Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos with some images directly from Pixabay. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
A little later this month, I’m off to see The Chameleon Theatre Group’s pantomime, Cinderella. Oh yes I am! I’m looking forward to it as their pantomimes are always great fun and this one is based on my favourite fairytale. A review will follow in due course (but if you haven’t seen any of their pantomimes, do check this one out. There is still time to book). See their website for more – https://www.chameleontheatre.co.uk/
But the thought of this inspired this article. I’ve loved fairytales for as long as I can remember.
I still have The Reader’s Digest Collection of Fairytales (a two volume set which has the original stories collected by/written by the likes of Charles Perrault, the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christen Andersen etc). I once undertook a Future Learning course (an online one for free) about the works of Andersen. It was fascinating and fun to do.
For many of us, these tales would have been the first stories we heard regularly (and then, I hope, went on to read for ourselves). Many of the pantomimes are based on the fairytales precisely because they are familiar stories, all of which have a strong plotline. There are the goodies. There are the baddies. There has to be a good ending. Magic is involved somewhere. There is usually a three act structure to the stories which translates brilliantly to the stage.
All of these are great ingredients for a pantomime and your average fairytale provides all of these. Pantomime also relies, to a certain extent, on folk already knowing the stories because it helps make the jokes work better. It also helps when it comes to “slipping in” additional characters such as Buttons for Cinderella because the pantomime writer will see where the extra character could work. Because the audience know the story so well, they will see that too. Characters like Buttons can add further entertainment value to a familiar tale.
But fairytales, for me, are relevant, and always will be, outside of the world of pantomime as well. Just because we all get older doesn’t mean we should stop reading them.
Fairytales and The Reading Diet
Every writer, regardless of what they write, will hear the advice often to read widely, in and out of their chosen genre, and to include nonfiction. I’ve given the advice out myself. We learn from what we read, even if we’re not consciously doing so. We will take in by osmosis things like story layout, dialogue layout, the fact there has to be a beginning, middle, and an end to make a story work.
Where fairytales are already so familiar, you may think you don’t need to read them again because you’ve already taken these things in but I’d say otherwise. It’s vital for any writer to avoid the familiarity breeds contempt scenario. In any case, there is always something new to be found in a story when you study it (as the course on Andersen showed me only too clearly, it was enlightening).
For fairytales, I would look again at how the well known characters interact with each other, what their motivations are and so on. With fairytales, you can also see how to bring magic into a story where it makes sense. There is also a sense of seeing how a magical world is set up and works whenever you read such a tale.
Fairytales form a major part of the fantasy genre. There is a market out there for fairytales – and not just for children, far from it.
And if you love the stories, why not write fairytales of your own?
The Joys of Fairytales
I love the simplicity of their format, the way justice is usually seen to be done (could do with some of that in life, could we not?), evil is beaten, and things are usually resolved at the end. Again, we know the latter is so often not true in life and I do think fairytales provide a valuable “comfort reading” role here and that shouldn’t be looked down on. That kind of reading can be a blessing to so many and it continues to be for me when life is more on the grim side than I’d like.
Fairytales are honest too. They call out evil for what it is. They do make it clear who the baddies are. I also like the way that magic is used to assist but isn’t the sole means of resolving problems.
Indeed, in tales such as Sleeping Beauty, magic causes problems (the bad witch cursing the princess) which then has to be softened (by the good fairy godmother changing the curse so the princess doesn’t die but sleeps for a century, which must be the all time lie-in record!). Even then others (in this case the prince) still have to act (he has to find the palace and kiss the princess, magic doesn’t help him with either of those things).
Sometimes fairytales can act as warnings. I’ve always loved the warning against arrogance you find in tales such as Beauty and the Beast. The latter was a prince who was arrogant to an old woman. She was a fairy godmother in disguise who turned him into a beast to punish him for that arrogance and he was to stay in that form until such time as he was redeemed by love. There’s a good warning here not to judge by appearances either.
I also love the fact fairytales are anything but twee precisely because they do show evil up for what it is.
Fairytales and The Writing Craft
I know this happened over time but with repeated readings and hearings of the classic tales, I did work out that on the “third time”, something must happen which would lead to the (usual) happy ever after ending. I was taking in the Rule of Three, as writers know it, without realising it. The Three Little Pigs is a good example of this. Also the writing in fairytales is direct and the word count usually isn’t that high. Now both of those things are going to appeal to a flash fiction writer!
Characterisation is clear and we only find out what we need to know about each one. Back story is kept to a minimum (we did need to know the prince in Beauty and the Beast had been a prince until he was rude to the old woman. We didn’t need to know he’d been educated at the magical equivalent of Eton, for example).
So there is much for writers to learn from how fairytales are presented. Tightness of writing leads to increased pace. You know with fairytales something has to change/happen otherwise there is no story. That doesn’t just apply to fairytales but I think it is especially obvious in them.
Conclusion
I will always love fairytales. They are great stories and I am grateful to all who collected them to ensure we can still love them now.
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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