Once upon a time, I got bit by a story bug and spent the entire weekend doing barrels and barrels of research for a manuscript that may or may not ever actually end up being written, ignoring friends, relations, and my cat as they expressed concern for my sanity and time management skills.
And by “once upon a time,” I mean, like, once a month at a minimum.
This month, the object of my short attention span is a sci-fi horror retelling of a classic fairy tale (I realize this sounds fairly childhood-ruining, to which I say, I’m no worse than the Grimm Brothers) which will probably end up being my July Camp Nanowrimo project. Fairy tale retellings are something I’ve always loved reading, but have somehow never attempted to write. So while I can’t exactly call myself an expert on the process, I have been having a massive amount of fun prepping for this one, and I thought I’d spread the love by sharing a few things I’ve found helpful so far.
Know your rights
As most people are aware, Disney is fairly ruthless when it comes to copyright infringement (and actually lobbied pretty hard for many of the copyright laws we have in the US today). This spooks a lot of authors away from writing fairy tale adaptations, but it shouldn’t! While Disney owns the rights to their own original IP, most fairy tales are old enough that they fall squarely within the public domain. This site gives a good overview of when a published work enters the public domain. If you’re adapting something that was originally written in the 20th century, you might have to do a bit of homework, but most fairy tales are old enough that this is a non-issue – we’re talking anywhere from a few hundred to even a few thousand years old. That’s about as much in the public domain as it gets.
Where you have to be careful is utilizing certain details that first originated in modern versions of the story that may still be under copyright. So, let’s say you were adapting Beauty & the Beast; you’d be in the clear to adapt the plot point of Belle’s father getting caught trespassing in the Beast’s castle, because that’s been present since the original version. But you can’t include a singing French candlestick named Lumiere. This is where it’s helpful to…
Know your history
Tracing the origins of the story I’m trying to adapt and familiarizing myself with the various versions of it that already exist was my first step in the research process. Wikipedia is actually a great source for digging this stuff up, largely because of how easy the platform makes it to dive down deep rabbit holes, which the histories of fairy tales typically are.
After reading the plot summaries of the main versions of the story, I was able to formulate an outline of the most common plot beats, as well as a list of miscellaneous details from throughout the ages I wanted to be sure to include. I kept this outline relatively vague, writing down the loosest possible descriptions, really trying to focus on what all these different versions of events have in common more than the beats of a specific version. I also had a pretty high bar for what plot elements actually got written down. Reoccurring in more than one version wasn’t enough – it had to be something the average reader would immediately associate with the fairy tale in question. Things that might feature in a trivia show question: “Name the fairy tale where blah-blah-blah happens.” Not the whole album, just the greatest hits. With that, I was able to sit down and figure out which elements I was in the clear to use, which of those I actually wanted to use, and how I was going to fit them in against the backdrop of the sci-fi horror genre.
There are a few other little gems of useful information this stage of the process can turn up, for example:
- Important historical and cultural context that can help to explain the changes the story has undergone over the years
- Ties to other folk tales and mythologies
- Details about other cultures’ versions of the story
Any of these can serve as additional inspiration for either the details of the story itself or the wider picture of how you’re going to frame it. You might find anything from entire characters you want to use to tiny nuggets of symbolism to use as connection points to the original story – all of it is potentially useful to you as you get to know your source material and work out how you’re going to transform it.
But the most important connecting thread between all these different versions of the story isn’t actually the plot, it’s…
Theme, theme, theme
Every popular story is popular for different reasons. We love action movies for the cool stunts, adrenaline rushes, and impressive CGI. Historical fiction resonates heavily with many people because the events you’re experiencing on the page actually occurred, and that’s meaningful. People like horror because humans have this weird bug that’s never been patched where the “scared” command in certain environments outputs dopamine. These things aren’t the only reason we love these stories, but when we think about broad categories of fiction rather than specific works, they tend to be the prime suspects. And for fairy tales, our culprit is theme.
I’ve got an entire post about theme and how to wrap your brain around it, so I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail here other than to say it’s something you should be heavily concerned with when adapting a fairy tale. The stories we tell to kids are often ridden with moral and behavioral lessons that tend to form the central themes. The rewards of kindness and generosity, the consequences of various types of bad behavior (lying, cruelty, etc.), and the triumph of good over evil are familiar themes you can probably pick out of basically any popular fairy tale. Many fairy tales are, at their core, coming of age stories, and many also play with the dynamics of power or wealth in some way. Metamorphosis is another ridiculously common one, with magical transformations being such a staple of fairy tales in general that some would call it a defining characteristic of the genre.
As you look back across your target story’s history, notice the themes you see reoccurring most commonly in different versions of the tale. These patterns of meaning are really what you’re working with when you adapt something, and they’re the part of the story you really have to nail to get people to go, “Yeah, I’ll buy it, that’s basically The Little Mermaid,” or whatever. Because the meat of that story isn’t actually about Ariel being a mermaid, specifically. She could be a three-headed alien for all I care. The part that really matters is that she’s a young person who is fascinated by something forbidden and desperately wants to be part of a world she can’t set foot in (mermaid-foot pun entirely intended; I’ll take no criticism). How you knit those themes and ideas of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, taking things for granted, and choosing between two worlds into the fabric of your target genre is the important part of the adaptation process. On your list of what to cut, these are the things that should be at the very bottom. Which brings me to…
You can’t keep everything
The story I’m adapting has had a romance at the core of the plot in every single iteration I have ever come across. It’s the first thing people think of when they think of this particular story. Wikipedia actually describes it as a romantic fantasy, and many of the popular tropes that can be traced back to this particular work are solidly in the category of romance.
Reader, I’m axing the romance subplot.
As I have discussed at great length in the past, it is in no way, shape, or form necessary for a good adaptation to preserve everything from the original story. In fact, it’s damn near impossible. Fairy tales are a fantastic example of this, and a good way to dip your toes into the concept of altering a story in adaptation if you’re the kind of person that’s inclined to pearl-clutching over this. There are so many different versions of any given fairy tale from which to pluck details – so many different forms of every plot beat already in existence for you to make a patchwork out of – that hardly anyone will notice, care, or think to question it if you want to add a brand new patch. This isn’t weird or controversial in the case of fairy tales. It’s simply how it’s done.
Now, for big things, like cutting a romance where that used to be the core of the story, you do need a good reason. In my case, I felt strongly that the themes the romance subplot was originally tied to could be just as easily (if not better) expressed through something more akin to a found family subplot, which in this particular case, with these particular characters in this particular setting, makes, in my opinion, an extravagant amount of sense.
Now, I’ll bet you just about anything that if my friend who reads my early drafts sees this, I’m going to get a pissed-off text about how dare I blah blah blah, but here’s the thing: you’re allowed to do this. When we make art, whether that’s writing, painting, underwater basket weaving, or anything in between, what we’re really doing is channeling something that’s already there. Redirecting the vibes, if you will. We always draw inspiration from the things around us, from our lived experiences to the stories we consume, whether we realize it or not. No one in their right mind would try to claim that this means the thing you drew your inspiration from has to end up in your book verbatim – in fact, most people would claim the exact opposite.
Of course, if you’re claiming to be adapting something, it does kind of need to be recognizable, but nobody ever said that means you have to keep everything. And for a wide variety of reasons – ballooning word count, genre-related constraints, fear of the wrath of Disney, you name it – you will end up needing to make some cuts. Possibly some huge ones. Don’t be afraid of this! You are not ruining anything, and if you’ve done your job in preserving the themes and ideas of the classic story, along with a few key plot beats, trust me, it’ll still be plenty recognizable. The things you cut will leave gaps in the story, which you get to fill with whatever the hell you want. This is where the story really becomes yours, and you get to take part in the ancient and powerful tradition of completely changing a fairy tale in the re-telling. This, my friends, is what it’s all about.
Now, go ruin some childhoods.
Happy writing!