Taking Inventory to Fill in the Blanks

As I mentioned earlier, a certain fairy tale did keep cropping up as a possibility, and I tried really hard to dismiss it.

“The Handless Maiden”

Sometimes, as a writer, you'll find yourself sorting through an array of options, throwing out the ones that don't work and slowly narrowing down your list.

Sometimes, though, one of your rejected ideas creeps back to you in unguarded moments, volunteering itself again and again. It returns as many times as it takes for you to accept it, giving you more and more reasons why it is the right one for the story. As your experience grows, you learn to trust this persistence a bit more--if the idea keeps cycling back, if it wants to be used that badly, sometimes it is the best fit.

This was what happened with Lena's hands. I kept pushing the thought away, wanting to spare Lena that experience. Yes, she needs to lose something, some body part, but not her hands. First of all, it’s really violent, and I didn’t want that for Lena. Second of all, her hands represent her body's ability to turn her passion for inventing into reality, and Lena’s dream is such a vital, vibrant part of her.

And what finally convinced me was the fairy tale, "The Handless Maiden," specifically the version that Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés interprets in Women Who Run with the Wolves.

This book is well-known for a number of reasons. I didn't read it in its entirety until I was twenty-two, but I grew up with a copy of the book in the house within easy reach. My mother had read it in the 1990's and drew on its rewilding influence as she raised two daughters. Even the title was a talisman. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, Mo would just burst out: "Women Who Run with the Wolves!" as a reminder to me and my sister to keep our wildness.

Later, in college, I took a fairy tale course from Professor Beth Darlington, a Jungian psychologist who showed us how to interpret the stories specifically from a symbolic lens. She taught one chapter from this book as an example of how to do an interpretation.

In that chapter, Dr. Estés retells the story of “the Handless Maiden:” A girl allows her father to let someone else chop off her hands in order to save his life, and then she decides to move away from home. Through magical helpers, her needs are still met, and eventually, as she learns how to take care of herself better, including by setting stronger boundaries, her hands grow back.

Even years later, while plotting out the Ever Afters, this story haunted me for two reasons:

1. This Tale is particularly rugged even to someone like myself, who reads Grimm's more grim tales unflinchingly, and

2. Dr. Estés interprets this story as an illustration of the way people, especially female people, give their power away. They often cut off a piece of themselves when other people ask, and that part doesn't grow back until the person decides to reclaim it.

The latter part swirled around and around in my head. It wanted for a place in Lena's story.

Because even in the first two books in the series, I knew what held Lena back from reaching her potential:

She often let others, especially the Director, make her decisions for her.

Lena's trust wasn't a character flaw, per se. Because she was so young, it felt natural for her to defer to the authority of those older than her. As the youngest in a family that did their best to take good care of each other, she had a natural trust that the older people making the rules were doing so in the best interests of the community.

But I knew something that Lena didn't: the Director's judgment was compromised. The Director had experienced trauma in the last war--when they were children, the Snow Queen had been the Director's friend, and the Snow Queen had still betrayed the Director. Trauma damages your ability to see clearly, which can lead to faulty decisions and therefore dangerous consequences. This situation is even more dire when it exists in a leader of a community. The Director's dangerous consequences would impact not just her but everyone in the community she led. 

So, no one can fault Lena for trusting rules and the adults who used them to keep her safe. Lena wasn't wrong to trust. She did however need to be discerning about who to trust, and that’s a mistake common to most young people.

Through making bigger and better inventions, Lena was expanding her abilities and therefore her influence on the Ever Afters world. When you have influence, you also need to expand your personal responsibility for it and your awareness of its impact.—Otherwise, you may experience negative repercussions you don’t see coming.

Lena was enormously excited that she was able to make her dreams a reality, and if you’ve read the books, Lena tends to lose sight of things in her enthusiasm. For example, in Of Witches and Wind, I’d already written a scene where Lena’s enthusiasm for her inventions got her in trouble with the Director’s rules. She opened a permanent Portal in the middle of a safe haven for Characters who have a lot of enemies. Even though they weren't actively in the middle of a war, plenty of bad guys could have infiltrated through the permanent Portal Lena had so happily set up in her eagerness to recreate Madame Benne’s invention. In the first two books, this is the only instance where the Director scolds Lena, who is rattled—especially since she only broke the rules against permanent Portals on accident through sheer enthusiasm.

That is a potent touchstone, one powerful enough to shape the new normal she would reach by the end of the series. Lena needed to come into a two-fold realization of her own power:

• She needed to recognize that she could not substitute her own judgment by following the rules of well-meaning but traumatized adults.

• She needed become strategic about what inventions to create and when to create them and develop the courage to defend her decisions to those who more authority.

In a story, as in life, sometimes the best way for a Character to learn is through mistakes. “The Handless Maiden” story—as gruesome as it was—was the best fairy tale I knew that could walk Lena into those mistakes and get her out the other side.

Taking Inventory of Puzzle Pieces to Fill in the Blanks

Once I committed to Lena having “The Handless Maiden” as one of her Tales, I had enough puzzle pieces. I didn’t have all of them, but I knew I had as many as I needed to finish her story.

Puzzle Pieces:

• Original Normal (i.e. what was already written in books 1 and 2).

• Lena defeats General Searcaster.

• Lena develops the courage to take on General Searcaster and set boundaries with the Director.

• Lena loses her hands and becomes a sorceress.

• Lena and the Director have conflict around rules.

• Lena and General Searcaster fight, at least once.

• Lena recognizes that she can’t trust the judgment of all grown-ups, including the Director’s.

• Lena is in her power around her inventions and her authority over them. 

I then sorted these into a rough order to create a partial story structure. I’m going to go ahead and use a diagram in the opposite column, for illustration purposes, and please do use diagrams if they’re helpful to you. But at the time of writing the books, I only used my freewrites—I kept the rhythm of Lena’s story in my head, mentally moving scenes around until the conflict rose to a crescendo. The most intense events needed to happen last, so defeating General Searcaster, for example, would need to happen near the end of the series.

I’m choosing to use the single story diagram, because it’s all one character arc. But since each of these events is also its own mini story, it could also look something like this.

Sorting the puzzle pieces into a rough story helps bring clarity, but it’s not a full outline. It does, however, help you see what specifics you need to develop.