Tiny pieces of fairy tale

I’ve got a new book out. Snippets is a book of 22 very short stories that look into the spaces left for the reader or listener’s imagination in traditional fairy tales. They’re moments that delve into character or sensation or motivation. Sometimes they follow the letter of the traditional story and sometimes they ask questions about it or provide answers to questions that lurk beneath the surface.

 

How Snippets came to be

A few years ago I set myself a 500-words-a-day writing challenge. 500 words a day is a pretty easy challenge most of the time. It’s about half an hour’s writing time for me. The trouble is, sometimes you’ve got to a point in your work-in-progress where you don’t want to be adding 500 words a day to it. And sometimes the day gets away from you and it’s ten thirty at night and you still haven’t written your 500 words. I started doing writing exercises from books but they weren’t exactly what I wanted. So instead I wrote down a whole lot of things I thought I would like to practise writing – jealousy or tension or fear or the antagonist’s point of view. Every time I was stuck for what to write for my 500 words I picked something from the list and I picked a fairy tale character and I started to write. Soon I found I wasn’t looking at the list at all. And I was writing the stories every day. Often a new idea would come to me as I was waking up and I’d grab my laptop and sit up in bed typing.

 

My first encounters with fairy tales

I have always loved fairy tales. When I was growing up I didn’t own a lot of books. My mother is a library-goer, so we went to the library every week and had the glory of choosing four books from the library shelves. We moved around quite a bit, but whatever new library we went to, there was a shelf of fairy tales and myths and legends right next to the children’s section. I know now that fairy tales are next to children’s books in the Dewey Decimal System, but at the time what it meant to me was that the fairy tales were special. On each visit I would take three novels and a book of fairy tales. Library-lovers of my age would recognise those fairy tale books: Ruth Manning Sanders Books of Princesses and Trolls and Wizards, illustrated by Robin Jacques, and the ones called ‘Favourite Fairy Tales told in …[some country]. There seemed to be an endless supply. At home, I had a collection of Ladybird fairy tales, sadly long since sold to a second-hand bookshop to feed my appetite for new stories. I had an LP of a dramatised Cinderella to play on our radiogram – it was something like a pantomime with Buttons and comedy Ugly Sisters and some very cheesy songs. I also had a 45 with a fabulous version of Sleeping Beauty, with music from the ballet and a terrifying wicked fairy, Carabosse, with a ‘retinue of rats’!

 

Why fairy tales appeal to me as a writer

There’s a world of fascinating, erudite study of fairy tales that I’ve scarcely scratched the surface of. For me, fairy tales are the essence of story. You may have seen some of Jan Pienkowski fairy tale illustrations about the place since his recent death (if not, go and look him up). These black silhouettes of characters moving across coloured backgrounds are, for me, what fairy tales are like. Fairy tale characters are puppets, who either have no names at all or else have generic names like Jack or Ivan or Gretel that appear again and again, or symbolic names like Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood or Beauty. Fairy tale plots may be full of incident, but the essential through-line of the plot is straightforward – they’re about seeking your fortune, coming up against an enemy, finding a husband or a wife. The teller can do anything with these stories, that’s the point. That’s why they endure and why they reappear again and again in different forms. They’re different from myths and legends because those are anchored to real places or specific characters like King Arthur or Cucullin. I’ve always considered them different from authored fairy tales like Hans Andersen’s or Oscar Wilde’s because there’s no room in those stories for anything beyond what the author has told you (unless you change the ending totally and make a weird uncomfortable mess like Disney’s Little Mermaid). Having said that, I’ve read that even some of those I think of as authorless aren’t really. No matter, for me fairy tales are made for retelling, they’re made for the teller to make them their own, to act out the parts, to do the voices for the three bears or threaten the pigs “I’ll huff and I’ll puff.” They’re made for storytellers to pick apart and weave into new stories that have a satisfying familiarity about them. They’re made for me to sew my own tales into.

 

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 You can read a Snippets story that's not in the book here. 

You can get a copy of Snippets on Amazon http://authl.it/c5p?d 

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The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

cover illustration by James Marsh

I’m not sure it had occurred to me that fairy tales could be anything other than children’s stories before I read Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. I breathed in these stories and they changed the way I felt about story itself.

Oh.
Such things are possible.
Stories are fluid.
They can be used in different ways to say different things.

(You’d think I’d have realised this already – I was nineteen and at university studying French literature. Perhaps, though, it was no good other people telling me, perhaps I had to find it out for myself).

I’ve written the date 22nd January 1985 inside my copy and - can you see? - I've covered it in sticky-back plastic, so I certainly thought it was a keeper! But I’m certain I must have read the book before 1985. Neil Jordan’s fabulously strange and atmospheric film The Company of Wolves, based on these stories came out in 1984 and I’m sure I went to it desperately hoping that he’d done the stories justice. He had, of course, and if you haven’t seen the film, you should put it on your watchlist right now. Worth it for the werewolf transformation alone!

So I’m imagining I’ve borrowed and read the book some time before, then seen the movie and felt I absolutely had to reread the stories. And in 1985, by some piece of extraordinary happenstance, I had the most perfect part-time job it was possible for a bookworm like myself to have. I had a Saturday job in the Good Book Guide Bookshop on Great Russell Street, just along from the British Museum. Now back then Britain had a thing called the Net Book Agreement, which meant that all books had to be sold for the price printed on the back of the book. I know, it sounds like a really odd idea now, but I’m pretty sure it was good for the publishing industry and I know it was good for authors. Anyway, what it meant was that having a job in a bookshop was a very fine thing for a desperate accumulator of books like myself, because I could buy books at cost, which was 33% off the cover price. I bought a lot of books.

And at the same time during the years I worked there, I breathed in the book world: I opened boxes with stacks of lovely new books; I arranged tables; I sat with a drawer of file cards on my knees checking the stock (no computers, oh youngsters!) and discovering all the backlist books a good bookshop should hold; I sought out books we didn’t stock on British Books in Print, which I assume must have been on some sort of microfiche system, but I can’t recall; I listened in while the manager chatted to the visiting publishers’ reps with their cases full of covers of forthcoming books.

And so to my copy of The Bloody Chamber. Imagine me. I’ve seen the film. I’ve maybe seen it twice. And it’s there on the shelf, when I’m stocktaking. I keep taking it down, leafing through, talking to the other person in the shop (it’s a small shop – there are only ever two of us). “Will you just buy it,” she says. “You haven’t bought anything since—” “Last week,” I finish for her. “There you go then,” she says. “You absolutely need that book.”

Filling the gaps in fairy tales

I have fairy tales on my mind.

SNIPPETS Birthday Party

It’s not a noise exactly, more a tremble in the air, but everyone hears it. There’s a hush, a stillness amongst the assembled guests. They feel the threat in the air. They’re waiting for whatever follows.

And then, someone’s teacup rattles into their saucer and the broken-off conversations begin again.

From across the lawn, the king catches my eye.

SNIPPETS Ugly

I get that I’m ugly, OK. Even my mother couldn’t bear to look at me. She did her best, mind, fed me and clothed me, tried to keep me from the prying eyes of the village. But she never once actually looked me in the face, not that I remember. And I guess the shame of having produced such a horror as me got to her in the end because one day she just upped and died in her sleep. Village priest took me in for a while, but there were whispers, first that she’d done away with herself because of me and then, when that wasn’t enough, they started saying that I’d done her in. Priest told me he didn’t think he could protect me from them. He gave me a gold coin and a slice of bread and sent me off out of the back door just as the mob appeared at the front. Seven years old I was, ugly as sin and all alone in the world.

SNIPPETS Sticks

Look, building a house out of sticks is a perfectly reasonable architectural option. You humans did it for centuries, probably still do in some places. Straw’s not such a bad option either. Both of them simple, reasonably robust once you plaster over with a bit of mud and most importantly, it’s cheap.

SNIPPETS Flies

The tailor smiled his careful smile as he closed the door behind the two young men. He raised a hand. Not that they’d notice, those rich dandies. They didn’t even think of him as a human being, most likely. Those young men Just like all the tailor’s other customers: they’d notice if he stuck a pin in them, that was about it. Some people would ask his advice about cut and fabric. Not the dandies though. They made their demands for bigger, better, brighter suits of clothes and struck poses while the little tailor tried to measure them, talking all the time to their companions if they’d come accompanied or to the air if they were alone.

SNIPPETS Apple

The moment she thinks of the way to do it, a little noise gurgles up from her throat. A chuckle, she tells herself. Certainly not a cackle. She coughs politely and pats her mouth with her table napkin.

“I will be busy this morning,” she announces to the room. As she rises, a silent servant glides forward to pull the chair out of the way of her skirts noiselessly.

SNIPPETS Boy

Moment I opened my eyes I thought, o-oh, better scarper double-quick. She was looking down at me with tears in her eyes, honest to God tears and going, “Oh, my beautiful boy, how perfectly you’ve turned out. I am quite the happiest mother alive.”

SNIPPETS Sleeping Draught

“Go on, take the idiot his cake,” whispered her eldest sister. “The sooner he’s asleep, the sooner we can be on his way.”

“At least he’s a skinny little thing,” giggled one of the twins. “Remember that big fat one last month, the one who needed two cakes before the sleeping draught kicked in.”

SNIPPETS Frog

“But he’s a frog!”

“It doesn’t matter, dear. You are under obligation to him.”

“But…”

“No arguments.”

This is beyond unfair. Ok so the slimy little beast brought back my golden ball, but quite honestly, I’d rather have lost it forever than have to put up with his creepy green body sitting right beside my dinner plate. It honestly makes my skin crawl every time he opens his mouth and human words come out.

“This is very kind of you, Princeth,” he lisps, right before his disgusting tongue flicks out of his mouth to nab a bit of meat from my plate.

SNIPPETS Tongue-tied

At first he thought it was simply a matter of finding the right words. He would frame it in his mind, where they would be, how he would introduce it into the conversation, this thing he needed to tell her. He would go so far as trying to picture her lovely face as he told her – horrified, sympathetic, generous – but there his imagination failed him. Or perhaps he couldn’t think it through that far because, after all this time, he couldn’t quite bring himself to hope that it would all work out.

SNIPPETS Shoe

“I don’t know why they’re making me bother with all this. It’s not like they’re actually going to let me marry whoever I choose anyway.” The prince waved away the attendant who was about to lift his foot to slip on his shoe. “Go on. Out! The lot of you. Yes, you too. We can do the rest.”

As the door closed behind the troupe of dressers and footmen, hairdressers and tailors, he flung himself down into a chair next to the mannequin that held his gold brocade coat. “Come on out, they’ve all gone.”

SNIPPETS Dark and Stormy

The Queen shivered. The padded box of hot coals beneath her slippers didn’t seem to dispel the deep cold that had settled into her bones. She felt the heavy wetness of the bottom foot of her brocade skirt, soaked up from the wet straw strewn on the floor. The fur trim on her gown couldn’t warm the expanse of bosom that she was obliged to display for the sake of fashion.

SNIPPETS Plait

Snick! went the scissors. The girl felt the pain on her scalp ease on one side as the hair fell away.

“There!” Drops of spittle flew past her face as Mother spat out the words. “Not so beautiful now, eh?”

The girl kept her eyes on the end of her copper plait where it lay curled at her feet. It shifted slightly as Mother twisted another loop around her fist and pulled it tight so that the girl’s scalp burned.

SNIPPETS Plans

The queen sat back in her chair and pushed her spectacles onto the top of her head so that they seemed to be a rather unusual addition to the small tiara she wore for everyday.

“There!” she said to the king indicating the papers that lay strewn across the entirety of the banqueting table in front of her. “I’m pretty sure I’ve thought of everything. This is going to be the finest christening in history.”

Writer seeks plan

I am a person who needs a plan. The idea that you can sit down and write something worthwhile off the top of your head is something I find very hard to understand. Not that I need a completely rigid plan, you understand, just a direction.

So, for example, these past two months, I have been writing tiny pieces of fairy tale each day. If you want to know any more about this you can look back at earlier blogs. The good thing about this is that I have a place to start writing each day but I don’t have to spend time on planning because it’s not part of a plot. What I’ve done each day is, when I’ve woken but not yet got up, I’ve let my mind wander around in the canon of fairy tales until something snagged and then I’ve teased that until I could see a thread, then set it to one side until I was here, with the keyboard under my fingers. 

Occasionally over the two months if I’ve been lying awake, I’ve delved a bit further into my next day’s fairy tale – much better than letting my brain dwell on those dastardly circular middle-of-the-night thoughts. Then, of course, I’ve got hope I remember it all the next morning.

SNIPPETS Fifteen

The key’s smaller than most of the others on the bunch, but you can pick it out easily because it is always slick with fresh blood. Some magic keeps it that way, never dripping, never drying, never rubbing off onto the other keys or onto your fingers. Not until you choose that one, put it in the lock, open the door.

I know she’s looked at it. They all do. Perfectly reasonable, a bit of curiosity. It’s only to be expected when something so mysterious is forbidden to you. And there’s always a chance everything’s going to work out this time – if all she does is look.

SNIPPETS Miller

The miller’s wife lifts her skirt hem to her knees and pounds up the stairs. She throws open the bedroom door and the sour smell of yesterday’s drink hits her as her husband shifts and moans in the big bed. He groans louder and pulls the covers over his head as she unhooks the shutter and pushes it back so that a shaft of bright midday sunshine falls over him.

She perches gently beside the hump under the covers and lays a hand on him. She can hardly contain her excitement, but if this great smelly lump of a husband of hers has achieved what she thinks he’s achieved, it’s only reasonable to be gentle with him.

SNIPPETS Invitation

“For goodness’ sake!” her stepmother muttered. “We really don’t have time for this. Go on, girls, the carriage is waiting. I’ll just be a moment.”

The girl hesitated before setting her foot on the next step down, watching her sisters disappear, smirking.

“I’m waiting for an explanation,” her stepmother said.

The girl took two more steps down, cautiously because suddenly the too-big shoes seemed far more of a problem than they had when she had put them on in her room.