Squeetus summer book club: The Goose Girl, chapter 2
Welcome to the annual Squeetus Summer Book Club! Join me weekdays in July for discussions of The Goose Girl.
POV
And so with this chapter we jump from the floating POV and fairy tale style of chapter 1 into the close 3rd person POV following Ani. I knew this was a risky thing to do. I really wanted that first chapter to have a fairy tale feel, but it was too much (too distancing, for one thing) to maintain for an entire novel. Would readers who didn't like the style of chapter 1 stick around till chapter 2? Would readers who did like that style feel jilted when chapter 2 changed?
Time jump
Between chapters 1 & 2 we skip over several years. I originally wrote them. I cut several chapters as being unnecessary from this section about draft 3. Then again around draft 10 I cut out the original chapter 2, but posted it on my website for the curious. It shows, among other things, how Ani first met Falada.
Selia the cat
There's a couple comparisons in this chapter to Selia being like a cat. Ani is often described as birdlike. (similies! foreshadowing!)
A talking horse!
This was from the original fairy tale, of course. Though I was frustrated with that tale because Falada never spoke. What good is a talking horse that doesn't speak? Falada, incidentally, is one of only two characters given names in the original Grimm Brothers tale. (The other is Conrad--sometimes called Curdkin.) A friend told me that "falada" in Portuguese means "spoken." A talking horse can be silly, and I didn't want Falada to be Mr. Ed. The silent communication seemed to work better for a more realistic story.
pg 27, "the mare screeched, stepped over him, straddling his body protectively"
I had the opportunity of taking horseback-riding lessons when I was younger for a summer. It was magical for me. Once while riding, a girl beside me fell from her horse. When she hit the ground, she broke her arm. She lay there, crying, but for some time the instructor couldn't get to her because her horse had stepped over her and was harassing and screeching at anyone who tried to get near. I was struck by that horse's concern for the girl, even though it was counterproductive at the time.
pg 29, "she felt only half-formed"
The tale of the Goose Girl is really about a half-formed girl, someone young, sheltered, incomplete who comes into her own by first losing everything then gaining more than she had through struggle. While I was tempted to start out with a heroine with a lust of life and adventure who learns swordplay, I felt that wouldn't be true to the original tale.