Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome
to my class today. My name is Beth Herb, but you can also call me
misses H. That's what my high school English students used to call me
when I taught them. I was a trained teacher in 2009, and since then, I have
taught for many years. I've also written novels,
musicals, stories. So this is such a
passion of mine that I want to bestow upon you today. We're going to be focusing on the fairy tale or the
prince and princess story. So if that is what
you are interested in today, please join us. I also, when I was growing up, loved to write essays. I love to write essays. It was my favorite thing. I love doing all the research, arguing my points, and then bringing it all
together in the end. And it wasn't until I
started studying later um fairy tale or Prince
or Princess stories, I started to
understand that it was just like an essay, and I
know what you're thinking. Who likes writing
essays? But I did. And I have since used that knowledge in order
to switch it over to a format for figuring out the points of
a good fairy tale, a good Prince or Princess story, and making that story line fit really well before
writing my story. So if you would like to do
that and join me today, come along as we learn how
to write these stories.
2. Points 1-3: I wanted to talk to you first
about what a fairy tale. What do I mean by that and what a prince or
princess story is? A fairy tale usually has some
mythical creatures in it. It could also be
some folklore of a story that's been given
over several generations, or it can also be a legend, some daring hero that goes
off and wins the battle. That's what I mean by
a fairytale story. And those stories can be whatever length you
want them to be, but usually they're not
this epic long story. It's usually told
in a concise way. And then second, the
Prince or princess story. Traditionally, this
was set in a kingdom. There would be a
king and a queen, a prince or princess. There would be some kind
of marriage between either a prince and a
commoner or a princess and a commoner or somehow a feat happens and they get to earn being in that
spot in the kingdom. So that's what I mean by a
prince or princess story. These ideas have
recently changed over the years to become more
relevant, but you get the idea. I'm going to explain to you what the 40 to 50 point system is for the fairy tale or
Prince Princess story. As I researched these
stories, both old and new, I found that the
authors tended to stick to a 40 to 50 point story line. Every time they
moved the character along or they
changed the scenery, that would be
considered one point. So in one of my
stories that I wrote, my first point was
explaining the setting. Where does the story take place? What are the people
involved in the area? That was my point number one. My point number two was introducing some of
the sub characters. Those would be people who would not necessarily
be the main character, but they would help the main character
along in the story. Then my third point was
bringing in the main character, explaining who she is, her personality traits, how
she interacts with others, what she thinks about
certain things like that. Already, just to begin the
introduction of the story, it takes three points. Let's go over those three
points together and hopefully you'll be able to write your own three
points by the end of this. The first point is macro. Macro meaning
large, meaning big. You have to start from a
large bird's eye perspective before delving into your story. Usually, that is the setting. You want to look at researching where do I want my
story to take place? What do I want it to look like? Sound like, smell like, even getting the reader to really be involved
in that world. Oftentimes authors will write about something that they know, a place that they know, so that it's easier to write about. However, you can also create
your own world if you want, or some kind of faraway land that you don't know anything about that you want
to research yourself. For example, in my story, I wrote about a young lady who lives on a farm in Wales
during the late 1800s. Well, clearly, I'm not
from Wales and I didn't live in the 1880s, 1890s. So I had to do a
lot of research. Oh, and I didn't even
grow up on a farm. So I had to learn what type of setting
that would have looked like, what the imagery of
their clothing or, um, what the farm land, what the land would have
looked like, all of that. There's a lot of research. That's the first point.
For your first point, getting that setting down, there's a lot of research
that goes into that. However, when you feel confident in your research and
you're ready to carry on, then move on to 0.2. 0.2 are the sub characters. Who do you want to be
around your main character? You do not have to add all
of your sub characters here. It can just be a handful or a few that you want to help
get the ball rolling. And so you focus on how do they interact
with one another? How do they handle humor or what are their personalities like?
What do they look like? I personally in my story did not talk about what my
character looked like because I wanted my reader to envision for themselves what they might think this
character looks like. But in the sub characters, you want to make
sure that you are positioning a good setting around before your main
character comes in. Your main character, this is what your whole
story hinges on. The protagonist is everything. You need to know
everything about them, you need to know
everything about them before you start writing so that when you put them in a situation where they have
to overcome something, then you will know
how they will react. For example, if you have a humorous character
who's very funny, they might in a hard situation
choose to pretend like it's not happening or just
try and laugh through it and these sub characters have to bring them back down
to earth a little. Or you might have a main
character who's very serious and needs to be
brought out of themselves, or maybe they don't know how to make a decision and the sub characters need
to help them do that. You need to know who
your character is before you present
it in your story, but just know that this is the point that everything
else hinges on. So take your time to develop a very well rounded character. So we've talked about point
number one, your setting. Point number two,
your sub characters, and point number three
are your main characters. Stick with me in the
next video and we'll go over the next points.
3. Last 3 Points: Okay, so we've talked about
the first three points of writing a fairy tale or
Prince or Princess story. Those points again
are point number one. Is going to be your setting, point number two, introducing
your sub characters, and point number 33 is coming
in for the main characters. So you start out macro and you work your way
down into the story. Now you would think
that I would be talking about the next points, maybe 0.4 to six. But actually, after you've written your first three points, now you're going
to go to the end of your story and you're going to write or jot
notes for the third, last parts or points
of your story. So if you're going to be
doing a 40 points story, those points could
be 38, 39, and 40. If you're doing a 50 points
story a little bit longer, then your points are going
to be 48, 49 and 50. And then say you land
somewhere in the middle, you end at 46, then this could be
44 or 45 or 46. So whatever length you
get your story to, we're going to work now
on the last three points. So I'm going to take you to the absolutely last
point of your story. You would think that
the last point of your story would end with your main character, but it doesn't. So the last point of your story should mirror
your first point. So your first point
is the setting and the community in which your
story will take place. And therefore, because
princess and prince stories or fairy tale stories
always and on a happy note, then your last point is going to be the communities celebrating. Somehow, whatever your
main character has done to help everyone or maybe they're a prince or
a princess finally, and there's a big wedding, it's the community celebrating. It's that time when it
goes back into the macro and we look at what actually happened
because of the story. So that is the last point. It will mirror your first point. Your second last point will
mirror your second point. So again, it is still not the main character celebrating on your
second last point, but it's actually
your sub characters, those around the main character
that are celebrating. So those are going to be whether it was family
members or friends, and they will celebrate the main characters
achievements as well. And then we come to
the third last point, which is the main character. Here the Protagonist celebrates. They might have done
a massive battle. They might have won the
heart of the Fair Maiden. There could be they could have saved the day or changed
the area in some way. So here is where the main
character celebrates. So those are the next points that we're going
to be focusing on.
4. Middle Points: So we've talked about points one to three and the
final three points of your story if you're writing a fairy tale or a prince
or princess story. Now we're going to look at the other points in the middle. I'm going to focus first on
points four through six. Somewhere within points
four through six, there needs to be a
struggle or a conflict that comes for the main character. I say points four through six because sometimes
an author wants to have a longer introduction and will eat into those points. And sometimes an author
wants to get right away into the main conflict. And so it's up to
you what you choose. So that's why I say somewhere
within points four to six, there needs to be a conflict. So this could be a
natural disaster. It could be a betrayal
of some kind, a mystery that needs
to be solved or a change in their situation that they can't stop from happening. Either way, this challenge
does not usually come upon the main character
because they chose it. Usually, it's something bad that happens that they
have to overcome. You can have a bit of a betrayal here by those around them, but save your big
betrayal for later on. So something here needs to go wrong that the main
character then needs to set upon a journey in order to fix it or help
those around them. And within that rising
action of your story line, there also needs to be five or six smaller conflicts
that the main character and the sub characters need to
go through in order to reach that final conflict at the end that they
need to overcome. So try and work those
into your points there as you go along in your rising action
of your story. Also in your rising action, I would say probably
between points four and 30, it's okay to even add
in new characters. So you don't have to add in all of your sub
characters in 0.2. You can add in character
as you go along, which is very important
because, for example, I did a story, as you know, of a girl working on a farm
or a young lady, sorry. But I also introduced
five townspeople and some story line behind the story in order to
give it a bit of context. What are the towns people like? Also, two other farmers,
and what are they thinking? And how does this
story play out? And so it's important to have other characters that you
can bring in along the way. It's also very important in your rising action
to have comedy. If you are not a
comedian and you need some outside help,
get outside help. It's very important to
have comedy in your story. So that's where I'm going
to leave it here, and next, we will talk about how
to get to that climax.
5. Climax: Before we talk about the climax, we're going to talk
about the villain. In every good fairy tale or
prince or princess story, there needs to be a villain or there needs to be
something that is villainous. There needs to be an
element of good versus evil because good always wins out
in these types of stories. So your villain can
be very blatant. It can be like this
is the bad person. You need to know
this is the villain. Or your villain could be very subtle where you don't
know they're the villain, maybe until the climax, maybe something happens,
and you find out, Oh, no. Ah, they're the ones that were doing this bad
thing the whole time. So you need to integrate that into your storyline
as we go along. You can also foreshadow,
you can give, um talk to, I wonder if this
is the villain or maybe it's that one,
maybe this one. And so you can present multiple villains if you
want to that in the end, you find out which
is the true villain. So you can add a whole
bunch of elements to your story as you rise
that action along. But just remember
that these stories always have good versus evil
and good rising over evil. And then in the end, we get to the Dun dun dun, the climax. I love the climax because it's that moment where the
reader goes, Oh, no. What's gonna happen to
the main character? How are they gonna
get out of this? And, you know, the
difference between Fairy Tale and Prince
or Princess stories and other stories is that the climax is not the highest
peak of your storyline. So you should hit
your climax somewhere between points 30
and 35 if you're doing a 40 point story or 37 and 42 if you're
doing a 50 point story. But there needs to be a climax. There needs to be that moment
where the reader is Oh, no. And here is usually where
there is a great betrayal. There's always a great betrayal in these types of stories. And remember that
the biggest betrayal happen in people's lives by those who are
closest to them. And so think about
who do you want in your story to
betray one another? It could be on purpose, or if you're writing for
a younger generation, it could be by accident, but there needs to be
some kind of betrayal. In my story that I wrote, I have the main character. She finds out that the young man that she had been working
with on her farm, he did not turn out to
be who he said he was. And so he didn't
mean to betray her. He had to fill that role
because of another character, but it did end up hurting her. And then there was this
big blow up, okay? That leads us into
the final battle. So usually on a story line, you get up to the climax, and then you work your way down and you're falling action. But in a prince or
princess story, it just revs it up. So you have a climax, and then you have
a final battle, and then you have
your falling action, which are falling action are your last three points, really. And so in that final battle, it could be an actual
physical battle. But in my story,
I did a battle of words and wit and yelling
at each other and, you know, that sort of battle. So it's up to you
what you choose, but there needs to be some
kind of final battle that happens that the main character overcomes so that
the celebrations that we've talked about
before can happen. So those are the
last of our points, and that's the last
of your research, and that portion is over. And then we move into
the arguing points.
6. Theme: So we've talked
about our research, and now we're going to move into the arguing points which are
very similar to an essay, only a little bit different. So we used to call this
the moral of the story, especially if you're
writing for young people. You know, you would include
some kind of moral, some kind of good virtuous
thing that you could point to. And you can still have
a moral to your story. But as story has
evolved and changed, I've noticed that it's
more about a theme. Okay? So I'm going to
focus on the theme. Every good story for a fairy tale or Prince or Princess story
will have a theme. It's important to
have that so that you have a guiding light as you
go through your story line. So this theme could be
be true to yourself, learn how to trust others. The theme that I had running
throughout my story was, how do we keep the family farm in the
family as an inheritance? So that was the theme that
I kept running throughout. It was not a moral,
but it was a theme. And so you can choose
what you want to weave in and out for that theme. And then finally, you
have your research. You have your 40 to 50
points for your story. You have your theme, you
have it all running through. You know exactly what
you want to write. Once you have it all laid out and you have
that story line, then you actually get
to write the story. Then you get to bring
it all together. Then your way of writing gets to come out of
you and come alive. And it's so much easier to write a story if you've already
written out those points. So I hope that this really
helps you that you are able to sit down and systematically
write out your points. Remember to write out the three points at the beginning first, your last three points, and then stretch those
middle points all the way in order to get a
finalized story line. And I hope you
enjoy the process, and I hope that you, you know, make a very suspenseful or
joyful or happy adventure for your main character and
your sub characters to go on. So that's it for now, and the last video
is going to tell you about your challenge.
Bye for now.
7. Challenge and End: Welcome back. So we're going to do the
challenge for today. I'm going to start you
off simple and small, but the most amount of work. So your challenge
today is to create your first three points
of your story line. Point number one, research, research, research your setting. Where do you want your
story to take place? What do you want
it to look like? How do you want it to be? What time period is
it going to be in? Is it another world
that you're creating? Take your time, do
a lot of research. Even in the name of
the town where I was, you know, that I wrote
about in my story. I did a lot of
research on creating that town and what would it
be like living in that town? You know, you can do
a lot of research on point number one,
which is setting. Point number two, is
your sub characters? Are they going to be related
to your main character? Are they going to be friends? Are they going to
just meet wherever? What are they going
to look like? Perhaps you could even draw
pictures of them so that you can get an idea of exactly
how you want them to look. Or you can also really work on their character,
their personality. You can do research
on personality types. Where are they born in their family line in
order to discover? Are they comedians?
Are they serious? Are they for justice and
look into things like that? What do their names mean? What Who do you want
these people to be? And do you want them to
have all good sides? Are there going to
be some bad sides to the sub characters? Many things to look at. And then, of course,
point number three is your main character. Who's your main
character going to be? What are they going to be like? Who are they going
to interact with? How do they talk? Do
they have an accent? Is there some kind of thing that differentiates them from other
people in their dialogue? Lots, lots, lots to talk about. So I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that this exercise gets you
starting to think about, I could really write
a fairy tale or Prince or Princess story,
and I hope that you do. So take care and have a
wonderful day. Bye for now.
Beth H.
