#Microblog Monday 519: Retelling Stories

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I read a fascinating piece on the power of retelling stories. Not your own story (though there is a different power in that), but taking Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy or a favourite fairy tale and giving it new life by playing with elements of the story.

The reason:

There’s comfort in returning to worlds we already know the rules of and characters we already love and understand … writers are drawn to retellings because they’re often the stories they grew up with, or have heard again and again. These stories might have taught us what stories were.

More than the story itself, it is the choosing of the story. Why are we drawn to certain situations? Certain characters? Certain settings? How does changing one element of the original story change your entire understanding?

What story would you love to see retold? I’m drawn to a bunch of Hans Christian Andersen stories, including “The Nightingale,” which sounds so much cooler when you call it Nattergalen.

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