Wednesday, November 12, 2003

   And so it begins . . .
Sorry sorry sorry about the length!! I went through and divided it into as small as sections as I could . . . and this is what you get. n_n;

Jack had been considered a nuisance by all the people in his home village of Midsummer for as far back as he could recall. Even as a youngster he was invariably asking questions that not only annoyed his elders, but caused them to have disturbing thoughts about many things that had before been taken for granted. He also had an unsettling tendency to act on a whim; a trait that in Midsummer was considered little short of diabolical, as well as just plain dangerous. As a rule, no one in Midsummer ever did anything other than what was to be expected, and Jack’s capricious streak had gotten him into trouble with his elders more times than he cared to remember. So it was that when he announced that he was going off to see the world,—a statement that would have been atrocious coming from anyone else—the villagers merely sighed with resignation. With never a backwards glance to the place of his birth, Jack walked out of Midsummer, and into our story.

Now, I’ve heard many people ask why it is that the main character of every fantasy story always seems to triumph against great odds and defeat the evil villain even when there is really no hope of them doing so. The answer is fairly obvious, and I’m sure if they had but stopped to think a moment, they would have come up with this: simply, no one would be satisfied with a story that ended before it began. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather read a story about the lowly scullery boy who goes off to fight dragons and becomes a hero, than a story about the lowly scullery boy who goes off and gets eaten by a dragon in the first chapter. You see, if the characters die, then there is obviously no way you can write a story about them. It’s not that the good characters always prevail; it’s that no one bothers to write stories about the times when they don’t!

Our story begins with Jack walking down the road with little more than the clothes on his back and a small coin-purse that jingled cheerfully with his stride. Passers-by would have thought him without a care in the world; and they would have been right, for indeed he had none. He had no plans of where he would like to go, only a vague idea of someplace where he might put his inventiveness to use.

Inventing things was the one pastime that Jack dearly loved, and he felt that his talent was wasted in dreary old Midsummer. To him there was no greater joy then taking an imperceptible idea and transforming it into a wondrous reality. Since the world was a large place, he felt sure that he could undoubtedly find someone, somewhere, who could appreciate his talents.

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