Finding Your Voice with Fractured Fairy Tales

by Mary C. Long

This is part of a series of classes I teach creative writers (kids ages 10-18) at my home each week.

​The activities can be adapted to meet them wherever they are on the writing spectrum. I'll be creating a separate piece with specific tips to help with those accommodations! I'm sharing the actual activity I write up for the kids and give them to read/refer to when they arrive. We go through it together as well.

​Fractured Fairy Tales Lesson

The hardest thing for most people when it comes to writing is finding a starting point. We’ll work on THAT another day, but today, with lots of new folks in the class, I wanted to work on something fun.
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So today, I’m giving you a starting point and you’re going to focus on making an existing story your own, creating a fractured fairy tale. What’s a fractured fairy tale? It’s taking a fairy tale and changing it up. Here are some ways:

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• Give it an unhappy ending
• Add other characters
• Change the main character’s personality
• Change the problem/challenge the character is facing
• Change where a fairy tale takes place
• Make the good guys bad and bad guys good
• Change the ending or the beginning – or both!
• Make a story that happened before or after the fairy tale
• Write a “REAL” story of what happened from another character’s perspective

 
The list of how you can change it is pretty endless. You can do this in teams or on your own.

​But here’s the challenge you’ll face BEYOND that – to help you find your voice: Once you’ve written your fractured fairy tale, I want you to reread what you/your team wrote and answer these questions (just talking through them with another writer). We’re trying to sort out what you notice about the WRITING STYLE overall, meaning:

• Are you seeing a mixture of short and long sentences?
• Do lots of sentences feel/sound the same?
• Would it keep your interest if YOU didn’t write it?
• What is it about the writing that you really like?
• Is the writing funny, serious, sad – what emotions do you feel reading it? What emotions did you WANT the reader to feel reading it?
• Does the story move too slow/take too long to make a point? How can you tighten it up?
• Does the story move too fast/leave the reader potentially confused and having to reread to figure out what’s going on? How can you add a transition to make it clear?

 
After having this discussion, consider rewriting parts of your story. You might rewrite the whole thing, or you might add a little bit to help explain the story better. Or maybe it’s perfect as-is! (Hint: it’s really NEVER perfect as-is ;)
 

Some examples of fractured fairy tales:
The Frog Prince Revisited by Marilyn Kinsella
The Giant's Big Toe  by Brock Cole. 
Sleeping Ugly by Jane Yolen.
Jack and the Meanstalk by Brain and Rebecca Wildsmith.
The Book That Jack Wrote by Jon Scieszka
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka.
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka.
The Frog Prince, Continued by Jon Scieszka.
Jim Henson Presents Goldilocks, Miss Piggy's Dream by Louise Gikow.
Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson.

Cinder-Elly by Frances Minters.
Cinderella and the Glass Flipper by Janet Perlman.
Cinderella with Benjy and Bubbles by Ruth Perle.
 The Adventures of Simple Simon by Chris Conover. 
Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella by Tony Johnston
Bubba the Cowboy Prince: A Fractured Texas Tale by Helen Ketteman
Cinderella Skeleton by Robert D. San Souci
Cinderella's Rat by SusanMeddaugh
Dinorella: A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards
Prince Cinders by Babette Cole
Sidney Rella & the Glass Sneaker by Bernice Myers
Deep in the Forest by Brinton Turkle
Goldilocks & the Three Hares by Heidi Petach
The Silly Story of Goldie Locks & the Three Squares by Grace Maccarone
Somebody & the Three Blairs by Marilyn Tolhurst
Jack & the Giant: A Story Full of Beans by Jim Harris
Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs.
Kate and the Beanstalk by Mary Pope Osborne
The Magic Mustache by Gary Barwin
Little Red Cowboy Hat by Susan Lowell
Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale by Lisa Campbell Ernst
Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood by Mike Artell
The Three Little Javelinas by Susan Lowell
The Three Little Wolves & the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas
The Three Pigs by David Wiesner
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf by Jon Scieszka
Ziggy Piggy & the Three Little Pigs by Frank Asch ​​

 Your turn!
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