I had this idea about a character I wanted to write about. The idea was that this character would undergo radical changes over the course of the story. After a lot of thinking and jotting down notes, I finally found the right story for this character. The initial story idea (a short story) evolved into a pair of novels that led to a third novel.
Princess Moxie is an unusual protagonist. She's obnoxious, self-centered and often in a snit because someone didn't do what she wanted them to do. Moxie's favorite pose is hands on hips, scowling and tapping her toes. Readers don't like her.
So why did I create such a character? Because the great thing about Moxie is her character arc. By the end of Moxie's Problem, readers opinion of here has changed from annoyance to sympathy. By the end of Moxie's Decision, readers are hoping she will be successful in her quest to become the queen. That's a helluva change.
Character arcs aren't an on/off switch. The character can't be one way at the beginning and then a different way at the end with nothing in between. The story has to show the character slowly changing, in incremental steps. And some of the steps have to be negative ones, in which Moxie reverts back to her bad old ways. In effect, the character arc forms a story within the story.
Besides Moxie's story, the novels have a number of characters stolen from the Camelot legends. For instance, I have several battles between Camelot's Knights of the Round Table and the Saxon warriors led by the Hengist (an actual historical figure). However, instead of bloody shield walls, the battles take place on a football pitch using primitive rules and referees.
There are a number of other changes in my Camelot. Stonehenge for instance is a theater-in-the-round available for hire. Merlin investigates the magic of the mind using primitive Rorschach inkblot diagrams.
This strange Camelot and a few of Moxie's adventures bothered me for quite a while: How could I get readers to accept a Camelot that was so different from the beloved legends? One day the answer hit me: my Camelot was in a parallel universe! The perfect solution! And the Princess Moxie novels were launched!
Here are links to the Moxie novels:
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