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Topic Brainstorm

In no particular order here are four topics I am interested in possibly using for my Storybook Project.

Korean Tales
My mom was adopted from Korea so I have always been interested in learning more about Korean culture since I am half Korean myself. I even took a Korean language course in high school and took an online course through Stanford on Korean history. I personally prefer stories that are more fairy tale than what most of these stories seem to be but I would love to research more into it. I would love to focus more on tales with women and/or nature and less on the animal ones due to my own personal preferences. I could also possibly retell some of these stories with human characters instead of animals.

Fairy Tale Villains
One of my favorite new tropes in storytelling is retelling traditional fairy tales from the perspective of villains. In stories like Maleficent, the traditional villain is given a backstory and the fairy tale is told from their perspective to give more understanding and sympathy for their actions. This idea is actually similar to one of the storybooks I liked and wrote about at the beginning about Peter Pan. I would probably not update the stories to modern time but instead, give the villain a backstory like in the other two stories I mentioned earlier. I would maybe focus on three or four fairytales but I would need to research further to narrow them down.

Charles Perrault
I chose this topic because Charles Perrault's fairy tales are some of my absolute favorites. Donkey- Skin, in particular, is a fairy tale I remember loving to read when I was a kid. For a storybook centered on Charles Perrault, I would probably try to bring the fairytales into a modern retelling by changing the setting. I would also think of maybe gender swapping some of the stories.

Fairy Tales
For this storybook, I would like to focus on bringing together fairytales from different cultures across a similar theme. One way I am thinking of possibly doing this is bringing together essentially the same plot told in different ways, for example, a Beauty and the Beast or The Six Swans tales from different cultures. Or maybe a less obvious connection between stories, such as a focus on a particular motif or symbol. For example, I like the idea of focusing on the magic of books or maybe stories that involve a suitor having to pass a series of tests to marry.
(The Six Swans from Wikipedia Commons)

Comments

  1. Hi Meghan!
    Just looking through your ideas, and it looks like you have some good ones. It is always nice to bring in your culture when writing stories. It helps make it more personal. I love fairy tales! It was funny that you mentioned Maleficent because she is one of my favorite villains. I think the idea of giving them a background will make the story more interesting and maybe even cause the reader to lean towards the villain's (evil's) side haha. Also, I know nothing about Charles' Perrault, so I am already learning new things from your post.
    I am inspired by some of your ideas, so I can't wait to see what you come up with!

    ReplyDelete

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