Why Fairy Tale Retellings?

Hello, my lovelies!

I’m not sure if this is a question you’ve asked since I started blogging again but I know it’s a question I have been asked by other people when  talk about my love of retellings so I thought I’d clear it up here and now.

First of all, I would like to say that I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I’m not the authority on retellings and I certainly can’t offer the final word on why they are so popular. But I can offer my insight and so that I shall.

Questions:

I touched on this in an earlier post but would like to expand it a bit here. Fairy tales have so many questions that need answered and sometimes a retelling is nothing more than that- the answer to a question. We read a story and something doesn’t make sense. Our brains like puzzles, they like to figure things out, and sometimes as writers the way to figure that out is to tell the story over again until we find the answers we’re looking for. We like life to make sense and if stories are just an extension of life then why should they be any different?

Or a retelling is just us asking so that the reader can answer it. Or at least try to. Sometimes we’re just as confused as everyone else but we want others to know we’re asking the same questions. We don’t always have the answers and we never claim to. But sometimes we’re searching for that answer, the question worth thinking about, and we want our readers to do the same. We have nothing profound to say, no incredible point to make, we just want you to think for yourself.

Plot:

I honestly don’t know how many other writers write retellings because of this, but I know that part of the reason I write retellings is because I cannot create plots to save my life. The fact that I managed to finish more than one story with an actual plot that wasn’t a retelling is kind of mind-boggling to me. Because I’m awful at plots.

Fairy tales offer a structure and a frame that can otherwise be hard to come by. They help offer a clear story goal and a basic idea of events that can and should happen. And then we have the freedom to go in any direction we want outside of that. The story can be set anywhere, anytime we want. We can do whatever we want with the characters, they can be whoever we want. But we know where they’re going, know what they’re supposed to do. And fairy tales are honestly so short that when you’re expanded them into a full novel they leave so much room for other things to happen. But with the basic framework already laid out you have the freedom to have fun with all the meat of the story.

A Desire to Share:

I like to tell people “I know how to share; I went to kindergarten.” But beyond the basic ability to share I have found that when it’s something that brings me immense joy, I more than know how to share- I love to.

When I read a story that I connect with it makes me happy and I want to share that joy with people. I want other people to experience what I did. I want the story to mean as much to them as it did to me. If I love a character, I want people to see what I see in them; if my mind if blown by a plot point, I want people to appreciate the brilliance of it; if I find a particular theme, I want other people to think about it the way that I did.

Retellings give us the ability to do that- we can show people the beauty we find in stories, help them see that story through our eyes, show them what we love.

Connection:

Fairy tales connect us to the past in the most special of ways.

Think about it for a moment, would you? The stories we love, the ones from our childhood- whether ones we watched or read or had told to us by someone- were stories other people grew up on years before we did. Sometimes even hundreds of years before. A different version, maybe, but that makes it all the more special. Someone in a different country had a version of that story that means so much to you told to them in a different language hundreds of years before you were even born. You’re connected to that person now, someone you will never meet or even know the name of, but you know the same story and that little bit of your childhood is the same as theirs.

Retellings are just an extension of that. We take stories that were made to be changed with each telling, made to hold a piece of the teller, and we tell them. We change things, we answer the questions we want answered, we ask the ones we don’t have the answers to. We share the characters we love most, draw attention to the evil of the ones we hate. We share with our readers the way we feel the story is meant to be shared. Because as the storytellers of old, we want our story to survive. We want our stories to shape the way others view the tale, want our versions to be a part of someone’s childhood or young adult years or midlife crisis. We want the tales that means so much to us to be expanded, to reach a wider audience, the show the story anew, fresh and ready for a new generation.

One of our biggest fears is that we don’t matter, that we have nothing to contribute to this world, that we have nothing to leave behind. Fairy tales remind us of our connection to people throughout the generations. They remind us that people are always connected to people and that we are never alone. Retelling remind us that we have something to add to this world, that our perspective matters.

Every time we tell a tale we are connected to every single other person who has told it, our version of the story a mosaic of all the versions that came before it. And our own story will be a piece in the mosaic of all the tales that come after it.

We matter. We are not alone. We are all connected. And fairy tales remind us of that.

That’s why fairy tale retellings.

See you on Friday! Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess