Hey all,
I realize I have not been active at all for .. well .. years now (for which my apologies) but I need some help now, so I come crawling back
When my kid was born, I have always had the idea of writing him a story for his birthday every year, but so far have failed to do so. In 4 months time he'll be turning five, and I figure if I don't get started now, I never will. However, I would love some feedback/input on the world, characters and style I am planning. Since I'm planning to publish these on our webcomic site, I figure it's okay for me to ask in here
The idea is to have a new story for him at least every year on his birthday, with the series growing as he ages (so it keeps up with his development). Of course, while I'm writing this for him, it should be appropriate and understandable for all other kids as well (the idea is to print a small copy of each story to give as a present to each of his classmates on his birthday, as well as publish online).
The main character in the series will be a faerie girl who, due to reasons I have not worked out yet, can neither do magic nor fly (I picture her with a damaged wing, bit like Nemo). She gets teased a bit about this by the other faeries, but she doesn't mind too much. Being on the ground gives her a different perspective (literally) to the others, and she has many friends in the low-on-the-ground animal group.
She's very smart, and is constantly creating inspector gadget-like woodpunk machines and contraptions to let her do things other faeries do with magic.
The underlying goals behind the character are:
- To show a girl enjoying and being good at maths and engineering
- To show that 'disabilities' can be overcome and that they don't make somebody a lesser person.
First story: Dragon Tea PartyIn the first story, our hero is working on some machine when she hears a lot of noise outside. Going out she finds her friend the hedgehog who tells her the other faeries have been kidnapped by a big dragon (there's a bit of maths here, with the hedgehog saying the dragon took three in one paw, two in the other and four with his tail, and our hero figuring out that means there's nine taken).
Our hero then sets out to find them, which involves climbing to the dragon's nest on a tall mountain. There she finds her friends have been put in little cages to provide lights for the dragon who has some friends over for a tea party. Having no magic, she can sneak around in the dark and with some derring-do manages to free the other faeries and take them safely home again.
Character designAs said, the main character is a young female faerie. I'm currently thinking she's blue-skinned with bright pink hair (all the faeries have very diverse colours of skin, hair and wings, so no racism here). She has butterfly style wings, of which one is damaged.
She wears a skirt so it's visually clear she's a girl even if she doesn't act according to stereotypes, but the skirt is more like a kilt in style. I'll probably switch her to pants in later stories when everything is well established (and might well put some of the boy faeries in skirts too). The skirt has a big pocket (or more) that's full of little McGuyverisms. She wears a toolbelt with some tools in it (not sure yet which ones are appropriate for woodpunk) and several pouches. Whereas most faeries are barefoot, she wears sturdy boots.
So that's it, my new project. I would really really love any and all feedback and suggestions. This is the first time I'll be writing for such young children.
Also, I suck at names, so I would love some suggestions for the name of the main character (suggestions in English, Dutch and Norwegian are welcome since those will be the initial languages we'll be making this in).
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