Tagline: It appeared a little bit of bad luck was going to bring a lot of happiness to Princess Amanda...In a Nutshell: Amanda is a princess-for-hire but gets a flat tire on her way to her first gig. A man comes to her rescue.
Observations: I feel like I've read a story about a birthday party princess before, but it doesn't really matter. Story elements have a way of reappearing in Woman's World stories. This was still fun and cute.
I haven't talked about story structure in a long time, so today's a good day for that.
The first part of the story introduces the heroine, her situation, the hero and his daughter. It takes us continuously all the way from Amanda's flat tire to the party.
Then, notice there is a "tell" paragraph to transition us to after the party. There's no room to show everything in a Woman's World story, so when writing your own stories, make strategic use of summarizing the action like Hendrickson did. This transitional paragraph kind of serves as the second "act" of the story.
In the last portion of the story, there is no "black moment," per se. You have that worry in the back of your mind that Eric is married because he has a young daughter, but really--this is a Woman's World story. The reader knows deep down he's single, and yet the tension is still there subtly. Black moments are good, but not necessary.
Photo Credit: Alesgab93 via Wikimedia Commons
5 comments:
I think this is a clever story. I like the bad luck turning into something good and the last line brings it all together. "I have to fix your coach" is the cutest. The editor in me (such as it is) had a problem with the second paragraph. I would have taken out "carefully". It's redundant and I don't like "care" being repeated in two consecutive lines. It may have been written by the editor, but if not, it should have been corrected by the editor, in my opinion.
My thoughts, exactly, Melanie - I'd have liked to have seen the princess changing her own tyre, too. And I'm sure the same theme was used not too long ago. But the timing in the magazine isn't down to the writer and it was nicely written with a good feel to it, so I could see why they couldn't say no.
I loved the theme of this story and how well written it was. The characters were so cute it made me giggle.
I loved the little girl's reaction to the princess. Cute story.
Who among us hasn't wanted to be a princess anyway?
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