- Villains are always bad-tempered and impatient. Naturally this leads to their downfall. Fairytales are very "hot" on ensuring justice is done (and if it can be poetic justice so much the better).
- It is vital your hero/heroine never judges anyone by appearance alone. Powerful magical beings have the habit of testing the character of those likely to be heroes/heroines. They do this by disguising themselves, usually as crones or old men, and see if said candidate will be kind to them or not.
- There has to be a clear cut bad guy and good guy in fairytales. People need to know who to "root for". That doesn't mean your good guy is perfect. The best tales are those where the hero/heroine clearly has flaws but overcomes them to get the quest achieved. Also the villains have good reasons for being the way they are so people have some sympathy for them, yet it is still clear they are wrong and/or the way they are going about things is wrong.
One advantage of writing genre fiction is people know what the rules are and you are generally not expected to reinvent the wheel. For example, in fantasy everyone has wizards with black pointed hats. It's what you then do with that wizard which counts for anything! So a quick look at fairytale character traits reveals:-
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm Allison Symes and write fairytales with bite, especially novels and short stories. Archives
October 2019
Categories |