Now I'm familiar with the idea there are really only so many plots, but watching these two movies in such immediate juxtaposition with each other still hammered home that there are myriad ways to tell a tale. Cliched is only that if we mishandle our material.

Has anyone created an edited anthology of retellings of the same story?

This whole story thing is becoming apparent to me too. Several times I come up with something very cool and then a friend said, oh yeah that's like in <insert book here>. Sometimes I'll go pick up that book and it is sorta the same story except, not. On the way back from a friends house (two hour drive) this weekend I thought of this interesting vampire-esque thing where they feed on your soul too, which all ties in very neatly with some of the things I've already planned. Fifteen minutes later I realized that sounded exactly like what the dementors from Harry Potter do. (What can I say, they're interesting) When I first tried to explain it that's what it seemed like, but then I realized that that element would be totally different in my story. I think it's sort of like cooking, we've been using basically the same ingredients since the beginning of civilization but we keep coming up with interesting and yummy things to eat. Same with writing, maybe.

Ok, enough blabbering. Surely, nobody actually reads these posts.

Jon

quote:

---

Surely, nobody actually reads these posts.

---

quote:

---

I actually read these posts. And stop calling me Shirley!

---

LOL It works fine written, EricJamesStone.

Back to the topic, this makes me think of the history of inventing. You discover that many people had the same idea, a few really worked hard at it, but only one person got credited with it because they'd either put in the most effort or just got lucky.

What made me think of this is that I noticed one of the posters here (was it Lorien?) was toying around with a story about a vampire who was once a priest. I was working on a story like that a year ago, but gave it up because it was too dark for me.

This makes me wonder if there are "muses" whispering stories in our ears and the writers are the ones who bother putting them on paper. And maybe the reason there are so many writers nowadays is because the muses are getting more insistent about the stories that need to be written.

I participated in a theater workshop where teams were handed the same one page script and sent away for a week. The ten different shows that resulted were radically different, and yet each supported an aspect of the script. It was very exciting. It's one of the reasons I don't get upset about the platitude that there are only 'x' number of plots. It's the telling of the story, and the details that make it interesting.

I was speaking in reference to my posts in particular, Shirley. :-) Maybe somebody bothers to read even mine sometimes.

Blade - I love that bit about the recipes, mind if I quote you?

Keeley - That idea about the muses would make for an awesome story!

It is a great collection of short stories based on faerie tales, just retold from a different POV. i.e. Is the "big-bad-wolf" really the villian in Little Red Riding Hood? Is there a connection between the Princess and the Pea and Rapunzel?

Some good reading.

Hopefully Kathleen will stumble across this thread soon and we can talk turn it into a writing assignment, somebody would just need to pick a new story, one without too many details probably.

Has anybody ever read/seen "Wicked" (I haven't but I have several friends who are obsessed with it). It's a retelling/expounding of the story of the Wizard of Oz in which Glenda isn't such a good which and the Wicked Witch of the West isn't so bad (they were once friends according to it.)

Y'all know I have this thing about more than 13 lines, dontcha?

How about if we keep the assignment right here, and just have you brainstorm (along the lines of OSC's 1000 ideas in an hour sessions, for those who know what those are) all the different ways you can reinterpret a story.

To make it more interesting, we could add the rule that you have to come up with a description of how you think some famous writer would reinterpret a story, instead of giving away how you'd do it (in case you want to write it up and try selling it someday).

For example, for a high school English assignment (umpty-ump years ago), I wrote a version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" the way I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald would have written it (after having read THE GREAT GATSBY).

Maybe someone ought to begin a new post to see who wants to participate. Ask anyone interested to read this thread before jumping in and also to suggest a story to rewrite. Then we can exchange by email on or before a given assigned date. Anyone not meeting the deadline is SOL. And anyone else interested in 'reading only' can sign in too if they want.

As far as posting on "Writing Assignments," that's a bit of a problem. Posting all our stories would seriously overburden Kathleen. So, maybe we could, at a later date, start a discussion on how it all went and what we learned, or each post thirteen lines from our stories or...???

I agree with MaryRobinette.

However, if you guys want forum capability, I have a private bulletin board on my (perpetually unfinished) personal website and I can easily create a forum for us all there. You have to register and be approved by me etc, so there would be some emails flying around for a bit, but it would work very much like this forum does. To see it, go to http://www.munsil.net and click on Forums.

I also like Kathleen's suggestion about writing as we think a famous author would.
(Thanks also for thinking of our rights )

When whomever starts the rules and sign-up thread, I'm in.

Here's a direct link:

Those who sign up can choose from the list and do one of three things:

1) Re-write the story with your own twists

2) Re-write the story the way you think a famous author would have told it

3) Combine two of the tales into something new

When you finish your story, post the first 13 for people to read and reference "Retold" in the heading.

Those who want to read the whole can have it e-mailed to them.

As most faerie tales are fairly short anyways, maybe we could limit it to 3000 words or so. Not too long to write, small attachments and quick reads.

We could set a deadline for the end of August. Plenty of time in case "life" happens. If you have something to post sooner, power to you! Just reference it as a "Retold" story.

Feel free to take issue now

I thought of:

The Odyssey
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
The Bremen Town Musicians
King Midas
Deadalus and Icharus
The Gift of the Magi
Johnny Appleseed (as suggested by NewsBys)

Any of those sound interesting? And since this whole discussion started out as Kolona pondering on the different ways the same story can be told, I think we should concentrate on a single story--two or three at the VERY most.
I also like Robyn HOod's idea of choosing how you want to do it--twisting, copying the style of someone else, or combining two.

I'd be willing to spearhead this thing, but we need to decide on the story(ies) and how we want to proceed.

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 04, 2004).]

How about including a more femanine story line as well i.e. Echo & Narcisus or "The Princess and the Pea"?

Looking back I think I like Johnny Appleseed. It leaves all sorts of possibilities open, I mean it's basically just a creation story type of thing. Are we going to try and have any other similarities between the stories than just inspiration?

I wouldn't mind helping organize this if dj needs help or isn't interested. I think it's a good idea to make just one thread or to get our own forum, personally I like having our own forum so that we can all share thoughts on the stories.

Jon

I think "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" has some interesting potential, especially if you don't restrict yourselves to billy goats.

So that's the assignment.

• Three Billy Goat's Gruff
• No more than 3,000 words
• Due by August 31st
• Use the Fragments forum and post first 13 lines
  

May I suggest that we all use the 1st of the 3 variants posted in this page http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html
as our starting point?

So, thank you. I'll be putting that idea in my file.

I think it's also important to post an introduction/invitation that establishes the rules.

Something like:

***

The First Annual Hatrack Re-Write Challenge!

Welcome! This thread is the brain child of a discussion that began in the Open Discussions section of this forum. There Kolona began a discussion concerning how essentially the same tale can be told in so many different ways.

And the Re-Write challenge was born.

Here is the challenge:

1. Re-Write the story, Three Billy Goats Gruff, (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html) in one of three ways:
*Twist the story to suit your own creative bent. And, as Kathleen suggested, don't restrict yourselves to goats and ogres.
*Write the story in the style of another well-known author.
*Combine the tale with another tale of your choosing.

2. Submit the first 13 lines to this thread.

3. Anyone wanting to read a submitted story may contact the writer by email.
Do NOT post the request on this thread.
Do NOT post comments of any kind on this thread.
A separate thread will be opened in Open Discussions after the deadline for discussing the submitted stories.

4. 3000 word limit.

5. August 31, 2004 deadline.

6. It is suggested that anyone participating read the original thread in Open Discussions titled Same Old Same New, by Kolona.

***

quote:

---

Sounds good but this is the "first ever" challenge, not "first annual". You can't have a first annual, it isn't annual until the second one
(Okay, okay, my journalism instructors pounded that into my head and I just can't shake it. I'll be quiet now )

---

I'm going to propose (hypothetically) six writing challenges (collectively known as the Eric James Stone writing challenges) with periodic deadlines.

One challenge will have a deadline every day at 5:00pm Mountain Time.

One challenge will have a deadline of 6:30pm Mountain Time every Saturday.

One challenge will have a deadline of 11:59pm Mountain Time on the last day of each month.

One challenge will have a deadline of 5:00pm Mountain Time on the last weekday of March, June, September, and December.

One challenge will have a deadline of 8:00pm Mountain Time on every June 30 and December 31.

One challenge will have a deadline of 12 noon Mountain Time every August 15.

You will notice that the deadlines for these six challenges recur on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual basis.

Now, it would be very messy if I had to refer to each of the first instances of these challenges as the "first ever," without making reference to their expected recurrences: I would have six indistinguishable "first ever" challenges.

Now in the example of six different challenges... Well essentially you do have six "first" challenges. However if you are issuing the same challenge with six different due dates that recur, then you actually have one challenge with six submission options. If each deadline group represents a different challenge subject then you would change your title to i.e. The First EricJamesStone Fantasy Challenge, The First EricJamesStone Sci-Fi Challenge, The First EricJamesStone Spec-Fic Challenge, etc.

Does it any of it really matter? No. Do I really care? No. Do I like discussing semantics ? Absolutely .

Of course, I did it purely for a laugh and it does amuse me (and my wife, too). I used our back garden for the scenario I created; seemed a good place at the time. Good fun. And a good idea to rework an old story like this. I hope others take up the challenge.

Readers wanted.

And THIS time, I'll try to actually *finish* my review before I send it off! Though I understand this is more for fun than an in-depth crit.

I'm still trying to decide which permutation I want to write, and if I want to do it in any particular style. A number of ideas have come to mind, just a matter of choosing one! Or ah.. can we do more than one?

Cheers,