This month’s theme for prompts at StoryADay is: playing in other people’s sandbox, or in other words: writing fiction based in somebody else’s universe.

The Prompt

Take a universe you love and write story where the values are reversed: the good guys are bad and the bad guys are evil

Tips

• You could change the whole value system of the world, so your characters don’t really change, but people’s reactions to them do.
• You might want to take a well-known story and mix things up the way Gregory Maguire did with The Wizard of Oz in his book Wicked (just don’t try to write the whole novel. Remember: a short story pivots around a single moment. Pick a scene and write the mirror image of that.
• Think about what changes: the language characters use, the imagery they chose, the reactions of the people around them, perhaps even the colors and textures in your story. If the original story was dark and brooding, perhaps yours is all primary colors and rainbows!
• You could rewrite a fairytale or a folk tale where the villain in the original is now sympathetic, and the hero is kind of a jerk. What changes?
• Remember that you probably don’t want to publish these stories for money if you want to steer clear of Intellectual Property lawyers and Marvel’s well-funded copyright office.