Short Story - Romance - SOTL

The next short story I wrote in my creative writing class was supposed to be a romance. I didn't really have it in me to come up with a new romance, so I turned to my story ideas again. At this point in time, I hadn't written any part of School of the Legends, but I did have the concept for my "Beauty and the Beast" characters, Beau Bellerose and Ursula Lobo respectively. I decided to center my short story around them.

I wrote this short story in the first person, but when I eventually got around to writing SOTL, I decided that third person was easier because I once again had an ensemble cast, and writing The Secret Portal in a multi-perspective first person was hard enough.

The opening scene was a traditional meet-cute where Beau and Ursula literally ran into each other at the school, and Beau offered to carry her bags up to her dorm, I originally had Beau a year above Ursula, but I have since changed them to both being the same age, in their first year.

The second scene, Beau and Ursula walk through a garden, and it was during this part that I came up with Beau's power, that being plant manipulation, as a throwaway line referencing his cousin Jack, who is one of the main characters in SOTL. It was also here that I decided they were cousins to give them a connection. However, this draft gives the reference of the beanstalk a more accurate telling of the "Jack and the Beanstalk" story, while what I have in SOTL is much different.

I then have a scene where extremely eager and pushy triplets who desperately want to be Ursula's friend but end up pushing it too far. It sets Ursula off, and one of the triplets is sent flying into a locker. Later, another confronts her, accusing her of attacking someone who's been nothing but nice to her, which causes Ursula to lose control. To prevent herself from hurting anyone else, Ursula runs to her dorm, locking herself in as she begins to transform into a beast.

I ended up cutting most of the above because I ended up surpassing the word count, and I realized that the assignment was a romance not a story with a romantic subplot. Introducing the triplets and having a total of three scenes with them took up too much space, so I replaced them with a more cliche scene where Beau wants to get to know Ursula more, and she yells at him for being too pushy, which sets her off into the same outcome as the original.

In both versions, Beau goes to check on Ursula, although he apologizes in the latter version. When she doesn't answer and he hears a growl, Beau picks the lock with a plant and enters to see the beast. At first he believes the beast killed Ursula and fights it off with his plants, but after examining Ursula's torn clothes, he realizes there's no blood, and pieces together that the beast is Ursula. He calms the beast down, and she turns back into Ursula.

In the original version, Ursula goes to apologize to the triplets and they apologize to her too. In the edited version, the moment remains between Beau and Ursula. In the original, Beau and Ursula go back to continue what they planned to be a night of studying, and they end up making out. In the edited version, the moment with Beau comforting Ursula escalates to the romantic kiss.

Overall, I actually prefer the edited version, and I'll probably have something similar to that one when I get to actually writing these scenes in SOTL, although a similar encounter with the triplets will still likely be there, although I won't know for sure until I get there.

I'm really glad I got to write this, though, because it did spark me actually working more on SOTL that year, and got a good foundation for writing both Beau and Ursula's characters.