As you can tell, I left the plot pretty vague, because you only want to capture the essence of the story, and then add your own ingredients to make it fun and interesting. One example of a Beauty and the Beast retelling had a girl (who was actually a spy!) fall through the beast's roof and break her leg- that was the author's plot device to make the girl stay at the castle instead of keeping her prisoner. Because she was stuck at the castle and had a secret mission to learn more about the beast, she tried to talk to the beast and learn more about him. Of course, she ended up falling in love with him and breaking the curse! Another fun addition to the story was the side story with the servants- instead of turning into utensils and objects, the servants lost their ability to speak, as well as their identity (they had to walk around with face masks).

So as you can see, the basis of the story remained the same while the author was able to put her own amazing spin on it. There are countless examples of this for countless fairytales and all the ones I have read so far are extremely enjoyable. You can even gender swap characters for the stories, or add crazy spins on the tale- it’s all up to you as the author!!!

Something that always draws me in is when someone puts a solid, really entertaining spin on a lesser known tale- so don’t be afraid to research old stories and bring back the forgotten stories!

I hope this inspired or motivated you to start/complete a fairytale retelling. That’s all for this week, so stay safe and see you on the author side!!