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FAIRYTALE THEMES

14/8/2016

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One great source of ideas is to look behind stories and songs and work out the themes (see my post, Generating Story Ideas, on Allison Symes - This World and Others for more on the latter.  This was inspired by an amazing Lyrical Challenge workshop at the recent Swanwick Summer School).  Common fairytale themes include:-

  1. Justice will be served - eventually (and usually roughly!).
  2. The downtrodden are almost guaranteed to end up in positions of influence and power (so don't ill treat anyone or risk regretting it later!).
  3. The fairy godmother always turns up when least expected.  (I like to think of Cinderella as silently cursing said godmother for not turning up a lot sooner and sparing her years of misery).
  4. Talking animals in fairytales are more sensible and intelligent than the humanoid creations.  I never did like Goldilocks much, my sympathy always was with the three bears.
  5. You can never trust a Grand Vizier (or someone claiming to be your uncle who turns up out of nowhere - see Aladdin for more on this).

Below are a couple of photos from the recent Summer School.  The grounds of the conference centre were lovely and walks around the lakes there would have inspired further stories I'm sure.

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    Author

    I'm Allison Symes and I write novels, short stories as well as some scripts and poems.  I love setting my work in my magical world, the Fairy Kingdom, and my favourite character is Eileen, who believes hypocrisy is something that happens to other people without caring that statement is hypocritical in itself!  Eileen is huge fun to write for and about. 

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