Sunday 21 October 2018

Fairy Tales

Fairytale toadstool
(Amanita Muscaria,
Fly Agaric - highly toxic)
I have a story published in the November edition of Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special. It’s the tale of Ashley, a lowly gardener who finally wins the heart of the college girl who he had thought was too good for him.

It is based on the classic Cinderella tale. With a change of gender Cinders became Ash, a change of occupation kitchen skivvy became gardener, the good fairy became his best mate who thinks of a way for Ash to gatecrash the masked ball, the midnight chimes became a call on Ashley’s mobile and the glass slipper became a scrap of card dropped from his pocket as he ran away. 

(Photograph by Readly)
Last Wednesday on the Twitter #writingchat discussion (8pm every week, all writers welcome) we talked about rewriting stories. Tweaking our own stories is something that many short story writers do, adapting a rejected story to meet the guidelines of a different publication. 

Rewriting someone else’s story is another matter entirely. There is of course no copyright to a storyline and on the basis that there are only a limited number of plots some similarities are inevitable. But how much has to be changed before it becomes a different story - names, gender, setting, era? 

I would hesitate to rewrite someone else’s story. But fairy tales are fair game. 

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the story Bea.

    Lots of fairy tales have been retold in new ways; it shows the creativity of the writer being able to come up with a new slant.

    I wasn't seeing all the tweets on that #writingchat session so found a few of the tweets difficult to follow due to missing comments in-between. A lot turned up the next day!

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    1. Thank you, Carol.
      Yes, there was definitely something interfering with the Twitter feed on Wednesday evening. I often end up reading through the tweets later in any event as on a busy night it can be difficult to keep up with all the conversations.

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  2. Congratulations on the sale!

    I wouldn't be comfortable with rewriting anyone's story no matter how many little details I changed – and wouldn't be happy for it to happen to one of mine. Using one as inspiration is a different matter. We can't help being inspired by things we experience, see or read and that can even happen without us realising where the idea originated.

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    1. Thank you, Patsy. In fact it’s the second story I sold to WW (and was paid for) in 2014 but it had slipped through the net and was never published. At least now I can claim ALCS.
      And yes, inspiration is a totally different issue to plagiarism, no matter how cleverly disguised.

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