June is Fairy Tale month here at the playground, in honor of Miss M’s birthday. Today’s Friday Fun is to twist a fairy tale! Here’s a couple of ways to get you started.
- Change genres or setting. Use a high-concept movie pitch: Rapunzel in space! Cinderella in an anime! The Little Mermaid meets Jaws in the Bahamas! The Brave Little Tailor meets Godzilla above Tokyo! Okay, those last two were a joke….but if they inspires you, feel free to use them. 😀
- Use this prompt: You’re out and about and suddenly you see this woman with long past-her-feet-and-beyond hair. Write a story about this. The setting could be NYC, a New England college town, a colony on the moon. The woman could be dressed in a wedding gown, hair spilling down her train, and getting out of a limo, or she could be wearing gingham and walking fast, hair bundled under her arm, not looking at anyone.
- Use the They Fight Crime! generator to reimagine fairy tale characters. For example: “The Beast’s a lonely alcoholic photographer haunted by memories of ‘Nam. Beauty’s a ditzy winged safe cracker with an incredible destiny. They fight crime!”
- Ask why and keeping asking why. Why did the princess in The Princess and the Pea have to undergo a sensitivity test? Because the royal family wanted to keep the bloodlines strong. What does sensing a pea have to do with keeping bloodlines strong? They’re magic bloodlines, and the test is really to check for sensitivity to magic. So the pea is a magic pea? It only looks like a dried-up pea to those without magic. It really is a gem of magical power. Why did the princess come dripping and wet out of the night? She was on the run from an evil sorceror who’d been keeping her captive…. or so she said. Why’d she say it if it wasn’t true? Because she was really a magic con woman after that dried-up pea/powerful gem. And so on.
Have fun. 🙂
Hee – sounds like fun!