Week 11: Famous Last Words -- Arthur and Guyon Storytelling

I'm fairly proud of the work I did this week for my storytelling post. My main reason is that unlike most of my retellings, where I mostly kept to the story while deviating in a particular aspect, I completely created this story myself. Not the beginning of the story -- that was definitely from the original Faerie Queene, what with Prince Arthur and Sir Guyon chasing after a man who was chasing Florimell in turn. However, the rest of it was mine: Prince Arthur and Sir Guyon being led into a cave while chasing after both, the discovery that Florimell and the man were not human, the idea of them becoming a two-headed serpent (though I'm sure this idea isn't new to mythology and folklore), and the fight scene.

Actually, if there was one thing that I wish could have been better, it would have been the fight scene. I wish it could have been more epic, but by the time I ended my original fight scene, the word count was somewhere between 900 and 1000 words. And since I didn't feel like cutting back after going over the word count (since I probably would have gone all out), I decided to not rewrite the fight scene.

To tell you the truth, I was at first debating between creating a fight scene or a mind games scene. And what I mean by 'mind games scene' was a dialogue-heavy and tense challenge, where high stakes (in this case Arthur and Guyon's lives) were raised and hopes rested on the mind, rather than on the body. Well, I guess I wouldn't have made it psychologically twisted (though that definitely would have been interesting). Instead, I would have done a riddle challenge, where Arthur asked the creature/supernatural beings three riddles. He would have won if he had stumped them even once. But that wouldn't have been hair-raising. It would have been anti-climactic, since I would have made Arthur win on the third riddle.

It would have been interesting, I suppose, to have gone with the riddle idea, but only if Arthur lost and a fight scene or something to divert the monster trying to kill them appeared before Arthur and Guyon died. I only thought about this now. At the time I was writing the story, it never occurred to me; I believed the only way he could logically be saved was to win the challenge.

Anyways, those are my thoughts concerning my story for week 11, Arthur and Guyon.

Two-headed snake

(this is what the water serpent is supposed to look like)

(Source)