- Getting a magical talking mirror. Had Snow White's stepmother not had this, she at least would not have known for sure who was doing best in the being beautiful stakes. Without that "for sure" would she have gone on to try to kill Snow White? Maybe, maybe not. With the mirror it was definite!
- Leaving breakfast unattended to go for a quick walk. I doubt if this was a mistake the three bears made twice!
- Sending your kid off with a basketful of goodies to grandma's house. Why it didn't occur to Little Red Riding Hood's parents that there were likely to be dangerous creatures in the woods is beyond me. Certainly she should have been told something about not talking to strangers. (And why she didn't think it odd a wolf should be asking questions is also beyond me).
- Going to see a witch to get help to win the love of a human prince. It really should have struck The Little Mermaid the witch was going to ask as very heavy price. Forget Disney. See Hans Christen Andersen on this one.
- Going to a witch's garden and pinching her vegetables. The man who would go on to be Rapunzel's father must have bitterly regretted this the day he had to hand his daughter over to the witch.
We have all had ideas that sounded great at the time but with hindsight we should have seen the flaws. Usually we discover what those are the hard way! The same is true for the fairytale world. For example:-
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What are those tasks and chores your characters love or hate doing and why? Are your characters well organized or do they leave everything till the last minute so jobs etc get done in one big mad rush?
People are usually either pantsers or planners and your characters should reflect that too. It is possible to be a bit of both but one trait dominates. In my case, I'm a planner. I can't imagine life without a list! Job gets done, gets ticked off list and it is satisfying to see I am working my way through what I have to do. But on occasions when it is not possible to plan in advance, I manage well enough doing things "on the fly". So how do your characters manage when having to act in a way that goes against what they would usually do? Of all the things we have to do daily, we each have our favourites and those things we loathe doing, other things we wish we were better at and so on and our characters should reflect that. There's nothing I like better than, at the end of the day when I'm tired, to want to grab a book and curl up. How do your characters relax? What would they read for pleasure? If they are borrowing from other worlds, do they borrow from their literature too? What makes them pick the choices they do?
What end of day rituals do your characters have? Are these personal to them or what their society does? And just how long is a day on the world you've created anyway? What creatures of the night exist in your fictional world? Is there a second kind of life in your society that only appears at night and only a select few know about and join in with? Or is that the time when the downtrodden and underclasses are allowed to appear? I talk on my Facebook author page tonight about my love of historic buildings and how revisiting the past can make me appreciate what I have now, especially in terms of education. After all the (generally) universal ability to read and write has not always been universal!
Do your characters ever go back to a place with links to their past? What are they hoping to achieve - to erase rotten memories and try bring about a sense of coming to terms with what happened? (And incidentally what did happen to make them want to do this?). Are they successful in revisiting their past like this with the aim of trying to "heal" it as much as can be done? Do you have characters that resolutely refuse to go back because they just want to forget and feel such a revisit would not be helpful? Does anything make them change their minds? Do they find another way of erasing bad memories or are they bottling up here? What are the consequences? Going back can have good consequences too - of bringing back happy memories to cope with the "now" that isn't all it's cracked up to be, maybe? Going back can be to show other, younger members of families where they come from. But for good or bad, going back can have a major impact on your stories, even if it is not the story in itself. A good social gathering of any kind should encourage conversations. So in your fictional world what kind of social gatherings are there? Does your fictional world celebrate birthdays and other family events in similar ways to ours or are there specific customs for this? What kind of conversation would be "good" in your created setting?
Are all groups on your world equal or can some groups not talk to others? If so, why and how did this come about? (You can see how that kind of situation leads to the Romeo and Juliet plot because at some point the ban on conversing, or indeed anything else (!), between specific groups is going to be challenged and broken by somebody. It is almost inevitable). As for family, how are these made up in the world you've invented? Families come in all shapes and sizes after all and fiction does generally reflect that but how does it show up in your fiction? |
AuthorI'm Allison Symes and write fairytales with bite, especially novels and short stories. Archives
October 2019
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