The Dragon Story

I have been reminded quite a lot about my love of dragons recently; I found a rather addictive game on my

phone the point of which is to raise dragons, I found a video on making origami dragons, and I have been promised to be lent Eragon once exams are over, because it came to light that I still haven't read it.

I fell in love with dragons when I read Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider in year 5 or 6; I got it from the school library, and tried to read it fast so that I'd have finished it by the time I had to give it back (it was a big book), and cried after I did give it back. I believe it is the one book, or one of the very few books, I class as one of my favourites that I have not reread (that's another addition to my post-exams reading list, methinks).

So, I thought I'd talk a little about my one novel idea that actually has a dragon in it, albeit not very much. You'd think that a writer who likes dragons would have a dragon in like every single story, but apparently not. My lack of dragons makes me sad. I need to write about more dragons.

Anyway, this story started out life in a small black and red notebook with squared paper at my grandma's house when I was about twelve or thirteen. I believe it was the first project I ever took seriously (though of course, between the ages of six and ten I took my badly illustrated, badly handwritten, badly stapled together books very seriously - until I got bored of them a couple of hours after starting them).

What will from here on in be referred to as The Dragon Story was a fantasy story (naturally), though it didn't have a name and still doesn't now. I remember reading an extract out at my school's creative writing club (which I had only just joined), thinking it was brilliant - and looking back, I completely understand why the older students struggled to compliment me. It began completely unplanned - even as I wrote the first lines at my grandma's house I'd hardly even thought about it - and when I did start planning it partway through, the plot was over-the-top, carried by weak characters with few motives, who lived in a world that had no history (although it did have a map that I slaved over for hours and hours and have since lost the original of, so I only have bad photocopies).

The map shrank in the wash.

I recall one particularly melodramatic scene inspired by my favourite song (I Was Only Dreamin' by Bryan Adams - no longer my favourite song, but still close to my heart), in which my character fell asleep on the beach and woke up to find his lover gone - and he comes to the conclusion that she was merely part of his dream, and falls into despair until she reappears a few minutes later, much to his delight. Does that portray the levels of bad we're talking about here?

Naturally, my protagonists were going to win against the bad guys (who had a stupid, and stupidly long, name made up of a load of French words stuck together), and the two characters mentioned previously were going to get married and live happily ever after.

Good start.

So where does the dragon come into this? And why am I writing about this story that I abandoned when I was thirteen?

To answer the first question, I shall have to tell you a little about the plot. The first part of the story involved my characters fleeing literally to the other side of the world from the bad guys, until they found help in the form of an elf friend of one of theirs, who advised them to go to Wise Dragon (creative name, I know), who lived in a cave under a mountain which he never left (nice to know that my one dragon is an awesome, fearsome dragon). I'm not even sure my characters ever got as far as Wise Dragon except for in my plan, but Wise Dragon was going to reveal a few secrets about my characters' identities and send them off on their noble quest - he was rather an important plot point.

To answer the second question - I have a bit of a habit of merging numerous story ideas; so, this story has become embroiled in a rather large network of sequels and companion novels to Barnabus' Balloons which incorporates a great number of previously-thought-of, sometimes abandoned ideas, and a few new ones. Therefore, this story now takes place in the same world - and in some parts, the same queendom - as Barnabus' Balloons, but some years after the end of it, and also involves the same enemies as it, which no longer have a ridiculous group name. Basically, this particular link to the companion novel network (which may perhaps one day be something akin to Terry Pratchett's many, many Discworld novels) stemmed from my desire to replace these evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil antagonists, and "hey look, I already have some more realistic villains with more plausible motives, why not just borrow those?" 

As I am mostly focussing on Barnabus' Balloons at the moment (apparently my concentration levels have increased from my days of badly illustrated, badly handwritten "books"), The Dragon Story is currently little more than a couple of initial chapters and a vague plan, but I do know that it will still involve Wise Dragon (who, unlike the antagonists, will keep his name, I imagine) and the plot will still revolve around a journey however the ending will not be as happy as my thirteen-year-old self intended. :)