Fairytales heroines nab our attention because they are either princesses, become princesses or encounter the supernatural. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, The Snow Queen. Even the heroine in Rumpelstiltskin marries the King who locked her in a room, demanding she turn straw into gold. (What’s up with that, by the way? Marrying the greedy guy put you in a tower?) But fairytale heroines are often tools in a morality story. A symbol. A two-dimensional character that shuffles the plot along to teach a valued lesson. For a novel, we need a heroine readers can relate to, who looks someone like them even if they are a princess, or meet a prince, or who’s superpower is strictly her beauty. From the web site Den of Geeks: “We don’t care who they are, […]
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Learning from Fairytales: Story World Building Part II
Fairytales can’t exist without story world. Where would we be without Cinderella’s magic garden with the fairy godmother? Or Snow White’s dash through the evil forest to meet up with seven spunky dwarfs? How about Beast’s castle? The enchanted place where Belle found herself detained? The last time on the fairytale blog, I talked about the elements of story world being visual, emotional and symbolic. Today we’ll look at mystical and societal. Mystical Below is an excerpt from the book I just finished about a long lost princess returning to her great grandmother’s country. She looks out the palace window to see a glow in the forest. “You don’t see a white light? Kind of sparkly? In the woods?” Franz stared ahead, his hand wrapped around the thick curtain cord. […]
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Learning from Fairytales: Story World Building
When I started the Royal Wedding Series, I knew I had to create a country or countries “worlds” in which my royal families lived. I’m a realistic kind of writer. I like real cities and real places. I once called the Starbucks in downtown Chattanooga to get a description. I called the University of Northern Iowa to see if scholarshipped athletes had to live in the dorms. All the sake of authenticity. Yet, I’ve created fictional towns three times in the course of seventeen novels. Reasons can vary for making up cities, or countries. Or entire universes. Genre is a key reason to invent other places. Fantasy, Sci-Fi and fairytales, books with supernatural elements, demand world building. Tolkien created a middle of the earth! So what can we not do […]
Read the RestThe Fairytale Code: Write a great story using Fairytale Elements
One of the things we love to do at My Book Therapy is “break it down.” Just what does it take to write a great story? Fairytales capture our imagination in many ways. The art of creating worlds full of the supernatural, good verses evil and true love have been around since… well, The Garden. The elements of traditional fairytales are often found in fantasy and modern day science fiction. And of course, love stories. This week and next, I want to break down the technical fundamentals of a fairytale. You’ll see we use them in our “non fairytale” stories as well. Story world. All stories must have some story world, but those with a fairytale element, must have a rich, dynamic story world. The characters’ world must go beyond […]
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