There is a belief that writers come up with ideas out of their imagination as simply as you pick apples from a tree, but that is not always the case. Sometimes writers hear a story, and it stays with them so long that they are inspired by it. Put simply: they take a base story, and build off it.

Now you might be thinking “well that is cheating!” and if that is the case, then Disney is the biggest cheater of all. Disney really started to explode in popularity when they took fairytales, like Cinderella and Snow White, and gave them life in animated form. When that worked for them, they moved on to folk tales and books.

For example, in the book The Littlest Mermaid by Hans Cristian Anderson, the base story is quite similar to the Disney The Little Mermaid, but they did some tweaking (like by not having her die at the end), added some Disney magic, and boom, a hit. Even Mulan is based off a folk tale.

My point is that what Disney is great at is taking stories, like they did with the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and building it into a money maker(Frozen). They do not always spend time trying to come up with a basic plot, instead they take an old story, take what they need, and reimagine the rest.

Doing this not only saves time and money, but it can be an interesting challenge for your imagination. If you retell Little Red Riding Hood the way it has always been told, people will not want to read it because they will feel like they have read it before. However, if Little Red Riding Hood is a hunter and the wolf is a werewolf, it changes it drastically. It is still the same story in basics, but it is the twists you weave in that draw your readers to keep reading.

If Disney is not the example you want, the same is done for almost every popular book there is. Harry Potter (don’t kill me for saying this, Potter fans) is basically a mix of The Wizard of Earthsea, The Worst Witch, and mythological creatures from our world. Game of Thrones is almost the the exact “plotline” to the real life War of the Roses.

No one argues that these authors are cheating because they made the stories their own and wrote them in a way that spoke to people.

For a final example: Star Wars (the originals) follow “The Hero’s Journey” plotline beat-for-beat, but the addition of space, aliens, and the inspiration from old samurai films, gave us the Star Wars we know. For those who do not know, the hero’s journey is the most common template for stories that involve a hero going on an adventure, does the adventuring, and comes home a changed person.

So, if you want to write a reimagined fairy or folk tale or even a time in history, do not feel like you are cheating. There is still plenty of work to do, and writing a reimagined work does not make you less of a writer.

My Writing Progress

To Steal from a King

New Outline

First Draft

Woad (Temporary Title):

First Draft

Second Draft