On Retellings

I have always loved retellings, like Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted (Cinderella), Edith Pattou's East (East of the Sun, West of the Moon), Robin McKinley's Beauty (Beauty and the Beast), Diana Wynne Jones Fire and Hemlock (Tam Lin.)  Ever After, I must admit (only slightly shamefacedly) is still my favorite movie (another Cinderella retelling). There's just something intriguing about stories so timeless they can be told over and over again and no one (myself included!!) seems to get sick of them.

The novel I finished drafting last month is a retelling of the fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon, with a little bit of Tam Lin thrown in because I thought it meshed really well.

My favorite fairy tale of all time is Beauty and the Beast which, like East of the Sun, is a variant of the Cupid and Psyche myth. I love it SO much I never thought I'd do a retelling—there are many, many wonderful versions out there already (And yes, Cruel Beauty is on my to-read list. I'll get to it soon!). But stories have a way of tugging at you, and here I am now with a first draft of my own take on East of the Sun. I have no idea if I did the story justice (though I hope I did!), but regardless, it was a fascinating experience to follow a plot essentially already written for me, trying to keep it fresh by doing new/different things, and at the same time wanting to remain faithful to the spirit of the original fairytale. I made a conscious decision to not re-read the fairytale before writing my first draft, as I wanted to allow myself the freedom to follow the story where I felt like it needed to go.

In my version, I modeled the setting after 19th-century rural Russia. Looking at pictures of the Siberian landscape inspired whole sections of the plot (seriously, it's so gorgeous!). I'm excited to do further research and incorporate even more historically-inspired details in future drafts.

Now that my rough draft is finished, I'm going to go back and re-read the original fairytales, dig deeper into my world, fix inconsistencies, figure out the real backstory of a character who unexpectedly turned out to be somebody different than I'd planned, unravel the confusion of my middle, work on characters' relationships… Lots and lots to do, but I'm looking forward to shaping my version of East of the Sun into exactly what it's meant to be.