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So, here’s the deal. I’ve got a new story that I’m working on the characters for, and I have the beginning of the story. I don’t have the ending though.
I takes place in Scandinavia around the year 1000 AD, where a man is heading home in the middle of winter storm and he stumbles across an unconscious body. He takes the person home to his wife where they care for this person. It turns out to be a young woman who can’t remember anything about herself. They do discover that she is Irish based on her accent. Over the next year she becomes a part of the family, acting like a big sister to their son. At a festival where a bunch of people from other villages gather together. While walking around with the son, an Irish person comes up to her saying that they know each other and it turns out she used to be a slave to a family in another village.
That is as far as I’ve gotten in my outline for the story. I was wondering if anyone might have some ideas on what comes next, or even ideas for the ending.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder Maybe before the Irish woman meets the Irish man, she could be wondering where she came from constantly, all the while getting more and more comfortable around her new family. So when the Irish man comes in, she wants to see where she came from, and see her old family and friends, but she also doesn’t want to go back into slavery, and she loves her new family. That gives her a strong dilemma that keeps building up throughout the book. Then something action packed happens like a fire or other catastrophe. Or someone attacks where she lives (although I know nothing about Scandinavian history, so, I don’t know if somebody actually attacked Scandinavia…). And then she HAS to choose between Ireland and Scandinavia.
That’s my idea 🙂
You can pronounce it however you want.
@dekreel Hmm, I hadn’t thought about her going back to see her birth family. That’s a really interesting idea.
I do know that I will have to do some research on Scandinavian history for several reasons, including picking a time and specific region setting for the story. That research might help with an action packed situation.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
Something to note might be that the Irish in that period were Christians/Catholics, but the pervading religion in Scandinavia was that of the Norse gods such as Odin and Thor. A possible theme could be your MC’s attempts to teach her friends Christianity (not in the normal, Christian fiction book way, this actually was a big theme back in the 1000’s, and Scandinavia did eventually convert to Christianity). The Bible does tell servants to obey their masters, so she might decide to go back to the family that owned her as a slave, but they could become Christians and free their slaves?
Is she going to be amnesic throughout the book, or will she recover her memory at some point?
I like @dekreel’s idea about having her conflicted between her old family and the new. Especially if she doesn’t remember the old family, but they still love her and want her.
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@skredder by the way, amnesia is one of my favorite plots!
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@rochellaine I had thought about MC teaching about Christianity, but with amnesia I don’t think she’d remember. However, depending on the exact time frame I could reverse it and have the new family teach her.
Freeing the slaves though, that does give me a very interesting idea.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder There are several different types of amnesia. Usually with the type of amnesia I think you are talking about the amnesics are able to remember basic things like tying shoes, riding a bicycle, and reading. Sometimes the amnesic effects are random, such as a bilingual forgetting one language, but remembering another. (That could actually be interesting because the Irish girl would probably originally know two or three languages, Irish-Gaelic, Norwegian/other Scandinavian language, and possibly Latin, if she ever read the Bible.) So she could actually remember her religion, or remember part of it, and try to remember the rest. Like, she remembers that she believed in One God, instead of the many her new family worships, but doesn’t remember why, or who He is, but when she meets the Irish man, he can tell her.
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@rochellaine The amnesia I was thinking of was where she has skills but she doesn’t know she has them until she happens to do them. For instance, she doesn’t know that she can speak Gaelic until it just comes out one day. It’s suspected that she can from her accent, but she can’t actively think about speaking it.
It is possible that she can have feelings about her religion. Like some things feel right about it and some things feel wrong or uncomfortable about the Norse gods. Having the Irish guy tell her about Christianity would be a bit too far into the book. However, there could be other Irish folk in that village that can teach her.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder Have you ever read the Viking Quest series by Lois Walfrid Johnson? It is about an Irish girl who is kidnapped by vikings and made a slave. It’s a very interesting series, and one of my favorites. It would give you a good starting idea of the culture and history of the time period, and you could research from there on.
Can I say it again? The series is GREAT! It’s WONDERFUL! PLEASE TRY IT!!! 🙂 🙂
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@rochellaine Yes! I absolutely love that series (as evidenced by the fact I have read them several times over and am trying to read them again)! It really is a great series. I’m just worried about copying it.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder I’m sure you’ll be able to do it without copying. Something I was thinking about was the fact that the Vikings captured people from several other nations besides Ireland. I read a G.A. Henty book about that, called The Dragon and the Raven. It was very interesting, and dealt with the Vikings and their culture, but the hero was British.
And just for fun, you might like to see the Tom Lovell paintings of the Vikings. I have for a long time wanted to write a story for his picture entitled A Viking Selling a Slave Girl to a Persian Merchant, but I have also been afraid of copying Lois Walfrid Johnson’s books too much. 🙂
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@skredder
Are you familiar with character arcs? Because having one of those might help you figure out where your character is and where they are going 🙂
Also with all this talk about amnesia I would suggest doing some research on the topic! Though maybe you already have?and I was so confused
@notawriter I do have part of her character arc planned out. It’s kinda different from what I’m used to. I do know that people with amnesia often have a change of personality and likes, and writing that while having people know her as she is now and others knowing how she was before is throwing me for a wee bit of a loop.
Turns out this story requires a wee bit more research than I had originally thought. More history research is definitely needed (which will change the plot just a little bit depending on the location and the specific time), amnesia research (I know a little bit, but need more), and snow blindness (this is important at the beginning of the story). That’s what I need to do for research right now, and I have a sneaky suspicion that I will be needing a whole lot more before the story is finished. 🙂
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder
I love how writing forces you to learn new things!But then since they are for stuff you are choosing to write, its usually something you would find interesting. (Of course sometimes you gotta learn loads of boring stuff.. *yawns*)
and I was so confused
@notawriter There was actually another story I wrote that had quite a bit to do with the Danes, and I bought an edition of the Danish history. There was a lot of interesting things I read in that. Combining history and what is written in epic sagas (such as Beowolf, which I actually enjoyed) was interesting and quite fun. There was quite a bit of symbolism that I found and some pretty interesting architecture and geographic locations. For a few months I knew the exact location of every Italian restaurant and antique store in Southern London…and practically every flight from London to a particular city in Norway to Greenland to New York. Figuring out those flights to get three different groups of people to certain places at certain times while keeping in mind timezones was like playing tetris. It was pretty fun!
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
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