Navigating Prompts: Retellings

Nothing new under the sun

There are people who will tell you that there are no new stories. Some will go so far as to put a number on it, and swear that there are really only seven stories in the world, or nine, or twelve, or thirty-six. Whether or not you believe this (it seems to us like a fairly limited and colonized view of storytelling, frankly), it’s true that we return over and over again to familiar stories and tropes. As humans, we like a little bit of predictability—it’s easy to immerse oneself in a story that feels comfortable, calming to be able to anticipate an ending trajectory when the world around us feels inexplicable and unsafe and balanced on the edge of too much precarity. But we also like unique stories: ideas and narratives that surprise us and show us something new. So how do we reconcile these two facets of the same coin?

Ready, set, go

This month we’re learning about retelling familiar stories in new and unique ways. We’ll give you a story prompt (with a link to the original), and you’ll re-tell it in a way only you can. Here’s how to do it.

What is this prompt and why is it here?

Retellings put a new spin on old stories. The original story provides a framework, but the author should bring something new and unique to the tale.

Editors and contest runners love this style of prompt because it is really easy to put together a themed anthology from retellings, and it’s a great way to compare exactly what each writer brings as creative content to a story. For an anthology, you’ll likely see either a specific mythos (same characters, many stories, like King Arthur or Robin Hood or… the Marvel universe) or sometimes a specific story. Competitions will usually call for a retelling of one specific story. You’re more likely to see prompts for stories still in copyright from an anthology, which can work with an author or publisher to gain rights to expand that world, and more likely to be working with stories in the public domain for a competition.

How do you use it?

First: make sure you are familiar with the original story or mythos. Do a little research. If there are multiple versions of a story, and if a particular version isn’t specified, choose the version you want to work with. (For example, Perrault’s Cinderella differs in some major ways from the Grimm Brothers’ Aschenputtel, but you can easily see that they are versions of the same tale. In fact… we might go so far as to call one a retelling of the other, or both might be retellings of some older story. But don’t worry too much about that; it’s a rabbit hole with no end.)

Your next—and arguably biggest—task is to decide what your version of this story looks like.

As long as we started with Cinderella, we’re going to go ahead and keep working with it. You’ve got two versions of the story already, so we’ll pretend those are our prompts. (For one take on the endurance of Cinderella stories, check out this article in Vox.)

In general:

The first thing you’ll need to do is figure out what elements of the original story are absolutely necessary. Your version of the story needs to include enough of the orginal to be recognizable to readers who are familiar with it. Use these anchor objects, situations, or events to connect the reader to the original story, so that even if your version is wildly different from the original, you won’t lose (or confuse) your reader.

Note that the absence of an expected element can also be an effective story-telling tool, serving as something like negative space in visual art. For example, cutting off your Cinderella story before the reader finds out if the shoe fits or not could work really well.

Let’s be specific:

What story are you telling?

For Cinderella, what are the required elements that make the story what it is?

• a central character
  • with this family:
    • one dead parent
    • one remarried parent
    • one step-parent that does not like the central character
    • two stepsiblings who do not measure up to the central character in some way
  • who is made to work while the step-siblings do not
• A big opportunity
  • which the step-siblings take their access to for granted
  • which the central character must overcome an obstacle to access
    • the obstacle is placed in their way by the step parent
    • the obstacle is overcome with the help of magic (small animals, fairy godmother, dead mother’s spirit, etc)
• The central character must temporarily forego the opportunity, in a hurry
  • midnight is often but not always used as an expiration time for the magical assistance
  • they must leave something behind
    • almost always a shoe
    • this is used to locate them again
• Story ends with the opportunity realized: happily ever after
  • stepsiblings and step parent may be punished as part of this denouement

Now, what can you change?

Do you notice how our list varies from the Cinderella stories you know? For one thing, the central character doesn’t HAVE to be a teenage girl. It usually is, but… would the story be recognizable without that? Sure! Gender isn’t actually critical to this story. However, the relative treatment of the central character versus their stepsiblings is! If your Cinderella is the apple of everyone’s eye, they’re probably not going to be nearly as motivated to seek out this “big opportunity.” Did you notice that we didn’t say chance to marry royalty? Sure, that’s one great example of a huge life-changing opportunity. So is the chance to compete on the Great British Bake-Off.

Examples are great!

So what can you change? Just about anything so long as you include the elements that make up the heart of the story. Still using Cinderella as an example, just to illustrate how many variations there are of this well-known tale, can you see if you can spot the required elements even with the ways each author has changed the story?

• Change character attributes, such as gender, age, or occupation
  • Sometime after Midnight by L. Phillips (a retelling of Cinderella where Cinderella is a gay high school student)
• Change the POV; i.e., center the story on a character that is not the main character
  • Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire (a retelling of Cinderella from the POV of one of her stepsisters)
• Change the setting (time and/or place)
  • Cinder by Marissa Meyer (a science fiction retelling of Cinderella where Cinderella is a cyborg)
• Add (or subtract) elements, such as subplots or characters
  • Ash by Malinda Lo (a retelling of Cinderella that introduces a faery prince and a captivating huntress as rival love interests—and leaves out the glass slipper)
• Change the ending and/or “lesson” of the story (if there is one)
  • Mechanica by Betsy Cornwall (a steampunk retelling of Cinderella where, instead of waiting for a prince or happy ending, the Cinderella character takes her destiny into her own hands)
• Explore the relationships between characters
  • All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother (a retelling of Cinderella from the stepmother’s POV, where she struggles to love her husband’s daughter)
• Tell a story within a story (Note: this is a risky approach when responding to a prompt, but it might spark some retelling ideas for your original work)
  • The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (a graphic novel about a gay Vietnamese boy who retells fairy tales—including Cinderella—to come out to his mother)

Nota bene:

This right here is the only time in the Navigating Prompts series that we’re going to say this: with retellings, it’s ok to see how far you can get from the prompt and still make it recognizable. Editors and judges don’t want 500 people telling the exact story of Little Red Riding Hood. They want to see what Little Red Riding Hood would have been if you’d made it up yourself. Within the limits of the prompt you may be able to explore genre, setting, character, etc., but as always, remember to read the instructions to see how far the contest rules or submission guidelines will let you veer. They may limit anything from point of view to setting to character attributes. (For example, “queer retellings of traditional fairy tales.”)

Considerations

You’ve got the basic idea; now let’s drill down a bit deeper. Here are some things to think about when planning a story retelling:

• At what point, if any, do you want the reader to recognize the story? (For a prompt, the judges will know already, so it’s going to be more recognizable regardless.)
• Who is your main character? Is it Goldilocks, or are you focusing on a bear?
• What interactions are necessary? What goals?
• If you plan to change the ending of the story, be really careful, because the rest of the story may need to adhere more closely to the original plot to be recognizable.
• Do you plan to introduce your own original characters (OCs)? How do they interact with the story elements? Your OC shouldn’t fundamentally alter the story but they could add new perspective. (See, for example, Dante as an OC in the Inferno.)
• Remember that even if you’re changing the setting, you’re retelling the same story. That is, the characters will need to have identifiably similar traits and goals to those in the original story. (Robin Hood could be female or nonbinary, but they can’t be a tax collector.)

Save yourself some trouble: don’t make these common mistakes

• DO NOT FALL INTO THE FANFIC TRAP. Your reader’s familiarity with the source story should not be a required element. You still have to tell a complete story, with a fleshed-out world and fully realized characters. Make sure you don’t leave out crucial information just because you know the story!
• Don’t assume your story is recognizable. Give it to a beta reader who does not know the prompt but does know the original story (this one’s easy if it’s a story from your shared culture; less easy if it’s a story that’s maybe outside your beta reader’s cultural competency), and ask them if they can identify what story you’re retelling. Ask them how they could tell (or what was missing, if they couldn’t).
• Watch out: if you are dropping old characters into a new mythos, make sure you have a fundamental understanding of that new mythos, because a lot of, say, deities don’t map to each other the way white-centering literature says they do. Anansi is not Coyote is not Raven is not Loki, even though they are all often labeled as “trickster gods.” There’s no reason you can’t retell Cinderella in, say, 6th century Finland… but you’re going to need to know what “fairies” mean in that culture. Are you really talking about keiju, which is what a direct translation would get you, or are tonttu a better fit for the domestic spirits of Cinderella’s home?
• Don’t be coy. While it’s tempting to “hide” what story you’re telling until the end, it’s better form to just lean into the story you’re telling without trying to deceive the reader or play clever tricks with the information you’re handing out. Tell the story the way you’d tell it if it was your original creation from start to finish, without tricks that we assure you your judges have seen before and which rely too much on readers’ external knowledge and attention level to work well as storytelling devices.

Your turn!

Check out our weekly prompt posts and try to retell a story using the prompts given. (We’ll provide links to the originals.) Don’t forget to ask for help in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord if you’ve got questions – you can post a link to your draft or even a snippet of your story or essay (up to 250 words) for immediate feedback. Don’t forget to use content warnings where they’re merited, so that you can get the best and most engaged readers for the words you like to write.

What’s next?

Wondering what the year has in store? Here’s a handy roadmap!

Get out your map

Here's the general flow of this year's workshop series. You don't have to follow them in order, but you may find that one builds on the next.

September: Retellings

October: Style over Substance

November: Combination Prompts

December: Roundup

About the author:

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me