Today’s prompt is part of a workshop that I give on story structure. (If you’d like me to talk to your group, ask!)
The Prompt
Write A Story With A Cinderella Story
A Cinderella Story Structure
In the story of Cinderella our heroine wants to find happiness. She tries and fails and tries and fails. A lot.
- She tries to find it by being nice to her sisters and stepmother, but they just treat her terribly.
- She tries to find it by going to the ball, but she’s not allowed to go.
- She tries to find it from her fairy godmother. This one almost works, but there are time limits and she fails. When the love-struck prince can’t find her, all is lost.
Eventually, the life-changing moment comes at the end of the story when the prince finds her and Cinderella gets to choose her happy ending.
(In most versions she says yes and marries the prince; in every version, this choice is the first time Cinders has had any power. This is when her life changes.
So, this is where the story ends because the character’s story arc is over: She has her chance to reach her goal, at long last.
It’s a bit hard to fit the structure to a 100 word fan fiction drabble with prompt words – but I’m stubborn, and maybe a bit nuts. =) It worked beautifully for my Kifo story, and helped me find the pivot point in the relationship between the two half-sisters, Ophelia and Marilyn.
Love toying with the fairy tale styles without writing fairy tales! Thanks, Julie!
Here’s my plotting post, which includes snippets and links to the complete stories.
http://shanjeniahslovelychaos.com/lovely-chaos-blog/2017/5/31/cinderella-story-for-stad-may-day-twenty-eight
This one was harder for me. I was feeling like anything I wrote would be cliched, so I wrote an anti-Cinderella story. Rules? What rules?