Radical Retelling - A Writing Exercise

I ran this writing exercise with the NZSA Children's Literature Hub a few months ago - now's your chance to give it a try!

The intention is to explore the possibility of writing your own radically retold fairy tale. Follow the steps below and see how you go.

You may like to refer back to my blog post on Approaches to Retellings or use some of the resources below to read up on some fairy tale originals.

Step One. Brainstorm fairy tales you know well or would like to get to know better – get a list of four to five fairy tales that you might be able to work with. Pick one fairy tale to use for the next activities  - or follow the steps below for each of the fairy tales on your list.

It can be a good idea to do the next steps below without revisiting the original fairy tale. This will help you to see what you have remembered or misremembered and what elements of the tale really held meaning for you over time. However, if you can't remember enough about the original fairy tale to complete any of the activities past Step One, then reread the original before continuing.

Step Two. Brainstorm some of the key elements in the fairy tale you have selected – jot down the key characters, events, motifs and objects.

​Step Three. Think about a character whose motivations are unclear in the story and try to work out their back story. Consider: Why do they behave the way they do now? What has happened to them in the past to make them act like this? What was their childhood like? What do they really want now and why? Give them some psychological realism. Repeat this activity for as many of the characters as you like. Now choose which character captures your interest the most. Whose voice is strongest to you? Whose history and motivations are most interesting to you? This character will be the character your story is about - either its focalising character or its narrator, depending on your choice of narrative perspective.

Step Four. Brainstorm possible settings and genres for your fairy tale (note: setting and genre goes hand-in-hand - if the story is to be set in the future or in space then it is likely to be science fiction; at a bus station or on a crowded beach, contemporary fiction, and so on). For each setting and genre you jot down, imagine what in the story could or would be changed by this setting and genre. How does this influence your characters (their appearance, their speech, mannerisms and personality traits)? How could it change the events, motifs and objects that appeared in the original fairy tale?

Step Five. Work out what kind of message you want to deliver. What do you want people to believe about themselves and the world? How could you develop your character/s and structure your story's events to deliver that message?

Step Six. Write! Start with ‘Once Upon a Time’ or a radically different starting point... Explore the characters and the events. See where the story takes you.

After you've got some basic ideas, or if you get stuck while writing, revisit the original fairy tale. This will help you to better shape your retelling as you isolate the key elements you would like to keep and those you would like to change to deliver your interesting new story with its new message/s.​

Suggested Resources:

• Grimms' Fairy Tales
• ​Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
• ​Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
• The fairy tales of Madame d'Aulnoy
• The fairy tales of Charles Perrault
• ​The fairy tales of Joseph Jacobs