Fantasy with Friends: What Makes a Good Fairy Tale Retelling?

Fantasy with Friends is a weekly meme hosted by the good people over at Pages Unbound. Fantasy with Friends poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.

This week’s prompt is:

Do you like reading fairy tale retellings? What, in your opinion, makes a good retelling?

I don’t know that I have a real passion for fairy tale retellings, but more often than not, I enjoy them when I run into them.

I break them into two varieties–straight retellings. I’ve only got one example that comes to mind–Hansel and Gretel by Stephen King and Maurice Sendak (which I didn’t write about, which bothers me, I liked what I thought I wrote). There’s an emphasis here or there that the author brings to mind, or a certain amount of their own style, while retaining a Straight Outta Grim feel. I’ve read others like it, but they’re not coming to mind.

The other type is a reinvention–tweaking the setting, updating, gender-flipping, setting them in the future or whatever. With those…the necessities are that you retain enough of the original that it’s recognizable, but the author throws more than their emphasis or style. But then, you throw it into the future with cyborgs, like Marissa Meyer. Or make Cinderella a secret agent along with some of the other princesses after their “happily ever after”s, like Jim C. Hines did. Or, you take all the Prince Charmings (who really aren’t that impressive when it comes down to it) and throw them into an effort to save all their kingdoms from a common foe. Or–last example–you play with the Fairy Tale tropes and the power of narrative, throw in some guns and crime, like Seanan McGuire did in her Indexing series. I’m waiting to see how M.K. Felix goes beyond her Robin Hood/Snow White mashup before I try to summarize–but I’m eager to see what she does. But the basic elements need to be there–Red Riding Hood should wear red–it’d be great if there was a hood–some sort of wolf-figure and a grandmother; from there, the author can do what they want, as long as it’s interesting.

Or you take a couple of elements/characters and throw them into some larger work–like when the Gruffs show up in the Dresden Files (and Harry can only wish they were billy goats), or Snow White shows up as one of Toby Daye’s most dangerous foes. That works pretty well, too.

I’m really looking forward to some of the other posts in response to this prompt, I ended up not having as much time as I intended to write this and am looking forward to some thoughtful posts.