’ve been missing the fourth Queen for many years, and that vacancy has begun to affect them. When the fourth Queen is finally awoken, she finds her path to the throne full of pitfalls.

This is about all I have to guide me:

One seeks to preserve the fourth throne

One seeks to prevent the fourth Queen from her throne

One seeks to destroy the Queens

One seeks to gain her throne

Not a whole lot to go on, so this will be an interesting experience, but at least I’ll come out on the other side with something I can work with beyond these four lines.

Here’s what I know: 1) all four of the Queens will have a name by tomorrow, 2) the fourth Queen will have a protector by her side, 3) I’m aiming for diversity, 4) they’ll all need backstories, 5) I think Queen Three is possibly crazy and Queen One might be too nice and could end up eaten alive, and 6) I keep picturing the fourth Queen as a milkmaid, so we’ll see how that goes.

The first part will be posted Tuesday at 9pm PST, in whatever shape it ends up being in.