Helpful Links Part 2 - Fairy Tale Retellings

(Larisa-K, Pixabay)

As promised, here’s part 2. When I started on my retelling of ‘Sleeping Beauty’, part of my research was finding out how best to tackle retellings. These articles are the ones I found most helpful.

I’ll start with ‘How to Write a Fairy Tale Retelling’ by Kaitlin Hillerich at ‘Ink and Quills’. I like this because she’s given examples, albeit with films instead of books, where the original story has been used to give us a remake instead of a retelling, where there have been slight modifications, where we’ve been given a fresh look, and a tale that’s been completely revamped.

‘How to Write a Killer Fairy Tale Retelling’ has 6 very useful tips.

In ‘How to Retell a Fairy Tale’, Holly West talks about including the elements that are key to fairy tales.

Betsy Cornwell explains how to make your retelling stand out from the crowd in ‘Writing Fairy Tale Retellings That Stand Out’.

After observing her own method when attempting a retelling, Ashlee Willis gives us ‘Advice on Writing a Fairy Tale Retelling’.

You’ll probably find there’s overlapping advice in these articles, but each has specific points that were helpful to me.

Finally, I thought I’d also add ‘Why Every Heroine Doesn’t Need a Love Interest’ because, in some books I’ve read, I feel the love interest has been shoehorned in and, instead of adding to the story, detracts from it and slows it down.