Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. AI images avoided.
I’ve loved fairytales for more years than I care to remember. My sister and I were blessed with a mother who loved books and we were read to regularly as children. It is one of the best things anyone can do to encourage a child’s imagination and develop their vocabulary. Not that my sister and I were aware of this, of course. We just loved the entertaining stories and relished the “baddies” getting their comeuppance.
Fairytales have the security built in there will be some sort of happy ending though, years later, when I first read Hans Christen Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, its ending came as a shock. This wasn’t a happy ever after ending story. Disney couldn’t have filmed the tale the way Andersen wrote it. And my mother never read it at bedtime – wise move, that!
Fairytales often have more impact than might be realised at the time you first come across them. From a writing viewpoint, they teach you a lot about the craft of writing and those thoughts continue to have validity.
Fairytales and the Writing Craft
Most fairytales use the Three Act Structure, though when you’re having these stories read to you or read them yourself later this is not apparent. What you do pick up on is the first time something has to happen to the main character, then something else happens, and it is only after that you get to the third thing to happen which leads, usually, to the happy ever after ending.
You only get to find out what it is necessary to know about the characters for the story to make sense/work. There is no padding. You do need to know Cinderella lost her mother and her father remarried, unwisely. You don’t need to know the cause of death for the mother, how old Cinderella was when this happened and so on (though there is room for other stories to flesh out that kind of detail separately. My A Helping Hand in the 2009 Bridge House Publishing anthology, Alternative Renditions, showed the younger stepsister hadn’t been as nasty to Cinders as the older one had been so Cinders sent the fairy godmother back to help the youngest one out. Good fun to do.).
It is clear cut which characters you should be supporting. The plot is direct. Everything follows a sensible structure. (And what kids love best of all, as I did and still do, is that the “baddies” do get their comeuppance, something Roald Dahl was only too aware of when he wrote for children).
There is no sentimentality in the fairytales. The original versions can literally be grim. Yes, there is a moral behind most of them but it is left to you the reader/listener to figure out what this is. I’ve always loved The Ugly Duckling. The messages here I picked up on are ugly is in the eye of the beholder, not just beauty; those who are different can have skills/talents/worth; and late developers can and do come into their own. Still pertinent messages, I think. (Overall, I think there is an anti-bullying message here too).
The best stories bear retelling/rereading many times and each time you experience the tale, you get something new from them. I find this to be true for the fairytales. As an adult, I can understand more of the heartache behind, say, The Little Match Girl, then I would’ve done as a child. This is partly because I know more of social history – kids could and did die like that (and sadly in many parts of the world still do). When I first found this tale, my focus was on feeling so sorry for the match girl which is correct, of course, but you do only find out later what could lead to someone being in that position.
Repetition is used to good effect. A rhythm builds up as the story goes on and this becomes more apparent if you read the story out loud/have it read to you.
As you get to know the stories more, you obviously anticipate what’s coming but that is the joy of the fairytales for children. They need to be able to anticipate, to enjoy the knowledge all will be right in the end (which is why you save the original version of The Little Mermaid until later!). This is where the enjoyment of story comes from and should lead to children wanting to discover more books and stories for themselves.
There is a proper beginning, middle and ending to each fairytale.
Each fairytale is also easy to visualise, which is why they are great for film adapations and pantomimes.
There is a clear sense of good and evil. Now I’ve always liked that and still do. I don’t want the murderers getting away with it in crime stories, for example. Later on can come the blurring of the lines here but you need to have a rough idea at least of where those lines are in the first place and fairytales are great here.
I’m always reminded of the thought the late great Les Dawson made so many people laugh with his atrocious piano playing. The truth is he had to be an excellent pianist to be able to do that yet alone be able to do it well. Something of that applies here. In knowing where the lines between good and evil usually are, you can then work out where to blur them in a way a reader would “go along with”. I must admit though I still like my villains to be clear cut villains! And I know that’s a legacy from the fairytales.
Fairytales such as The Snow Queen are lengthy, others are much shorter. I like that variety here and in other forms of fiction.
The characters are well portrayed and it is clear always who is speaking.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the disguised characters who nearly always turn out to be powerful magical beings there to teach an arrogant so-and-so a lesson or several. Sometimes you can think of those for whom those lessons might be apt in the here and now! Fairytales can reflect us and our behaviour – and they don’t flatter. Greed, jealousy and so on are shown up for what they are. They’re not whitewashed. I like that too.
Conclusion
Fairytales are timeless for a good reason. They continue to reflect human behaviour – for good and ill. They continue to show kindness and compassion are good things and the villains won’t get away with it.
Perhaps many of us wish that could be true in life too.
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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