Context
I’m writing an enhanced version of the Little Snow-white story, and you could say this was my first roadblock when I started. I had to define the relationship between the king and queen. Sure, the queen wasn’t going to be around for very long, but she’s the one that started this whole story. She’s the one that made the wish to have a daughter who sported very passionate and poetic colors.
The same goes for the king. In the original story, he doesn’t participate much, and just fades out of existence after he’s mentioned to have gotten married a second time. My very intention in writing an enhanced edition of this tale was to answer questions like that: What happened to him? Or where did he go? This means that I had to write at least some scenes with him.
Which meant that I had to write them together, the king and queen, and show at least a bit of what their relationship was like. Which leads me back to the question at the very top of this post.
Did Snow White’s parents love each other?
This was not a question I’d been expecting, to be honest. When I sat down to write the first chapter of this story, I knew I was going to have the king and queen interact with each other. I just hadn’t considered the question of how. How were they going to treat each other? What was their relationship like, and how would its state affect their interactions?
The page was blank, the cursor blinked, and I just stared at the screen, thinking about this question. It was very likely that their marriage was arranged. Or maybe, they’d actually fallen in love before their marriage was arranged. Or maybe their marriage was not arranged at all. Perhaps they’d chosen to marry each other and their decision had been respected.
I had to choose between those options, and decided to go with the first one. Their marriage had indeed been arranged, and they did something that is almost never done. Or at least, I’ve never heard anyone talk about this when they decide to open up about their marriages.
They devoted time to learn to care for each other. They didn’t “click”, nor was there a “spark”, and the “chemistry” was not there. But they opened up to the other about themselves, and talked about what was important to the other.
That in itself would be a very interesting story to tell. Heck, I’ve been wanting to write a story about that for a very, very long time now. But unfortunately, this is not their story. It’s Snow-white’s, and her story begins with the queen sewing at a window. She’s already married to the king, and they’ve already gotten to know each other as best they could in the time since their wedding.
And The Writing Began
Having decided that, it was a breeze to write this chapter. Sure, a whole hour had gone by as I thought and pondered about their relationship, but that’s the way of writing. Much of the time flies by as you make decisions, and deal with answering questions that hadn’t come up until you actually sit down to write.
I’d already worked out their personalities. I already knew the king was a noble, responsible, conscious liege. The queen was a caring, wise, patient leader. In my experience, determining that is enough to write the interactions between my characters. What was preventing me from typing away was that I’d forgotten there was history between these two, and I hadn’t established it.
But there it is: An arranged marriage that worked out because of the willingness of the couple to make it work, and their actions to make it so. That’s all I needed to start typing away.
Simple enough, right? I thought enhancing Snow-white’s story would not be such a problem. I thought it would be a quick, fun, light project that I could finish in less than a month. The story had already been written, after all, and I was just adding a detail here or there.
You’ll find out in the following posts that I was very, very wrong.
May the runes fall in your favor, fellow.
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