Flipped Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are an easy source of inspiration, but that doesn’t mean the results can’t be powerful. Jen Buxton Haupt, an alumna (‘84-85)  and fiction instructor (‘98) agrees:  “For years I've been giving out lush, wordy writing exercises, but honestly these simple ones get the best results.” 

Choose a secondary character from your favorite fairy tale and retell the story's pivotal moment from that point of view. If you don’t have a favorite fairy tale, feel free to choose a secondary character from a well-known allegorical movie or story.  An example would be the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, the character in which the novel and Broadway play, Wicked, is based on.  

Note that the pivotal moment varies according to the teller. The grandmother and the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, for example, have different regrets. “You don't have to tell the whole story,” writes Buxton Haupt, “only the pivotal moment. It's plenty, you'll see!”

 Whatever you choose, remember to save everything you write—there will be opportunities to revise, share and even write more, if you’d like.  And while this prompt was tailor-made for fiction writers, there’s nothing stopping writers of other genres from jumping in on the fun and recasting their texts in another genre. See Louise Glück’s “Gretel in Darkness”, for example!