Fairytale Retellings: What Old Stories May Still Offer to the Modern Reader
Tags: Storytelling, Writing, Writers On Writing, Fantasy, Fairy Tale

Fairytales have been around for a long time. Millennia-kind of a long time. They’ve accompanied us for a long, long time and some have become almost second-nature to us. Everybody has heard them as kids and recounted them as adults.

They have insinuated in our lives in so many forms, always changing, always themselves. And of course, as writers, we have often appropriated them and make them our own.

But isn’t it odd?

As writers, we pursue the elusive idea of originality. If this is what we are expected to achieve, why are we still telling the same fairytales? And why are readers still reading them?

Retellings are addictive

I became fascinated with retellings when I was a teenager. After reading The Mist of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, I became obsessed with the Arthurian Legends. I discovered there were many different versions from many different periods, and — still more awesome — there were many different modern versions. Every time seems to have its own retelling of the story and, most fascinating of all, so many authors have given the story their own spin.

I suppose that’s when I became addicted to retellings. The fact that I could get the same story I love over and over again, and never the exact same one.

These stories are old and new at the same time. They are recognizable, familiar. In a way, they are like old friends. But at the same time, they are never the story we know. They always have something to offer, they can always surprise us. There is always something new to discover about them.

This is something I’ve realised a long time ago. But writing my own retelling in the last few months have made me think more closely to what it is that retellings can give to a writer, and therefore to a reader.

The power of these old stories

The secret to the power fairytales still carry, in my opinion, resides in their antiquity. They have been told for millennia, changing many times over the centuries, but far from having worn out over this time, they have gathered meaning and strength. They have become richer, and at the same time, they have learned to adapt, they have learned new languages, over and over again.

Adaptability is the magic world here, which is already a great lesson for a writer.

But there’s even more.

Fairytales have a strong message for our hearts

This is often why they have survived so long. Their core message is universal. They speak to us as human beings.

Their core message is universal. They speak to us as human beings.

As readers, we consume stories because we want to learn something about ourselves. We read because we want to understand things about ourselves that we can’t quite explain. Deep inside, we all have the same fears and the same hopes and the same desires. And fairytales know this.

When as authors, we pair up with fairytales, they lend us what they have learned about fears and desires and hopes over the centuries. We can let them lend us their characters, their plots, their twists, so that we may look further. We can experiment, we can search deeper.

It’s liberating. But it’s also challenging and inspiring. Pursuing my own retelling has allowed me to address my usual themes with a different take. Even as I bent the fairytale, it forced me to explore new territories that I might have never tackle without that prompt.

Fairytales speak the language of the heart

When they were first told, fairytales didn’t have the form we know now. Many fairytales were first recounted in a prehistoric time. I’m not joking. Scholars who have analysed their structure and elements have been able to determine that some well-known fairytales probably date back to Prehistory. Snow White, and especially Little Red Riding Hood appear to be among these.

It is clear, then, that fairytales have gone through huge changes through the many centuries of their existence. Little Red Riding Hood, for example, acquired the form we know today only a couple of centuries ago. Nothing, in comparison to its long life. It also appears that some of the older fairytales exist in many different cultures across the globe, even far away from one another (Cinderella has its own Chinese version, for example), though there is no accordance among scholars of how this happened.

Fairytales don’t fear to change and adapt. This is how they survived over the millennia. They changed, but they remained the same, to the point that we can recognise them no matter the language and the culture or the time. Adapting doesn’t mean losing themselves. It means reaching out to new readers, speaking their language.

Fairytales don’t fear to change and adapt. This is how they survived over the millennia. They changed, but they remained the same

This is how the very concept of retelling exists: as readers, we’ll recognise the story no matter what dress it will wear. This means that as writers, we will be free to experiment if we stay true to the core of the story. Retellings show us what’s crucial and what’s just makeup. What’s crucial is universal, and we’ll always connect with it. And because we connect with the heart of the story, we can play around with everything else.

Fairytales are old friends of ours

When we combine the steady core with the shifting language, we come to the true power of fairytale retellings. Telling our own version of a well-known story puts us writers in a place where we would always want to be, but we seldom are: we know quite well what readers expect and think.

Writer and readers both know the story, they both know the plot, the characters and the themes. So the writer has the opportunity to twist and turn the story, in a way that will surprise the readers once they have recognised the story.

But it isn’t just a matter of surprise.

Twisting the story will make it richer. Readers will have a notion of the original story, and the new twist, rather than destroy the old story, will enrich it. Our own theme will overlay the theme of the classic story, and the dialogue between old and new will give the possibility to spark even newer thoughts and reflection.

If we are faithful to the story, we can afford to betray it in all possible ways.

This is what I love about fairytale retellings. I’m thrilled that I’ve finally come to write my own.

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Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently.

She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/