Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: Fairy Tales, Remixed

Last week’s challenge: The Who, The Where, The Uh-Oh

Pick a fairy tale.

Go on, do it.

I’ll wait.

If you don’t know your fairy tales — Google is your friend, of course.

Hell, here’s a pretty good list of the Grimm’s tales.

I want you to pick one — I’ll let you do that — and rewrite it.

Except, wait now, hold on.

I want you to also roll to choose a random subgenre. You will then apply said random subgenre to the fairy tale you have picked for maximum awesome. Get it? Got it? Rad.

You have 1000 words.

You have one week — due Friday, January 31st, noon, EST.

Write it at your online space. Link back here.

Do tell us which fairy tale you’re using by making it the title of your story.

Subgenre

(roll a d20 or go to a random number generator)

  1. Cyberpunk
  2. Dystopian
  3. Erotica
  4. Spy Thriller
  5. Southern Gothic
  6. Satire
  7. Urban Fantasy
  8. Space Horror
  9. Space Opera
  10. Young Adult Contemporary
  11. “Grimdark” Fantasy
  12. Psychological Horror
  13. Hard Sci-Fi
  14. Slasher Film
  15. Ecothriller
  16. Sword & Sorcery
  17. Lovecraftian
  18. Zombie Apocalypse
  19. Superhero
  20. Detective

terribleminds

269 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Fairy Tales, Remixed”

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  1. Oooo, I don’t think I can do the sun ball bouncing into the well and the overall subliminal sexual nature thing. I was forced to read Grimm’s Tales for a class and it makes me hate fairy tales. Looking forward to the others participating in it though!

    Reply

    • It really is harder than it looks! I think the difficulty may lie in the adaptation. With the last flash fiction challenge, we worked from the initial prompts; the story was entirely from our own imagination. Here, though, we have to stay true to the basis of the fairy tale. That being said, I’m changing some of the more traditional parts of the fairy tale I chose.

      Reply

      • All I did was stick with the good guys and bad guys… giving them the usual bits used in the fairy tale and then filled in the rest with modern things we use around us all the time; but still, it was difficult 🙂

        Reply

  6. Depends how you define early I suppose. It’s just gone the 25th here.

    And here’s my contribution. I used “The Juniper Tree”, and rolled a 20 for detective. There wasn’t a heap of detecting going on, but I think it turned out alright.

    Blurb-y thing: Once upon a time, a boy came back to life, and avenged his death. Now, years later, he discovers that he might have stopped before his part in the vengeance was complete.

    http://antagonistsneeded.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-curse-of-juniper-tree-flash-fiction.html

    Reply

  9. Been miffed at myself for not having time for a bit of a flash challenge the past few. Blah Blah grant season, day job, paying bills, blah blah blah.

    Right. Southern Gothic Fairy Tale.

    Reply

  12. I picked The Youth Who Went Forth To Learn What Fear Was, because it was one of the stories from when I was little that always stood out to me.

    Then I rolled Spy Thriller.

    I can work with that.

    Be back later!

    Reply

  22. OK, what the hell is GrimDark? No doubt I am revealing the depth of my uncoolness, but I don’t know this as a genre. Are we supposed to pick the fairy tale before we pick the genre? That seems to be the rules, I was reading the entire post and came across a sub-genre I didn’t know. Oh – and please give me an example of a work in the Grim Dark genre as well – I might have read in the genre without realizing it – it was years before I know that one of the things I liked was actually urban fantasy. LOL. I tend to refer to a lot of different genres as the literature of the fantastic and leave it at that…..not the biggest fan of niche marketing. Bah Humbug.

    In other news, I added my review of The Cormorant to amazon and also sent the entire trilogy to two people having a hard winter who need to lose themselves in a read that is a world in a mass market paperback. I immediately thought of Miriam.

    For this, I’m going to try something a bit off the beaten track in terms of the fairy tale – though of course, everyone loves the classics.

    Reply

    • Grim Dark is… when the setting/characters are cynical, dark, ect. Morals are harder to come by, and they tend to be very survival/needs based. Your main characters don’t always live, more often than not don’t do the right thing, but do instead what is needed to do to survive.

      It’s about people living in hard times, doing hard things to each other to get by. It’s more Game of Thrones than Star Wars, let’s put it that way.

      Reply

  27. I had a go at Rupunzel, but I can’t post it, sorry. For some reason she turned out to be a sex offender, locked up in a tower for her crimes against the missionary (position). Then she wondered the countryside and got mixed up with the Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. What’s worse, she didn’t even know which prince was the father of her twins…is that Grim Dark?

    Reply

  41. I did the Princess And The Pea.
    http://billionmonkeys.blogspot.com/p/the-princess-and-pea.html

    As with every single damn time I roll a random genre, I got Southern Gothic, which I know involves Poe, swamps, voodoo, uh, social stratification, brooding horror and was…I dunno, the name of a great album by The Constellations. Not very familiar with the genre as you might guess. So I wrote a story about online dating, wanna-be politicians and voodoo instead.

    When I reached 1000 words, I knew I wouldn’t be able to cram it into the limits, so I swung for the bleachers and did 2500 instead, instantly failing the challenge. I am now holding a pointy hat and putting it on. I am putting on my loser hat. There it is, on my head, with the Big L on it.

    Reply

  50. I guess we’re not supposed to give the spoiler of which fairy tale we chose, but I rolled 5. Southern Gothic. Not familiar with the genre but from what I’ve just looked up on the topic, oh how I long to roll again.
    I apologize in advance if I misunderstood. I feel dirty as I prepare to weave a mortifying tail of racism and intolerance.

    Reply
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