Once (more) upon a time…
Fairy tales hold a special place in my heart. They usually contain tight writing, a clear plot, identifiable and exaggerated characters, and often an important moral. The stories that contain magic, witches, wizards and high drama are my favourite.
I suspect I’m especially drawn to them because so much of my childhood was framed in similar narratives. Hindu mythology is told in dramatic stories of gods and goddesses, of demons and evil doers, of magic, wishes, and overcoming adversity.
We’ve looked at fairy tales before in Microprose. We’ve even retold familiar fairy tales before.
This month, we’re asking you to retell a popular fairy tale, with an important twist:
Instead of the traditional telling from the main character’s perspective, your challenge is to retell the fairy tale from the point of view of one of the secondary characters, in exactly 42 words.
What does it mean to retell a story?
For this month’s challenge, we’re going to rule that the story you choose should play out exactly the way it always has. The three little pigs stay safe in the brick house, Sleeping Beauty still pricks her finger, Snow White eats the poisoned apple, Hansel and Gretel chow down on the Witch’s home. The challenge isn’t to make the story new; it’s to tell the same story from another character’s perspective.
We know how the story of Red Riding Hood turns out from Red’s perspective, but what was the Wolf thinking? How did Grandma feel about being gobbled up? How did the woodcutter come to be involved (if, that is, you’re using a version with a woodcutter)? We know how Snow White felt about living with seven short guys, but how did Sleepy, Grumpy, or Doc view her intrusion into their lives?
Gregory McGuire did this spectacularly with his retelling of Cinderella in his novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.
Here’s an example I prepared earlier (see if you can guess what the original story is):
Home Invasion
“Shh,” said Papa as we approached the house. “They may still be here.”
Broken pots, smashed windows, and porridge ground into carpet greeted us.
Baby, never still, had vanished from my grasp.
“Someone was sleeping in my bed – and she’s there now!”
What is or isn’t a fairy tale?
So which stories are fair game for this week’s retelling? I’m going to insert Christine’s words here since she said it so eloquently.
“Fairy tale” as a genre is notoriously difficult to define. I mean, we all think we know one when we see one, right? If I were asking you to write an original fairy tale, I’d have a much more detailed list of elements, but since we only need you to recognize a fairy tale, I’ll keep it simple:
For the purposes of this microprose challenge, we are defining “fairy tale” as a short story without a single identifiable author (although it may have been collected by a single historian, e.g., Grimm or Perrault), which involves completing a quest or solving a problem with the help of magical elements and/or beings, e.g. fairies (duh), gods, witches, dragons, elves, flying carpets, magic potions, enchanted items, etc. Other elements that feature heavily in fairy tales: magic numbers (3, 7, 9); interplay between poverty and richness (the poor shepherd and the princess, etc); simple character archetypes (the prince, the witch, the ogre, the djinn).
Note that a fairytale is basically a folk tale with magical characters; it is not intended to explain how the world works – that is, creation myths are not generally considered fairy tales, nor are fables. If the purpose of the original story is to tell you why the shadows on the moon look like a rabbit, it’s a myth, not a fairytale. If your hero has to bring each of the moon’s five daughters a quest item to learn one of the directions to the place their true love is hidden in a tree? Fairytale.
Which tale do I chase? Fairy tale sources
Not sure which fairy tale to retell? Here are some collections of fairy tales to get you started. Reading a few different versions of the same story can help you get a clearer idea of who the secondary characters are and what their motivations might be. If you notice that versions of your story vary widely, I recommend you pick one version.
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Brothers Grimm
- Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose Tales
- Afanasyev’s Russian Fairy Tales
- Chinese Fairy Tales
- Brazilian Fairy Tales
- Fairy Tales from Around the World
And finally…
Remember that your reader may not be familiar with the original fairy tale you choose to retell, or with the version you used. Hyperlinking a key word or a phrase in your story to the original tale is a good way of allowing your reader to compare the stories.
If you think your story is or should be familiar, try using no names (don’t give it away by talking about “Red Riding Hood”), or use offbeat versions of their names (for example, “Cinders” for “Cinderella”) and see if your readers can figure out which story you’re riffing on?
A well chosen title is also a great way to give your reader clues about which fairy tale you’re retelling, without having to call it “Goldilocks but from Mama Bear’s point of view.”
Don’t forget to utilise your beta readers, too. If your reading group can’t work out which fairy tale you’re telling, then you probably need to add more information or make sure you’ve got that important plot point correct. Don’t have beta readers? You can always post a request in the Coffeehouse on Facebook. If you’re nervous about asking for a beta reader, don’t be! Just offer to trade stories. The micro is our most popular challenge and there’s always someone looking for another pair of eyes but too nervous to ask. Be the friend they need.
This is the badge you need:
Below is the YeahWrite badge you need for this month’s microprose challenge. Under the badge is a few lines of code. See that? Copy it and then paste it into the “text” or HTML view of your post editor. If you don’t copy it exactly, the image will not appear correctly in your post, and you will receive an error message when you submit the post to Inlinkz. If you have any questions regarding adding this code to your post or website, please contact us at editors@yeahwrite.me.
Need a hand?
Microprose sounds easy. After all, how hard can it really be to write a story with fewer than 100 words incorporating a prompt or two? But it turns out it’s our hardest challenge to really get right. Whether you’re a seasoned micropro or a brand new microwriter, it’s worth taking a minute to glance through the tips and tricks our editors have put together, like this quick refresher on what makes a micro great, or this one on how to incorporate mandatory prompts into adjudicated challenges. Make sure you make it to the vote this week: check your wordcount (we count those footnotes!) and prompts!
The microprose challenge ends in:
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
How to submit and fully participate in the Microprose Challenge
Basic YeahWrite guidelines:
- your entry must be in response to the prompt found in the introductory post above;
- your entry can be dated no earlier than this Wednesday, August 1 (US Eastern time);
- a retelling of a fairytale from a secondary character’s perspective told in exactly 42 words.
You may enter only one microstory per weekly challenge.
To submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- Please grab the code beneath the microprose badge in the body of this week’s post and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
- Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
- Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Asha keeps moving from one side of the world to the other. Her most recent move has taken her back to Perth, Western Australia where she grew up. She lives near the beach but hates sand between her toes. It’s a real conundrum. Asha began blogging at YeahWrite in October 2014 with this post, and YeahWrite was lucky to pull her on board as a Contributing Editor in December 2016. She is currently working on a novelette that grew from a series of flash fiction pieces. Asha is published in a variety of places including Modern Loss, PANK, Dead Housekeeping, and SheKnows. You can find her inconsistent blogging at Parenting In The Wilderness, or at her fiction blog, FlAsha Tales.
