First off, I hope everyone is well, staying safe, and contributing to the safety of others. David and I are okay and very grateful that dogs don’t get the virus.

And, letting you know, in addition to my ongoing daily Facebook reading of a chapter of Ella Enchanted, last week I did a Q&A talk, also on my Facebook page, sponsored by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and PJ Library. It’s still there, so you can watch and listen. I can’t say how heartened I was when both Melissa Mead and Christie V Powell showed up in the comments scroll.

Now for the post. On December 5, 2019 NerdyNiña wrote, When you’re writing a fairy tale retelling, how do you make it have a real plot? I’m trying to write a mashup of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Rapunzel.” I have my characters, and a good idea of the themes I want, but I don’t know what to have happen to make it a story worth reading. Can anyone help?

Several of you weighed in.

future_famous_author: What I do when I don’t know what kind of story to write is that I just make a new document on my computer (or get a new page in a notebook) and use bullet points. Write what comes to your mind. One time when I was doing this I ended up with a really good story. One of the words that I wrote, though, was a llama, and I did not use that word. And maybe rereading the fairytales, if you haven’t already done that, would help you. Maybe think about how you want to start it and just start writing. I have done this often, where I don’t have a plot, just a character, and a beginning, and the story ends up really good.

Yay! future_famous_author uses lists! I use bullet points, too.

Melissa Mead: I pick the parts of fairy tales that make me ask questions or roll my eyes. For example, with “Snow White,” I’ve always wondered “Why would the Prince want to kiss a dead girl?”

(Gail, if this is an out=of-line shameless plug, rather than an example, please remove it!)

Here’s one answer I came up with: https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/twisted-fairy-tales/melissa-mead/white-as-snow-red-as-blood

Me: Not a shameless plug. That was one of my questions when I wrote Fairest.

Raina: If you’re talking about coming up with plots in general, Gail has a ton of great posts in the archives tagged “plot” or “plotting”. One thing that also really helped me was learning about story structure and beat sheets, such as the Save The Cat method, which is what I use. (You can find the book Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder at your local library, or google one of the free summaries online.)

Thank you, Raina!

More Raina: If you’re talking about fairy tale retellings specifically, I think a good thing to remember is that (generally) your story should be an original story first, and a retelling second. It can definitely borrow characters, events, and themes from the original, but your priority should be making sure that those characters, events, and themes all contribute to making YOUR story, rather than trying to make everything match up to the original. For me, the litmus test is when a retelling is able to stand on its own as an engaging story, even if the person has never read the original fairy tale. (Though of course, if they’ve read the original, they should enjoy it even more because they’ll be able to spot the parallels!)

future_famous_author: In my version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Red was actually friends with the wolves, and the “big bad wolf” was a man who was trying to kill the wolves and wore a wolf hide. I hardly followed the storyline of LRRH at all. I had some wolves, a girl with a red hood taking treats to her sick grandma at the beginning, and some bad guys who try and stop her.

Oy! The worth-reading worry! This is a question we should never ask: not when we’re thinking about what to write, not when we’re in the thick of it, not when we finish, not when we revise, not when we send out our query letter, which will not contain words like, “I’m not sure this is worth reading, but I hope you will think it is.” !!! And not even when it’s published or ten years later. It is a question not worth thinking! It doesn’t help; it just hinders. The only important initial question is, Does this interest me?

I agree with everyone above about fairy tale retellings. Mine have run the gamut from close to the original to light years away. Right before I started writing Ella Enchanted, I read Beauty by Robin McKinley, which I love. This retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” hews close to the original and yet stands as a unique creation. I’ve never managed to be that faithful. It’s an achievement–

–that we don’t have to achieve–

–unless we want to.

Most fairy tales have been around for hundreds of years. They’ve lasted because they’re exciting; they’re generally short and packed with action. And they touch deep places in us. For me, the original “Cinderella,” for example, is at bottom about feeling unappreciated–even though I didn’t take the story that way. Cinderella does everything right and tries so hard, and all she gets is grief. We aren’t told if she loves her stepfamily, but they certainly don’t love her. Everybody (or almost everybody) has felt undervalued and misunderstood.

We can use those deep meaning to fuel our plots. The meaning you take from a fairy tale is likely to be different from mine. For me, for instance, “Hansel and Gretel” is fundamentally about abandonment, but for someone else it might be about poverty. “Snow White” makes me think about jealousy and rage, but others may find kindness and love–in the generosity of the dwarfs.

If we go with abandonment, we can give Hansel nightmares and make Gretel more conscientious than a child should be, because both children sense that their parents are unreliable. We can invent earlier incidents during good times when the parents behaved irresponsibly. We can bring in the witch during one of those incidents. If we know what the underlying big issue is, we can figure out how to structure our story. Once the two of them are in the witch’s cabin, knowing what we know about each of them, we can decide how they’ll be together in that very small space. If we’re following the fairy tale, we can plan how the two children manage to stay alive but almost fail a few times. It’s all informed by abandonment and, possibly, their commitment to never abandoning each other.

I also do as Melissa Mead does: look for leaps of logic, plot turns that make absolutely no sense. Why does feeling a pea under twenty mattresses prove royal blood? Why does the prince fall in love with Sleeping Beauty when she’s, well, asleep and he’s never met her and she’s about a hundred years older than he is, even if she doesn’t look it? Why does the Beast frighten Beauty’s father and threaten him if he (the Beast) is really a good guy at heart? Why, oh why, does Snow White fall for the evil queen three times in a row?

We can contemplate these goofy parts and see how we can explain them. Let’s take the prince and Sleeping Beauty. Why does he go on the crazy quest in the first place? We can make a list! Remember nothing is stupid on a list:

∙ He’s on the lam. He stole the golden astrolabe of the Admiral of the Fleet. A party of knights is after him, and there’s this hedge.

∙ His mother insists he marry his distant cousin, Merna, whom he hates. He’s refused, and now he’s been exiled. He’s been riding for days, and there’s this hedge.

∙ He lives in the next town over, and the hedge has grown so high that it blocks the sun from the wheat fields. Crops are failing. He hacks his way through the hedge to find the authorities and tell them to trim the darn hedge!

And so on. A nice list has ten to fifteen possibilities. As you can see, these possibilities are complicated. We probably have to set them up, which could take half a novel. Meanwhile, we have to keep an eye on the sleeping princess and decide how she can complicate the problems and then lead eventually to their solution. I happen to love this approach.

Here are four prompts:

∙ Write the abandonment story of Hansel and Gretel.

∙ Write a version of “Hansel and Gretel” using poverty as the underlying problem. Or pick another issue that strikes you as at the core of the problem.

∙ Write seven more “Sleeping Beauty” possibilities. Pick one of yours or one of mine and write the story.

∙ Write a version of “Snow White” that begins in the dwarfs’ cottage and explain SW’s behavior each time the evil queen shows up.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Just to let you know in case you can come, I’ll be signing books at the Westchester Children’s Book Festival at Mohawk Day Camp in White Plains, New York, on May 5th. I’ll be there from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and I’ll have time to chat. I’d love to see you!

On January 10, 2019, Emily F. wrote, I’ve been working on a retelling of the Mulan legend. What I’ve been wondering is, how far can you take a story from its origins before it stops being a retelling? For example, would you consider it to be a retelling of Mulan if it’s not set in China? I was reading book reviews of another Mulan story, and the reviewers seemed generally unhappy with the fact that the author took the story out of China. And that’s only one example of a way I’m deviating from the original legend…

Any thoughts on what makes for a good retelling?

Christie V Powell wrote back, Do you feel the need to label it as a retelling? If not, you can just write the story you want to write, and if people notice the similarity, it’ll be a fun bonus for them. Most retellings that I’ve seen don’t label themselves as such. Disney added a tiny “inspired by The Snow Queen” in the credits of “Frozen,” because the story was so different.

One of my favorite books when I was little (I have no idea what the title was) was a retelling of The Arabian Nights in a Native American setting, incorporating actual or made-up Native American folk tales. This was about sixty years ago. I suspect the tales weren’t true to the culture, but I don’t know. I hope they weren’t actually offensive. Anyway, in my ignorance, I loved it. If a thousand reviewers had been miffed about the transplant from one society to another, I wouldn’t have cared. And I liked very much that I had the inside dope that this was a transformed Arabian Nights. I enjoyed making the connection.

I agree with Christie V Powell that you don’t have to call your creative work a retelling. And, going the other way, I think, no matter how far you stray, you can call it such if you want to. Ella Enchanted and some of my retellings in The Princess Tales are pretty faithful to classic versions. But in other of my fairy-tale based books, like A Tale of Two Castles and Ogre Enchanted, the connection is pretty tenuous. I don’t think I did in A Tale of Two Castles, but in Ogre Enchanted, I cite the source, the fairy tale, “The False Prince and the True, on the copyright page. And I do the same in all the Princess Tales. My hope is that kids who see the citation will be moved to read the originals. Then they can have two pleasurable reading experiences. They can notice the differences between the stories and ponder why I made the changes I did.

Is a story still “Beauty and the Beast” if the beast is a wasp, and when he’s transformed he turns into a sheep with golden fleece? If we think it is–if the fairy tale inspired us–and we want to claim a connection, no one has the right to say we can’t.

Critics’ opinions vary about everything. I would advise that we not dwell on negative judgments of another author’s work and certainly not apply them to our own. Even this particular reviewer might have a different opinion about our story. Some critics might even like the variety that came with the change of location and whatever else.

Really, when we write, we have to please only ourselves. Later, after we’ve revised more than once, we may have to please an editor and then a copy editor. No one else. Critics are on their own. Even readers are.

But the wonderful thing is that if we please ourselves, if our story is true to our own ideas, then readers, and sometimes critics, will find the truth in it and be pleased, too.

Having said all this, however, I wouldn’t make Mulan the title of my story. In the text, I might not even mention the name Mulan except on the copyright page or in an afterword, because the mention might send the reader out of the story.

As for what makes a good retelling, hmm…

I love it when I find a new way in my own work to look at a fairy tale and when another author shows me a new way. Donna Jo Napoli, for example, always does this. Her novel, The Magic Circle, tells the tragic-but-triumphant story of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” and her Zel, among other things, explains the witch in “Rapunzel.” Beast is “Beauty and the Beast” from the beast’s POV (as is my Ogre Enchanted, sort of, but in an entirely different way). My favorite of her books that I’ve read is the lighthearted and endearing Prince of the Pond, a retelling of “The Frog Prince.”

I also love a straight retelling that honors the original, like Robin McKinley’s Beauty, a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” which set me to writing Ella Enchanted. Beauty tells its story in beautiful language. The atmosphere enfolds me, and she treats her characters with great sympathy. Also, another important feature in a retelling: Robin McKinley brings the world to life.

I appreciate when an author finds a surprising way into a story, as Susan Fletcher does in Shadow Spinner, in which she tackles the story that frames the tales in The Arabian Nights. I had wanted to do the same, but I got stuck. I couldn’t figure out how to make the sultan sympathetic, because he kills a series of young women, but Susan Fletcher does it by stepping back–her MC is a young girl with a limp, who hunts for stories when Shahrazad runs out.

And I’m delighted when a retelling deals with the wrongness in a tale. I can’t find it online, and I don’t own it, but a picture book exists that reveals that the real hero of “Rumpelstiltskin” is the eponymous dwarf. He saves the miller’s daughter’s life three times, and he makes sure, I think, that she discovers his name. Recognition has been a long time coming!

There are other fairy tales out there that need attention! Greek myths, too! Here are three prompts based on them:

∙ Explain the miller in “Rumpelstiltskin.” Write a scene that shows why he boasts to the king that his daughter can turn straw into gold. Go on to explain why the king makes death the punishment if she fails. If you like, make him sympathetic–a tall order, in my opinion. Write another scene in which the miller’s daughter does more than wring her hands, in which she actually accomplishes something.

∙ Before you read Donna Jo Napoli’s version, write the backstory of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

∙ Retell “Sleeping Beauty,” but put it in the modern world, no more than three miles from where you live.

Have fun, and save what you write!

First off, I got an email this week from The Alliance for Independent Authors saying that “you have been nominated to receive a ‘Top Website for Self-Publishers Award’ by our members.” This stamp of approval goes to blogs or websites, and in this case I have to assume that the recognition belongs to the blog (which is part of my website). And lots of the credit goes to you, faithful readers, for your insightful comments and important questions. Kudos all around!

On December 22, 2012, Tiki Armsford wrote, I was just noticing earlier how books and movies based on fairy tales are starting to become more and more popular (something that’s incredibly joyful for me, since I love fairy tales with a passion) and I was just wondering what your take on this is? Why you think they’re rising in popularity, and what are some tips you could give to someone who’s considering adapting a fairytale?

I’m ashamed to say I’ve read few of these new books and have seen none of the movies or tv series, but I have a few ideas.

Fairy tales deal in universals: love, jealousy, rage, fear, death, beauty, acceptance, good, evil, and probably more. They provide instant entry into these deep topics. Take “Snow White,” which may beat out all the competition with seven out of nine: love (Snow White’s mother, the dwarves, the prince), jealousy (the queen), rage (ditto), death (Snow White), beauty (ditto), good (ditto, the hunter, the dwarves, the prince), evil (the queen).

Universals appeal, obviously, because everybody relates.

In “Snow White,” we’re glad when the evil queen dances in those red hot slippers because she represents parts of us (of me, certainly) – the rage and jealousy – that we’d like to kill off (even though we can’t entirely). We go back to the tale because those disowned parts keep cropping back up in us.

In “The Princess and the Pea,” to pick another example, the MCs virtues come through despite her unpromising appearance – soaked through, hair plastered to her scalp, nose probably running. We get confirmation from her for every time we’ve been misunderstood and underestimated.

Coming at it from a more commercial direction, I think film makers and tv series makers (not so much book writers, in my opinion) look for the familiar to help them find the enormous audiences they need. Many kids today don’t read the original tales, the Brothers Grimm or the Perrault versions, but they read picture book adaptations (or sit cozily in a lap while the story is read) or they see a Disney recreation. The stories are in our bones. This is a leg up for those who survive only if lots and lots of people watch. I don’t mean a criticism; if the stories are well told, I’m happy.

And then there’s magic. If I were an animator, I’d bet magic would be my favorite thing, a license to go wild. And even in live action, I suspect the special effects possibilities are vast and irresistible. And audiences love the wonder.

I do, too. I love fooling around with magic. My editor was disappointed that there wasn’t more in Beloved Elodie, which has become Stolen Magic. So I worked in a few things, and boy, did I have fun! And I felt the story perk up.

The most helpful aspect of fairy tales for me, probably the reason I go back and back to them, is that they provide a rough story framework. Plot may be more important to me than any other story element, but I struggle with it. A fairy tale structure helps me make the plot work.

Let’s look at “The Princess and the Pea” again, which became my The Princess Test in my Princess Tales. The original tale is simple, only a few pages. I can tell it even more briefly: A king and queen want their son to marry a true princess, so they devise a test: the young lady will spend a night of luxury atop twenty mattresses, and underneath the bottom one lies a pea. If that tiny pea disturbs her sleep, she is a true princess and deserves the hand of their son.

There. Two sentences.

But look what’s locked up inside those few words. What sort of character could possibly feel the pea? What made the king and queen come up with such a test? What does the prince think of it? What’s going on with all the princesses who show up for the trial? Isn’t it humiliating?

I came up with one solution, but there are many ways to go, and now that I’m thinking about it, I’m getting really curious about the damsels who failed the test. Where did they go next? Did they have a kingdom to go back to? Are they really not princesses because they failed?

As for tips, I look for lapses in logic. I haven’t attempted “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” a fairy tale I love, because it’s perfect, in my opinion. The plot makes sense, and the characters behave reasonably within the context of the story. In many of the stories I fool with, the damsel is passive, and my job is to give her gumption. But here, the slave girl Morgiana takes action and saves the day.

If the story is kind of a mess, I’m in my element. I pointed out the absurdities of “The Princess and the Pea,” but there are other absurd stories. And they’ll strike you differently from the way they appear to me. Love in fairy tales is a target for me. It happens too fast and for the wrong reasons: beauty, handsomeness, rank. Even goodness can be lame. I like a little idiosyncracy mixed in with pure goodness. So those are the places where I get to work.

If you love a story but you’re also mad at it, that can get you going. For instance, my picture book Betsy Who Cried Wolf grew out of my irritation with the grownups in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” for abandoning the boy when he clearly isn’t old enough for the responsibility he’s been given.

There are some fairy tales that I haven’t figured out how to approach: “Rapunzel,” “Aladdin,” and “The Shoemaker and the Elves.” They interest me, so who knows? Maybe I’ll figure it out. Or you will. Fairy tales are free for all of us to play with.

Here are two prompts:

• Try your hand at “Aladdin.” What strikes you as illogical? What can you make of it? Write the first scene, including the sort of detail and realism that suits a novel, moment by moment. Write the scene when Aladdin rubs the lamp.

• Think of the bare bones of a fairy tale: damsel or lad in distressed circumstances, some magical element, possibly a fairy, probably a prince or princess, possibly an evil character or several, who may have magic on his side. Put them together to create your own fairy tale.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Before I start, thanks to everybody who came to a tour event.  I was so happy to meet you!

On April 4, 2010, Guinevere Amoureaux wrote, I have a problem with revamping fairy tales.  I always ask myself “why” and “how come” but I never find anything.  Then, when I read a retold fairy tale, I say, “Oh yeah! Why didn’t I think of that?”  And then, when the book THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS, a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” came out and I saw it at the library, I nearly boiled over. All day I was saying to myself, “Why didn’t I think about that?” I could have JUST asked, “WHY did the princesses dance every night?” Could you give me a bit of advice on this topic?
I’ve been fascinated by “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” too.  When I wrote The Two Princesses of Bamarre I was really trying to tell the tale of the twelve, but I couldn’t get it.  After I read your question, I looked The Thirteenth Princess up online, although I confess I haven’t read it.  When the review said that there were twelve princesses because the king kept trying for a son, my reaction was exactly the same as yours: Why didn’t I think of that?

Let me go through my process with this story as an example.  Here’s the tale, lifted (legally) from this URL at Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Dancing_Princesses:

Twelve princesses slept in twelve beds in the same room; every night their doors were securely locked, but in the morning their shoes were found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night.

The king, perplexed, promised his kingdom and a daughter to any man who could discover the princesses’ secret within three days and three nights, but those who failed within the set time limit would be put to death.

An old soldier returned from war came to the king’s call after several princes had failed in the endeavor to discover the princesses’ secret. Whilst traveling through a wood he came upon an old woman, who gave him an invisibility cloak and told him not to eat or drink anything given to him by one of the princesses who would come to him in the evening, and to pretend to be fast asleep after the princess left.

The soldier was well received at the palace just as the others had been and indeed, in the evening, the eldest princess came to his chamber and offered him a cup of wine. The soldier, remembering the old woman’s advice, threw it away secretly and began to snore very loudly as if asleep.

The princesses, sure that the soldier was asleep, dressed themselves in fine clothes and escaped from their room by a trap door in the floor. The soldier, seeing this, donned his invisibility cloak and followed them down. He trod on the gown of the youngest princess, whose cry to her sisters that all was not right was rebuffed by the eldest. The passageway led them to three groves of trees; the first having leaves of silver, the second of gold, and the third of diamonds. The soldier, wishing for a token, broke off a twig of each as evidence. They walked on until they came upon a great lake. Twelve boats with twelve princes in them were waiting. Each princess went into one, and the soldier stepped into the same boat as the youngest. The young prince in the boat rowed slowly, unaware that the soldier was causing the boat to be heavy. The youngest princess complained that the prince was not rowing fast enough, not knowing the soldier was in the boat. On the other side of the lake was a castle, into which all the princesses went and danced the night away.

The princesses danced until their shoes were worn through and they were obliged to leave. This strange adventure went on the second and third nights, and everything happened just as before, except that on the third night the soldier carried away a golden cup as a token of where he had been. When it came time for him to declare the princesses’ secret, he went before the king with the three branches and the golden cup, and told the king all he had seen. The princesses saw there was no use to deny the truth, and confessed. The soldier chose the eldest princess as his bride for he was not a very young man, and was made the king’s heir.
The version I know ends intriguingly by saying that a day was added to the princes’ enchantment for every night they danced with the princesses.

There are oodles of mysteries in this tale in addition to the puzzle about the quantity of princesses.  When I read it or any fairy tale, I question everything.  That’s what I’d like you to do right now.  Write a list of questions or mysteries, aspects of this story that seem unresolved.  Try to come up with at least eight.  My questions are below, but don’t look.  STOP READING AND WRITE.

I thought of continuing in a separate post, but that seemed untrusting.  Here are my questions:

1.    Why do the princesses share a bedroom in an enormous castle?

2.    Why is the king locking them in at night?

3.    Why aren’t evening entertainments held right there at the castle?

4.    If he cares so much about the dancing slippers, why doesn’t the king deprive his daughters of them at night and let them walk barefoot to the privy?

5.    Why does he kill the unsuccessful suitors?

6.    Why three days and nights for the trial rather than one or twenty-five or any other number?

7.    Generally, what’s up with this crazy king?

8.    Why does the old woman help the soldier?

9.    Who is she?

10.    What is she doing with a cloak of invisibility?

11.    Why are the princesses willing to let young men die rather than reveal the secret of their dancing slippers?

12.    Why do they dance with the princes?  How did it begin?

13.    Why three groves of trees, and why are their leaves made of precious metals and jewels?  (This is my favorite part of the story.)

14.    Is this enchanted world of the trees, the lake, and the castle underground?

15.    Why are the princes there?

16.    What does the soldier think of all this?

You may have come up with different questions than mine, maybe more, maybe fewer.  There’s no right or wrong number or right or wrong question.

So that’s my approach with fairy tales.  Questions jump out at me, and I make up answers.  I follow the answers to more questions and more answers, and eventually a story emerges.

When I attempted to turn “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” into a novel, I began by eliminating nine princesses, because three main characters seemed interesting and twelve impossible for me and the reader to keep straight.  Then I decided that the old woman was a sorcerer in disguise and that the king was consumed by grief for his dead wife, and I had an idea that the groves of trees somehow represented the seasons.  (I loved that idea.)

I got stuck in several places.  Even if the old woman was a sorcerer, I didn’t know why he/she wanted the princes discovered and why she chose the soldier, and I couldn’t figure out why they were enchanted and what their enchantment was.  At one point I decided that they might be specters, which seemed promising.

The obstacle I couldn’t get around was the princesses.  They seemed the obvious choices for heroines, but I hated them for allowing all those suitors to die.  Eventually I let the enchanted princes and the soldier go and lopped off one princess.  The sorcerer, who had been malevolent at the beginning, turned into kindly Rhys.

This wasn’t easy.  I was despairing when I couldn’t figure out the original, beloved fairy tale.  My story emerged slowly, and I no longer remember how I came to it.  The moral is, though, that the fairy tale is a jumping off point.  It doesn’t matter if you stick with it.  What’s important – the only important thing – is writing a story, which is bound to be your own, even if you hew closely to a known tale.  You’ll put something of yourself into it.

I’ve been thinking about “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” again.  I may have a new approach that will allow me to write it.  But if not and it veers off again and I get another different story, I’ll just throw up my hands and celebrate.

Here’s a prompt: The craziest fairy tale I know of is “Lovely Ilonka,” which you can find in Andrew Lang’s Crimson Fairy Book.  The Lang books (each named after a different color, and the series contains the well-known tales and many lesser-known ones) may be in your library, and they’ve all been digitized, so you can get them for free online.  Please don’t read the abridged version in Wikipedia, because you won’t see the full wackiness.  Read the fairy tale, ask yourself questions about it, develop your own interpretation, and see where you wind up.  Have fun, and save what you write!