Who didn’t imagine themselves as Cinderella, the prince, or the fabulous fairy godmother while growing up? Those machinations can lead to new ideas based on our own interests and our own timelines. Retelling is often one of the first forms of storytelling a writer encounters.
Writers retell stories for many reasons: to honor a work that made a big impact on them to amplify an important message to explore a theme from a new direction to add diversity where there had been none. And while writers can reinterpret classics in ingenious fashion – see, for example, Melissa de la Cruz’s clever recasting of the dwarves in Snow White as child laborers in the mines in Snow & Poison – they must stay within the confines of the already-established storyline. Tropes have no specific characters or plotlines, whereas retellings do. Writers enjoy more freedom with tropes, which can be interpreted in different ways or reimagined to fit the setup. While retelling stories and tropes share commonalities, like relying on a set piece, they are unalike in other ways. Another, increasingly important reason to retell stories is to do it with a more diverse cast, allowing more people to see themselves in the tales that shape society. And you earn automatic buy-in from fans of the original. People are already familiar with the story, so you spend less time setting up the plot. Writers have used classic stories as a vehicle for their own world-building for centuries, but recently we seem to have entered a renaissance for these retellings. Every work shares the same basic structure, but the details differ enough that each functions as its own unique story.Īusten’s work is hardly the only one to be retold. In one, the Elizabeth Bennet-styled protagonist is a successful neurosurgeon in another, she’s a high school debate champ. Each book offers a slightly different take on the classic tale.
But it’s also the plot to a whole host of other books, including Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim, Debating Darcy by Sayantani DasGupta, Pride and Papercuts by Staci Hart, and Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev, just to name a few. It’s the plot of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. Retelling stories: Of course you’ve heard this before.
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