Cinderella: Once upon a time
I just finished submitting Cinderella to the Editor. I’m very anxious to hear what she has to say about it, but I can share that my test reader enjoyed it. Cinderella was a blast for me to write. There are many reasons for this, but one of the top is this: EVERYONE IN CINDERELLA CAN TALK.
I imagine you’re blankly staring at your screen, wondering what talking has to do with anything, so allow me to review the other fairy tales I have written: Beauty and the Beast, and The Wild Swans.
In Beauty and the Beast, only three people speak out-loud in 3/4 of the book. (Those three characters are: Elle, Severin, and Lucien.) The servants play major roles in the story, but they are mute. They can communicate through writing on chalkboards and paper, but to save time (because it takes much longer to write than speak) they scratch out fairly brief sentences and messages. This means it’s pretty difficult to achieve a heart-to-heart conversation, or to properly joke around.
For The Wild Swans, the lack of talking was better and worse. In this case all of the characters could talk–but only for one hour every night. Otherwise the seven princes and Elise had to be silent. It’s not as noticeable because a lot of the scenes take place in that hour, or hinge on Elise’s inability to communicate. But let me tell you, it’s pretty difficult to have characters bonding and forging relationships when none of them can talk.
Cinderella was a huge relief for me because, as I mentioned before, everyone is able to speak! It does resemble Beauty and the Beast in that the original fairy tale didn’t have a lot of plot to it. (The whole premise of B&B is that a girl is held captive in a castle and falls in love with the beastly lord of said castle. The premise of Cinderella is an aristocratic girl is forced to do housework by her step-mother until she attends a ball and falls in love with a prince.) But, I feel Cinderella expanded very nicely into an interesting story.
That’s all I have to say about that topic today, Champions. I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and good luck muddling through Monday!
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About the general lack of plot in some of the older fairy tales, do you think it is b/c the oral tradition didn't allow for a lot of complicated twists and a large cast? Or that collectors of fairy tales put down the short version to save ink? Rereading fairy tales today, what jumps out at me is the lack of believable motive for people to act as they do. That is one of the enjoyable things about reading "updated" versions - seeing people's different interpretations of motive.
Carolyn wrote: "About the general lack of plot in some of the older fairy tales, do you think it is b/c the oral tradition didn't allow for a lot of complicated twists and a large cast? Or that collectors of fair..."You probably nailed on on the oral bit. Fairy tales are much shorter than I thought--which is probably why little kids can sit through them. And I agree with you that fairy tales general lack character motivation--although a friend pointed out to me that fairy tales were society's version of pictures books at the time, and picture books aren't exactly flooded with a lot of motive or plot.
