Common Uses of Fairy Tale Elements
Some novels are a new twist on an old story. For example, Enchantment, by Orson Card, tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the hero. The story is still set in days of old, but offers a completely new point of view, with its own brand of humor. Other authors elect to put a very modern spin on a traditional tale. Francesca Lia Block's The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold puts the basic plot of old tales into the modern landscape, giving them a moral that relates to life today. These stories contain all the elements one would expect from a fairy tale including a moral lesson, a lady in distress, her rescuer, magical spells and mythical creatures.
Also currently popular are novels that exploit character types for fantasy lore, but create a story that is completely unique. For example, Unenchanted and Fairest, two novels by Chandra Hahn, follow the antics of Wilhimina Grimm, the great granddaughter of the brother's Grimm. She fights fairy tale creatures and survives her own, uniquely modern, version of fairy tales in a set of novels that follow a plot design all their own. Other novels borrow smaller fantasy elements, like the existence of mythical creatures only. Stories like Harry Potter, the Twilight Series, and the Torn trilogy all steal fantasy elements from tradition but create a story that is both unique and new.
Why Modern Fairy Tales are Popular
There are a variety of reasons people are turning to stories which include fairy tale and fantasy elements. First, there is something comforting and childlike in the familiarity of these stories. We like knowing that there is a happy ever after waiting for characters, we like the surprise that comes with magic. We are forever endeared to their basic traditional elements.
We like to spot the story. Like a mystery reader on the hunt for clues, readers of fiction based on fantasy and fairy tales, enjoy searching for borrowed elements. They identify monsters from Grimm, animals from Aesop, and heros from Anderson without skipping a beat. They are emotionally invested in characters and outcomes from the beginning because the reader aligns them with those characters who have gone before.
Finally, readers also love the twist. We are set up with certain expectations. When we realize that characters have been borrowed from a specific tale, we expect it to go a certain way. Authors use these expectations to make us anticipate the story, but then twist it so we are caught by surprise. It is this twist, the feeling of surprise when things don't go as planned, that keeps us returning again and again.
Author
Melissa Barton has a bachlors degree in English Education, and a Master's in composition and rhetoric. In her spare time, Melissa loves contributing to college resource sites, such as DegreeJungle.com. She has spent much of her career both as a student and as a writer studying the trends in young adult fiction, and modern writing styles.
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