What Makes a Good Retelling? 💖⚙️📚
Open for a Clockwork Coffin update and other bookish fun! 🎁
Hello!
I hope you’re having a wonderful week! After a weekend in which my plans to go out were thwarted twice, I’m glad to have some good news at the beginning of this week: I finished the first read-through of my WIP! Every author has their own revisions process. I start with printing the entire book and write notes about what is and isn’t working for me on every single page. I have a lot of work to do before my story is in the hands of beta readers, but I’m so excited about this book! 💖
As I’ve been revising my own reimagined fairy tale tale, I thought it’d be fun to look at what makes for a good retelling, with the caveat this is highly subjective. I may eventually make a part two about this topic, but here are my two main criteria for retellings:
A Truly Original Twist
I need to preface this with an important PSA: You will never catch me publicly saying anything less than positive about another author’s book because the publishing community is incredibly small and I never know who I’ll end up paneling with at conventions. (Also, just because a book wasn’t for me doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the story. It could easily be someone else’s favorite read and I think that’s wonderful.💖)
Last year I picked up a retelling of one my favorite classic characters, thinking it would be right up my alley. At first I was enjoying the paranormal elements added to the story, until I was nearly halfway through the book. Why? Despite adding fantastical backgrounds to the public domain characters, the stories in the novel were following the original plot, down to the beats, without changing the outcome. I felt like I already read the story.
For me, a retelling should deviate in an interesting way from the original tale in order to prevent readers from getting bored. I don’t mind guessing the endings to books, but if it feels too much like the same cookie-cutter story, I it’s a lost opportunity.
Give Agency to Characters
This one is so important to me. I love fairy tales, but so often the female characters have very little agency in their own stories. While I’m not suggesting that every woman in a fairy tale retelling needs to be transformed into an independent warrior queen worthy of an action movie, I do think it’s vital to give underrepresented and marginalized characters a voice.
When I was deciding on a fairy tale for my book in the Wickedly Dangerous series, I spent hours looking through the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index), a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. While it’s a not a perfect system, it’s a great resource for looking up obscure stories!
During my search, I kept coming back to ATU 307, otherwise known as The Princess in the Coffin (sometimes called The Princess in the Chest.)
Though there are many variations of the Princess in the Coffin in multiple countries, the main concept of the story is a woman has been cursed to transform into a monster and rise from her coffin each night. Breaking the spell requires no small amount of cunning and bravery. The problem with the original tale is the titular character has no agency or even a name in her own story. Most of the time, the curse occurred because of something her parents did, not her. She doesn’t even have her choice of savior.
I immediately fell in love with this fairy tale about a monstrous woman. I wanted to write her a better story in The Clockwork Coffin.
If you’re looking for more fairy tale retellings to read or watch, check out this presentation I gave at DemiCon 35. I had so much fun during that panel!
Do you have a favorite retelling? I’d love to know about it in the comments!
January Events
When I’m not in revisions mode, I’m preparing for my next school visit later this month. I’m excited for this opportunity to talk about storytelling with students again! I’ll have announcements coming over the next several weeks for more 2025 events. Can’t wait to share more soon!
Temporal Textual Talks is a steampunk book club hosted by Madame Askew and Bill Bodden. It will be held virtually on Sunday, January 19th. The first book of 2025 is His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik. You don’t have to finish the book to participate in the discussion here. For the full list of next year’s book club reads, check out this post. (Forsaken Beauty and the Etherbeast is August’s book of the month! 🎉)
For more steampunk events, check out The Steampunk Explorer! They cover global events, art, books, fashion, and everything else steampunk in their excellent newsletter. I love looking through their photo galleries!
Happy reading!
Kelsey
