Topic: Troubles in a Fairy Tale Kingdom

[Christine B.]

Hello,

I am short on ideas: I am looking for something that could be causing political or economic problems in a fairy tale kingdom. Something like a drought or a famine...but what else?

Thanks!

[AmandaSue]

Gingerbread men running around leaking politically sensitive material.

[AmandaSue]

A crash in the market exchange of magic beans.

The entire crop of apples being poisoned.

A magical pot overfilling and flooding the entire town with porridge.

Haha, ok, I'm done. But I could do this for days. The book I'm working on now is all about different fairy tales in the modern world, so....yeah I think about this a lot.

[Eric Hammond]

If you seek something less Shrek-like, perhaps there is a power struggle in which royal houses feud over worthiness to rule--who has the better lineage, the purer magic, etc.

[Christine B.]

Thank you for the great ideas. I love the image of rogue gingerbread men! But the poison apples or power struggle between houses probably work better in my story. Thank you, my creative BB friends!

[Larissa]

Haha! AmandaSue, LOVE your ideas! So funny!

Power struggles, bandits overtaking caravans (causing shortages of whatever), plague.

[Karen de Foy]

How about some sort of quirky curse cast by a witch or fairy? Or maybe even a badly-cast curse that's gone wrong somehow and is even worse than intended?

[Christy]

Or a genie who has taken all the wonderful things and put them in a secret cave?

[dewsanddamps]

Gingerbread men running around leaking politically sensitive material.

You, madame, are a genius.

[TracyH]

Maybe think along the lines of Princess Acadamy? There's something in Farrah's kingdom (that maybe they don't even know they have?) that Cecile knows is there, and wants desperately. I like the way you're thinking, my friend

[xC0000005]

I'd riff on fairy tales.  Someone ate a gingerbread house, and came down with shingles from eating the roof.  There's a shortage of dwarves, meaning that princesses have to make do with less than seven (in fact, it turns out that some of the less well off princesses might be using children, and not dwarves).  Labor laws found out about the elves in the shoe factory.  Pigs have stolen all the straw to make houses from.

[jancoates]

The extremely high price of gold leading to thievery and skulduggery - something involving a King Midas character...

[Christine B.]

Thank you for the great ideas! I am definitely seeing much more chaos in my fairytale kingdom already--just what I hoped!

Thanks as always, guys!

[Traci @ITD]

Goblins in the sewers spreading rumors.

A kingdom starving and falling into disrepair because a bad little elf (ahem, not naming names or nothing, Rumplestiltskin -- you didn't hear it from me) keeps turning all the straw into gold. You can't eat gold. You can't thatch a roof with gold. You can't build with gold bricks. Hmm, or can you?

Trolls living beneath all the bridges charging tolls to weary travelers and daily commuters. Higher ups secretly giving them protection for a cut of the money they collect.

A man who holds all the secrets to saving the people, has fallen into a deep sleep beneath a large tree.

All the evil step-mothers have created a secret society in an attempt to take over the world!

[chip.amber]

Some kind of general addiction, like kids playing all day long to some new stupid game, or people spending their whole time in some sort of medieval social network.