All About the Fairy Tale Community

What is the Fairytale Community?

What is the Fairytale Community?

The Fairytale Community is many things.

Firstly, it is a home. How many of us have written retellings and struggled to find a place in the main genres? It's hard to force retellings into one place. Some may be put in teen fiction, fantasy, fanfiction, or romance. Others might be in the science fiction category or the adventure category. Others still could be in the historical fiction genre or even the paranormal or horror genres. Yet, sometimes these categories won't feel like the right place. Your story may not be like the other teen fiction or historical fiction stories. How is your story supposed to be noticed when it's pushed into a category that may fit it in setting only?

There is no one place for retellings and other related stories, because a retelling could encompass so many different aspects from all genres. The home for retellings and their kin would be a retelling sub-genre, but alas, there isn't one. There wasn't a sub-genre or community for retellings readily created by Wattpad(at the time of this account's creation.) So we decided to create one.

We don't have any say over the genres on Wattpad, but we do have a chance to make this account, its works, and its lists, the home for all things retellings.

Secondly, this account is a support system. Writing stories can be hard and there are so many handy little books about writing in the different genres, but there isn't a support system for people who want to write about fairytales, myths, legends, classic novels, or anything else retelling related. We are on our own unless we reach out to other retelling writers, and sometimes that can be difficult. How are we supposed to know who is approachable and who isn't?

This account will be posting helpful hints to writing retelling related stories. From how to keep things original, to the answers to questions like: "How much magic is too much magic?"; we will be doing our best to help you write your stories.

Thirdly, this account will be helping you get inspired or recognition by doing writing prompts and other contests. This means that every couple of weeks we will post a writing prompt, may it be an in depth one or something vague like "write a short story with an apple in it," and then feature the best ones somewhere on our account. We also may be doing our own general fairytale story contest, like the Wattys but with a winner in every fairytale category (i.e. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, etc.). At the moment, the contest and writing prompt aspect of the account is still very much under construction, but we have big plans for the future.

Fourthly, we're here to help you get in contact with other writers like you! We are a community and that means we can talk to one another. Feel free to message our account to ask questions about writing, or even one of our moderators. Even better, talk with other people in the comments! Finding common interests can be a great way to make friends.

Every time we post something, we'll post a question for you to answer at the end. This will be to help the conversations get started.

Anyway, that's us. We are a home, a supporter, a helping hand, and a friend for everyone who writes, reads, or likes retellings. We look forward to working to help this account, and the community itself, to grow, and we can't wait to start hearing from you all.

Happy writing everyone!

For our first question . . . well, we actually have two.

"What is your favorite fairytale?" and "What are you looking forward to seeing from this account?" Let us know in the comments and you'll be hearing from us soon!

- Sarah (Pennywithaney)

(Head moderator of the Fairytale Community)