Rewriting folk tales

When a writer's muse looks on vacation, she may be upset about the story. While there are many websites and tools on the web that can help make juice flow, one tool that writers may overlook is to study folktales.

Reading folktales is a great way to create new yarns, especially for children. I recently commented on a children's picture book published by Sylvan Dell, based on American Indian folktales. This indicates that they are publishable.

Folk tales, from

 Also known as tall stories and folklore, it is a country or region story. They are usually short stories about everyday life, and these novels come from oral traditions handed down from generation to generation. Most of these stories involve animals, celestial bodies and other non-human entities with human characteristics.

There are Mexican folklore, Irish folklore, Chinese folklore and many other folklore. There are also American folklore, including stories from 50 states. There are a lot of stories about spinning and weaving.

In addition to reviewing several published children's books based on folk tales, I also wrote a children's story based on ancient Chinese stories.

Interestingly, before receiving the story outline from

 An acquaintance from a Chinese non-fiction writer, I never thought about rewriting folk stories. However, once the outline is given, I like the story and information it presents. The profile itself is very rough, with adults as the main character [MC], which is often the case in ancient folktales.

After reading the story, I know that MC needs to be a child. Every child's writer knows that children want to read children, not adults. Moreover, MC needs to be older than the target audience written by the author for several years.

Based on this, MC became a 12-year-old boy. Moreover, since the ancient Chinese flavor of this story seems to be perfect, I have retained it and made the story happen in China in the 16th century. After the setup is complete, you need to create a title and the name of the MC.

When choosing a title for your book, from

 It is important to keep it consistent with the story and make it a marketable target for the age group you are targeting. I chose Go through the wall.

As for the name of the character, from

 You need to be based on the time period and geographic location of the story, not the elements of the character. Since my story happened in China, MC needs a Chinese name.

In order to keep the style of the story consistent, from

 You also need to give it a sense of realism. This will involve some research:

How do people dress in your story? What is the name used? What did they eat? What types of work or school education are there? What places can you mention? What types of crops and vegetation will occur? What types of houses do they live in?

Many aspects of the story are what you want to be as real as possible. Moreover, even in the story of the novel is important; it will add a sense of richness to your story.

The next time you enter the library, ask the librarian to show you some folktales. Then imagine how to rewrite one or more of today's children's book market.

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