[pt 2] What do you think is the key to writing a good story inspired by a fairytale, in terms of cliches to avoid and areas to focus on? Take Maas for example (whose stories intrigue me, even if I don’t like them at times): what is her strong point in this regard? What does she do right and wrong?
Ooh this is such a great set of questions! My answer to this got long, so heads up. 😉
I think the #1 rookie mistake people make when retelling fairy tales is going off of their recollection of the fairy tale and/or the Disney version without really interrogating the tale’s history or underlying meaning. This technique (or lack thereof) will result in a really shallow retelling that’s no more than an imitation. The other thing I see modern writers do a lot is say “I’m writing a fairy tale, but FEMINIST” without doing the work to study the history of gender and fairy tales OR read the work of existing feminist scholars who have worked with fairy tales specifically. This is true for any genre, really, but if you want to make A Point, you need to know what you’re talking about.
As far as what other writers do that I would do differently … that’s a tricky question, because there are bits and pieces I like from many different writers and strategies of theirs that I’ve incorporated into my own work. When it comes to the process of adaptation, there are many perspectives and specific techniques that writers use based on their particular projects. This can be everything from POV to the amount of liberty taken with the source to something like genderbending. I personally love writers who breathe more life into fairy tale characters, and I also like to have a solid sense of place. I don’t think enough writers explore the possibilities they could with multicultural variants or diversifying existing European stories, so that’s something I like to focus on.
To kind of synthesize the above and answer your next question, I’d say that if a writer wants to retell a fairy tale, they should know it in as many forms as possible. When developing Unrooted, I read variants of Snow White from Greece, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Chile, to name a few. I learned the history of the story’s development, how it changed over time, and why. I read multiple critical interpretations (which eventually started me on the road to my Ph.D), and considered at length the implications of every choice I made in adaptation. Some writers may do this more than others, but I think every writer adapting a fairy tale should do it in some degree. Otherwise, changes that seem “cool” have a major affect on the delivery and structure of a story that fundamentally alters it in important ways.
Scholars in adaptation theory have many opinions on this, but my perspective tends to be that a “successful” (I use the term loosely) retelling has to be in dialogue with its source material, rather than just copying it or changing it for aesthetic reasons. A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, for example, should have something to say, explicitly or implicitly, about the power dynamics of marriage, wealth, and social class. Adaptations that approach is as “it’s just Stockholm Syndrome!!!” are very much missing the point. Similarly, a retelling of Snow White should consider mother-daughter relationships, patriarchal standards and values of beauty and age, and sexual maturity. Again, these concerns can be addressed on a spectrum and don’t have to be in your face, but they’re things that I believe a writer should be thinking about when they adapt a fairy tale.
Much of this is my own educated opinion on the matter, but its something on which reasonable people can (and do) disagree on in adaptation studies. I actually wrote a term paper this semester on Maas’s adaptation “success” and found that, while by my standards she misses the mark (her approach at looking at power imbalances romanticizes rather than interrogates them), by other standards she does quite well. Jacques Derrida’s concept of bricolage allows for looser interpretation, with the understanding that such interpretation forces new meaning onto the story. I personally dislike the process of forcing new meanings onto stories without the requisite legwork committed to making that new meaning function–or, without that new meaning being progressive and a deliberate move performed in conversation with the source material. My conclusion on ACOTAR was that Maas’s “new meaning” was regressive when taken as part of the legacy of Beauty and the Beast and its adaptations, and while it structurally has much in common with its source tales (also including East of the Sun and West of the Moon), the specific changes made did not push the narrative forward on a metatextual level. I plan to keep working on this paper and hopefully publish one day under my academic alter ego, and if that ever happens, I’ll provide information about it.
Fairy tale retellings come and go in waves–there was a major one around 2011-2014 at the time Once Upon a Time premiered. It’s dimmed somewhat since then, but fairy tales are always relevant and there is constantly a conversation surrounding these stories that mean so much to so many people. I’m excited to be a part of that conversation, and I’m so happy to hear you’re excited about Unrooted. I can’t wait to share it with you. ❤
Sarah Viehmann 