‘ve always been fascinated with fairy tales. I think it has to do with the ‘bare bones’ type of storytelling it represents. Fairy tales are usually very formulaic, often poetically symmetric and always concise. These stories do not dwell on any realistic motivation of the characters, nor do they present a very logical world. There are talking animals, magical objects and sporadic reasoning, which would only make sense to the clinically insane.
Or a fellow writer.
Fairy tales are an excellent exercise in reading. Nothing is drawn out beyond the time it takes to have a cup of hot tea (without cooling off), enjoy a lie down in the sun (without getting uncomfortably hot) or answer Nature’s call (without your buttocks going numb). Cause and effect are instantaneous and there is no responsibility towards the fate of the characters involved or even any type of realism or natural logic. As long as the one message of the tale comes across. And even this is optional. Anyone interested in the true nature of fairy tales will gladly tell you that it’s a common mistake to think that Grimm’s Household Tales were lessons in morality. They were in fact nation building tools.
Fairy tales to me are also an excellent exercise in writing. Especially the part where I get to generate an alternate ending, version or expansion upon the story. In one of my posts I wrote an ‘opposite’ version of the Hare’s Wedding (The Fox’s Divorce – http://wp.me/p1oGJ2-7x). I’ve also in the past drawn a one-pager cartoon version of an emancipated Sleeping Beauty (she kicks the dragon’s butt, not the cowardly prince). When you check out what has been produced over the years in terms of alternate fairy tales you will find tons of material. Books (Grimm Sisters, The Fairy Tales Retold Series, The Grimm Diaries Prequels, The Princess Novels etc.), comics (Fables, Grimm Fairy Tales), TV (Once Upon A Time, Grimm) and movies.
I incorporate fairy tales into my novel Aelemental, but while that is being produced, I like to turn my writing attention to some ‘instant gratification’ exercises as
Here I randomly pick a number between 1 and 100, and I take elements (characters, settings, objects) from the fairy tale from Grimm’s Household Tales with that number. I mix these elements with a random fairy tale between 101 and 200 and write a sequel involving elements of those two tales. At the end of the story only one fairy tale remains dominant. This one will mix again with another fairy tale, but now the pool is limited to the 100 ‘winning’ stories. After that it happens again, but with 50, then 25, 12, 6, 3 and 1.
There is one twist: every new batch of fairy tale sequels is set in a time later than the last and a location further away than the previous that mimics the expansion of human exploration away from Europe and the pre-Industrial Revolution age and ends in a future space era. So there you have it. Fairy tales 2.0 or The Next Generation, what have you. Let’s hope it’s just as much fun to read as it will be to write it.
Muse Flight 