The Little Princess of the Forest

Disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. To the readers, this review will contain lots of spoilers, so I suggest you read the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

According to the description, this is a retelling of "one of the wildest fairy tales" the author has heard. There's also a conversational tone at the end of the story, resembling a recited tale, which carries onto the first page.

The first page has a bit of exposition about the poor woman. Some adjectives like "poor" and "days" are repeated for emphasis. This is a good technique, as a lot of adjectives have been sprinkled throughout, and this shows readers which ones to pay most attention to while envisioning the story. These specific words also evoke sympathy for the woman, given her financial situation and her husband having to work long hours. Choice of diction like "almost always" and "everyday", along with descriptors like "thin" and "raggedy", all lend to the overall atmosphere of a miserable life.

If there's one advice I'd give, it'll be to avoid overusing adjectives. This could be used effectively at times---for example, when quickly characterizing or describing something which isn't the main focus of a story---but too many would divert the reader's attention and lose their focus. Furthermore, it weakens the impact of other adjectives when everything is described. A caveat: the use of the phrases "lovely" and "darling laugh" to describe the baby girl is a good way of showing contrast---she is the sole source of happiness and joy in the woman's life; the only positive adjective in a sea of negative ones.

This sets up the first choice and conflict nicely. The woman goes about her day as normal, going through her chores and milking her cow, while lulls the reader into a false sense of normalcy. Then the details follow: the baby followed her as she balanced the bucket on her head. It's the foundation of what's to come. Finally, the climax of the scene: the eagle picks up her child and flies away. Based on the earlier characterization, readers can see how this is a terrible situation for the lady to be in.

WRITING STYLE

As mentioned earlier, the overuse of adjectives is prevalent in some parts of the story: "these windows had thick strong shutters, and the house was painted in pink and gold and green." Perhaps using specific nouns and concrete imagery, or verb-based sentences, or even literary devices like metaphors, similes and pathetic fallacy would be a great way to change up the way description is written.

I noticed a number of typos and grammatical errors like missing full stops, but nothing that made it unreadable. (Also, it's "should have", not "should of"). A quick proofread would fix these.

There's good use of alliteration to describe the monster: "With a rush and a roar something massive, dark and mean rushed up the long stairway around the trunk of the tree." The sibilance, "stomped around the house, snuffling and snorting", combined with a verb-based sentence, is a good choice here to characterize it with harsh sounding words.

Something this story achieves is that it captures the essence of a tale being recounted. From the use of repeated adjectives to the longer sentences, this story seems to have a certain rhythm that lends nicely to being read around. It's like the narrator stops to provide important asides to the audience, whether that's to impart important lore to the story or switch to another perspective to keep kids entertained. The use of choices such as "What about the witch's son though" and "What happened next?" puts the reader in the perspective of an interested audience member as this story is told. Nicely done and it matches the description before the storygame too.

CHARACTERS & PLOT

The first character that readers are introduced to is the poor lady. She loses her daughter at the start, but it is her daughter who becomes the protagonist of the story. Despite her only appearing for a few brief scenes, she's characterized well: the repetitiveness of her screams are a realistic way to convey her shock and dismay over the theft.

As for the two eagles, unlike the trope of the evil step parents in fairytales, they seem to treat The Little Princess very well. There's just the slightest sense that they might be using fear as a way to keep their adopted daughter from venturing out beyond their house, but maybe that's just me being influenced too much by the Mother Gothel and Rapunzel dynamics.

The Little Princess has the internal conflict of choosing to obey her parents (stay home) or find a source of fire (venture out into the forest). Maybe it's just the more distancing nature of 3rd person pov, but the protagonist doesn't seem to have strong motives for her actions. She fulfills the archetype of the naive, innocent child and lacks a sense of danger. For example, she lets the old woman in without asking about who has been hunting her, only cheering at her performing magic with her wand. In part, I get this is the way young children act. Though she seems more passive in regards to the plot than reactive.

A piece of writing advice that has stuck with me is, "Don't let your character be a punching bag for the plot". In such stories, things happen to them, rather than them influencing the course of their story based in their actions (which are, of course, rooted in their core values and beliefs). Otherwise the story could be a bunch of unrelated things happening with the protagonist just reacting to them. Regarding the path to stay home, I was pleasantly surprised that it lasted longer than I thought, but it was full of one-link pages until the end. The narrative randomly switches to the monster returning to his mum, then the other characters returning to find the protagonist in a state of coma (but for some reason they don't do anything about it so maybe she was better off being stuck with her original family). The prince finally finds her and wakes her up by...pulling out the claw? Why didn't her adopted parents think to do that? Ah yes, they are willing to travel for months to find a diamond ring for their daughter, but the second she is unconscious with a claw in her chin, oh no, they must abandon her due to being 'broken hearted'. I get this was done to progress the plot, though it feels somewhat artificial considering their earlier characterisation.

Everything about the prince's dialogue is unintentionally funny. "I want to see this for myself and pull out whatever is in her jaw." The first half of this makes sense; the second, not so much. The random "honey"s thrown in, the sudden wanting to bring her to his palace---if I met him, I wouldn't know whether to be weirded out by his love bombing tactics or laugh at his attempts at poetic compliments. And the idiot has a sweetheart back home so that's borderline cheating, though in such a story, it's justified because 'love'. But of course, I can't argue with fairytale logic. Then at the end, the princess is drowned by the queen. I guess her overly trusting nature has been foreshadowed, though this is an example of a protagonist who is more of a 'punching bag for the plot'.

This story contained references to fairytales like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty (curse of never ending sleep broken by true love's kiss, fairy godmother's protection, random prince as a deus ex machina, evil stepmother, protagonist separated from true family, speaking animals). I enjoyed seeing this as it used some tropes while twisting others (kind adoptive parents, kind deed being exploited by a witch, no happily ever after). This provided a refreshing take on conventional fairytales.

On the other path, the princess' naive nature is shown by how she trusts the witch despite the latter's evil intentions. It also provides more context behind the seemingly out of nowhere attack that occurred on the other path. Now that there was a link to ask about the witch's son, the perspective switch to him later was actually a cool detail, but it might be better if it was only added were the reader to have asked about it.

I soon realized that all paths led to the same ending. Still, I suppose it's about the journey and not the destination. Edit - as I was about to publish this review, I noticed one of the end game links was a fake-out! There’s a short branch (even one involving an explanation of a magnolia tree) and a happy ending!

I am also unsure about whether the critiques I've mentioned were all deliberate choices of the author. (I have an odd habit of glancing at other reviews once finishing mine and noticed this mentioned in Darius'). If it were all meant to convey the 'wildness' of this fairytale as mentioned in the description, well done. Still, it might appear more intentionally done if the narrative voice more actively conveys this, whether through sarcasm or instances where the narrator's stance on story elements is made clear. A good example is Mizal's story 'Jack and the Bean Counter'.

In conclusion, this read like a classic fairytale and I enjoyed the cozy fireplace story vibes. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten any featured reviews yet (but this would change that!)

I've always enjoyed reading fairy stories, myths and legends...this isn't one that I've come across before, but it definitely fits the normal fairytale feel, so that's nice.

This definitely felt like more of a story than a game. While there were a few options to make choices, none of those really seemed to change the story much. The little princess didn't seem to take an active role; most of what happened to her occurred because of the actions of the characters around her. Even when the witch's son tried to attack her, she was only saved due to the fairy's intervention. While I understand keeping to the original fairytale, it would have been nice to see the little princess take a more active role, turning this into a game as much as a story. Again, I understand that it's based on an existing fairytale, so that's probably more of a personal preference.

The initial scene was pretty harrowing, with the woman's child being taken away by eagles. I definitely got the impression that they saw the little princess of the forest as more of a possession, since they actively discouraged her from leaving her house unless it was an emergency. As it was a fairytale, I assumed that the eagle wasn't going to devour the child...but the scene was still really tense, so good job there!

I did enjoy reading this and getting to see a fairytale I hadn't read before, and I really liked the feel of this being told to another person, as evidenced by some of the choices/questions that can be asked.

Thank you for writing this and sharing! I did really enjoy reading it.

That was an enjoyable little story with decent branching. Very much a traditional cyoa.

I think the main critique of others is well warranted, if it was a regular old story.

However....

I have a feeling all of this was done very much on purpose. The disjointedness, the very cringy dialogue of the prince (who the frick says honey so many times), the sudden appearance of him, the odd deus ex machina and of course that Marie turns out to be a princess, the lack of any setting details, the very dry 3th person omniscient perspective, oh and that all the characters are very very bland, especially the princess.

All these elements would be on its own pretty bad, but together they give off the impression of a classic fairytale or perhaps more like amalgamation of everything a fairytale would be.

There were also pretty often fourth wall breaks, I think the main one was where the narrator is actively telling the reader that the princess had not been killed by the evil queen due to the intervention of the fairy god mother. These fourth wall breaks are pretty well handled. From what I read it's more as if someone is telling you this story directly in front of a fireplace with you chiming every now and then to ask what happens next. I would have liked to see this aspect a little bit more pronounced.

While I do appreciate it that the author doesn't back down on his vision, there is also a reason why modern retellings of fairytales like Disney heavily tweak the original tales, mainly because the original ones often don't have that much character development or overarching story arcs.

Ahum, ahum, I therefore think that the reception would have been better if you took a more liberal interpretation towards the prompt of the contest (perhaps lean into a story within a story format. In the storyteller of the fairytale and the listener you could add more conventional modern writing in it while you keep the overall structure and language of the fairytale. The integrity of the story will be kept as it is, while you also have more leeway for things like characterization and a more cohesive theme), but I did like it for what it is.

There was clear purposeful writing going on here and if what I was describing was what you were going for, then kudos to you!

This isn't great, but there are some things I would like to point out that if fixed can potentially make this a better story.

First off: The lack of description,
Each sentence is very vague and short and shares no details with the reader. Descriptive language can help break the barrier between your story and the reader and helps better describe what's going on.
For example: "This shadow was the one of a big old bald eagle"
Instead of this, you can add more description.
"Cast upon the grass was the distinguishing shadow of a bald eagle." Or something like that, that is more descriptive.

I get that this was a contest entree (You may have been short on time), but I would recommend giving readers more paths and options toward the end, instead of focusing on branching out later which most players won't even get to.

I think this fits the prompt very well, there may be some things you can fix but there's always something that can be improved.

Overall this was a pretty solid story, despite the lack of description and lackluster characters, this is a story to be proud of.

8
- 2, for little description
-1 for being predictable and boring

Overall this is solid 5/8

I really liked this story. I was a princess

It was a nice story. A little light on the descriptions on some parts for my liking but you did get the story to make since and it is quite beautiful. I also understand that this was for a competition so god knows how much time you had.

I think you should work on your descriptive skills. You like to use a lot of the same and basic words. I'd suggest doing something as simple as googling "another word for _____" Cute little story but I didn't really get to know the characters. One more thing, the whole princess part seems like it was forced to be added to fit in with the theme I think a prince falls in love with a commoner trope would've been fine. Even more so seeing as she just kind of adopted that nickname. Anywho 3/8 I'm sure you'll improve and I can't wait to see more!

I enjoy a story about a cute little princess told in a surreal and disjointed style in a way we are expected to accept with fairytale logic. But this story is very amateurish and rushed. We are given no inclination that this little girl is a princess at all, or what her effects on the forest and others are and why she must be killed. I would like to learn more about every character in this story with added background.

It was creative and the choose your own adventure was fun!