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ReTelling A Folk Or Fairy Tale

This is one of my favorite prompts of all time!

The prompt

Re-write a fairytale

  • TYou can find source material in Grimm’s fairytales, in collections of folktales, Aesops Fables, collections of regional tales, all kinds of places… Your own culture has fairytales. Your own family has “fables” that they tell. Steal without remorse. (Just remember if it’s not in the public domain you get into the messy territory of derivative rights and copyright law…)
  • You can retell the story from the perspective of a side character.
  • You can modernize the story.
  • You can twist the fairytale and give it a completely different ending.
  • Use any genre for this. A Cinderella story with a happy ending featuring a trans-woman? Go for it! Rumpelstiltskin, as Nick Sparks-style uplifting tale where the goblin is really a good-hearted social worker who saves the kids from a grim fate with their terrible parent? Sure! Want to turn the story of Beauty and The Beast into a modern-day slasher-pic? Be our guest!

Leave a comment telling us what source material you picked, what you did with it, and how it went. Or just post and let us cheer you on, if you’re flagging; celebrate with you if you’re still writing; applaud you if you’re getting back on the horse!

20 thoughts on “ReTelling A Folk Or Fairy Tale”

  1. I’m back! Sorry, took a few days off. Finishing the first draft of one novel & getting another ready to publish(which I did Friday) and celebrating 10th anniversary with husband over the weekend. But, I’m jumping back in hopefully for the rest of the month. Not going to worry about the stories I skipped, just picking up where I am.

    Now for today’s story: https://fallonbrownwrites.wordpress.com/story-a-day-september-2016/story-a-day-day-19-one-touch/

    This is actually part of a story I’ve been working on. Reading Snow White to my kids one night and keep thinking “really, that’s kind of ridiculous, what if this actually happened” and I kind of took it from there.

  2. I used this prompt on Day 21, saturday. I had written another story, but it wasn’t really finished, just sort of. Then I read Julie’s answer to Completing a story, and took her guidance in seriously. I put the first story aside, as a possible fragment of a larger work, and started over.

    I used the Rewritten Fairy Tale prompt. Love this prompt. I took the Three Little Pigs and rewrote it as “The Three Massively Large Little Boys:. Yes, it was more work, and after a long day, but it was also great fun. Thanks for being strict, Julie.

  3. Tonight, while taking a walk, a backstory came to me for one of the novels. Wrote it out as soon as I reached my computer. Felt good. ..But, the prompt for today is really cool, and I’ll be doing that one another time.

    1. Ha! You’re proving my point: the more effort we make to be creative every day, the more creativity comes our way. Good for you (and the novel)! Thanks for sharing this.

  4. It was more of a riff on fairy tales I came up with today about a magic broomstick that takes you where you tell it to – but never where you actually meant. Fairly standard fare for such tales.

    And now I’m up to fifteen stories!

    1. …but a lesson worth repeating in these days of reliance on technological magic (which often gives you what you asked for, but not what you wanted!)

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