Preparation

Okay for wwwW I'm gonna do something fantasy like, lighthearted, and quite tradtional in the sense of princesses and princes, knights, magic and etc. I'm aiming for something that would appeal to children but that adults would also love as well (the way that Harry Potter does, but I don't want it to be anything like HP)

So far I have very little plot in my head though, and looking for some twists I might on this old genre to make it a little different.

Any ideas oh wonderful writing companions?

Trying to find the time (as usual)!

You could switch the whole gender role around. So that it's the princesses that go off and fight the bad guys and become knights while the princes are helpless. :)

No Excuses. Just Write.
SoCNoC - Untitled Chick Lit
Freeing the Flame - 30,065/40,000 words rewritten for May

I like how Shrek played on that and has the princess waiting for the cliche fairy tale that never happens.

There are a lot of possible spins on this, and relatively few people do but the smallest change.

There is the Don Quixote idea where only he thinks that the fantasy is real and it isn't really, but you hope that he's right anyway. It could be told from one person's perspective and then you reveal at the end that it's a mental patient who is completely bonkers.

You could start with a mental patient and it turns out that he's dreaming that and he's actually in a fantasy world.

You do realize that in any fantasy world, most of it is completely mundane, and only the wizards and heroes see anything different from a typical medieval world.

You could tell the tale from a different perspective, the non-hero, non-wizard who has a normal life except every once in a while, some magical thing happens that he doesn't bat an eye at.

You could have a modern fantasy with magic in the modern world (I reviewed "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman on my review blog - modern fantasy - "American Gods" by the same author is also modern).

If you place it in the modern world, you don't have to make anything up except the bits that are different - funny, Harry Potter is also set in modern times, but it's easy to forget.

There was one fantasy I remember where giving a specific shop clerk a certain coin would transfer you into a different world.

Also, there's "Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!" where a modern business man loses his wife and while trying to forget her and move on answers a weird ad in the newspaper and becomes the king of a magical kingdom.

Finally, to keep this at less than "Chris Length", I will end at: someone is touring Europe and buys a cool antique item at a shop in France somewhere - they take it back to NZ and because NZ is a "new world" without so much magic in it (Europe has all kinds of medieval type wizardry in it), the magic item stands out and unusual people come looking for it.

Travis.
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http://cottreau.blogspot.com
http://cottreaureviews.blogspot.com/

In the same vein as Kerryn's idea, you could have two frogs talking about who the Prince Charming is of the frog world for their lovely daughter. Of course, when they kiss for the first time, one of the frogs turns into a human :-)

...or maybe an animal that frogs might tend to think are a little strange - a rainbow trout or something.

Andrew Chilton - http://kapiti.geek.nz/
SoCNoC 2008 - Unknown and Untitled

Okay these ideas are great. So far I'm really loving Kerryn's idea, and Travis and Andy have given me some things to think about and some decisions to make!

Thanks guys!

Trying to find the time (as usual)!