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The Fairy Books 01
Most stories featuring a dashing hero going off on a grand adventure to save a captured princess have some sort of fairy to guide the hero and give him moral support. But the hero always ends up with the Princess in the end! Well, what if the hero fell for the fairy instead?
In "I Gave Up Saving The Princess To Go Out With The Fairy", the Princess of Nogard is kidnapped by a bunch of trolls. At his wit's end, King Radius Enclavius sends out a lone fairy to find a hero with the potential needed to save his daughter. Love, Laughs and Lots of Training await!
The premises of your story is interesting. Here is my take on your first chapter.
I would recommend viewing Disney’s classic movie, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and study the birthday celebration. Its very easy to understand the entire kingdom is extremely happy that a princess is born. Obviously there is a difference in a birth of a royal and celebrating another birthday. In your story, it feels more like a private dinner or something. For as much money that has been spent on this event, doesn’t seem like a whole lot is happening in the capital. Food stalls in the capital, jesters, maybe even a jousting competition in honor of the princess. Should feel like a holiday. I would recommend some mingling with minor or background characters to make things feel alive. Have a foreign dignitary show up and honor the royal family.
Unless this is an isekai story, I would avoid making comparison between the modern world. Any reader understands the value of gold. Its better to create a financial transaction in story that the reader can understand gold’s value. Example: someone bought a purebred horse for fifty gold pieces as a present to the princess. That’s a lot of gold for a horse! That horse must be really something, yes?
Also, unless its a key detail of how financially irresponsible the leaders of this kingdom are, no one should be spending this kind of money on a single event if they have that low of a budget. This country is already ruined if they are spending money like that for a birthday celebration.
The reaction of the king to his daughter’s abduction is extremely flat. As the story is currently, I pictured the king on the throne pointing at one person: “Give me a solution! You don’t have one? Next!” The king should be enraged and demanding his vassals prepare his warhorse. He’ll go and recuse his daughter himself. That shows a loving fatherly character and earned respect from a reader’s viewpoint. His people should be the ones trying to calm him down and tell the king he can’t go because he could get hurt. The vassals should be reaching these conclusions about the knights being gone and such. Trying to come up with ideas on how to save the princess.
If the core of the knights are off training, establish that it would be pointless to recall them because they are so far away. It would take weeks to mobilize them and bring them back for this rescue mission. If they are merely training next door or off at some random province, well… GET THEM OVER HERE! Rescuing a princess is far more important. You could say, the kingdom sent the knights to that location as a guise for troop deployment for a pending conflict with the kingdom’s neighbors. That makes more sense as to why they cannot return.
You need to introduce the fairy as soon as possible and not at the latter half of the intro chapter. The princess is the star of the show as far as this chapter indicates. If she is merely a plot device, treat her as such and make the fairy the star. You need to show right away this fairy protagonist is important and has a personality.
Its a party, right? Maybe the fairy is struggling to get some food because everyone is bouncing around and doesn’t notice her.
Give her a gimmick, like its hard for her to show her beautiful wings because of her weak powers, or there is a nasty tear in her wings so she doesn’t show them often. Fairies are these beauty supernatural creatures, yes? Maybe this fairy is so plain Jane looking, people mistake her for an average human. Further expand on her fellow fairies ostracizing her because she is weak. I want to sympathize for this character to the point of wanting to give her a hug and assure her everything will be alright.
I would recommend reading: ‘The White Cat’s Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King’s Lap’ as an example of showing value in supernatural beings. Are fairies in this story rare and important? Does the kingdom revere them?
Thanks for the constructive criticism!
I’m taking some notes, and I’m going to try to fix some of the issues in chapter 1.
Hoped it helped.
I just thought of this but maybe toy with the idea that the weak fairy and the princess have a friendship with one another. Could explain why a weak representative of the fairies is present before high society at all. If other fairies don’t like her because she is weak, they probably would have left her behind. But if the princess knows and wants her there, kind of hard excluding her from the party.
Lots of improvement from start to finish. Really well done.