So, you know the novel I am working on now… the one called: The Seven Kingdoms… the one I showed you pictures of the piles of notes and plot lines and character description sheets and maps with the little arrows on them showing the movements of all the main characters for… (something I never tried doing before, frankly, because I am much more of a just-get-your-characters-into interesting-situations-and-then-figure-out-a-way-to-get-them-back-out kind of a writer)… the novel that you can find the first two chapters of if you click that button up in the top bar, the one also cleverly titled; The Seven Kingdoms…???  Yes, the novel where I intend to take the princesses back from the Disney corporation and fairy tales… that’s the one! You have been paying attention!

Well I am almost done with chapter three, and I have moved my first two princesses along to the third stop on their epic journey, with lots of interesting dialog and clever plot points and all that. The thing is… and this is the ‘thing’ that explains the ‘conundrum’ part of my title… but I needed a way to get the two princesses to the next island kingdom, to introduce yet another princess to add to my gang of kick-ass, I-ain’t-waiting-around-for-some-prince-to-save-my-butt princesses… and I decided to throw in a couple of new characters on the fly, so to speak.

These young men are brothers, both poor fishermen, that used to play with the princesses when they were all children… (this is a very unpretentious society we are talking about here, on my little make-believe world I created for this story)… and having them be fishermen gave me a convenient boat to cross the water in… but here is my dilemma:

Do I sent the two boys back home, and then reintroduce them later, or do I let them stay with the princesses?

Yes, keeping them with the princesses allows me to develop a slew of romantic entanglements and opens up chances for dialogs about male/female relationships, and the princesses are eventually going to need to raise an army to fight the bad kingdom.

On the other hand, it might change the original story dynamics in unforeseen ways. Also, since they sort of borrowed their father’s boat without asking permission, and both the boat and the boys themselves are sort of needed at home to help keep their family alive, it would sort of make them look like assholes if they keep the boat and don’t return…

Wait a minute… what if they send the boat back, along with a note saying not to worry, but, while they can’t yet explain what they are doing, they will return as soon as they are able… ooooh… and what if, perhaps, the princesses send along a little money to help tide… (ha, good fisherman pun)… the family over?

That way, the ‘seed’, if you will, of the resistance movement is planted, I keep the opportunities for romance and dialog open, and I have two trained sailors who can eventually become admirals in the resistance fleet. The boys can be loyal sidekicks in the Sam Gamgee sense, or develop into main characters.

Or, conversely, I can just kill the boys off if they start to get in the way of my original plot… oh yeah… I can do that… I am a freekin’ writer!

Hey, thanks for letting me talk through all this with you. That was very helpful.

You are such a good listener.