It's fun to twist fairy tales, but at the same time, I know I need to write stories that are different enough from each other that fans don't feel like they're just reading the same story over and over again.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.
Fairy tales and folk tales have always played a role in my writing in one way or another.
I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.
Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.
No matter what you write, you actually can't help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.
I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing.
I wouldn't like to just do one story or one type of stories all the time.
When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'
I've long been interested in the tale-within-a-tale phenomenon. I'm familiar with many tales which use this framework or the device of many people in one place, telling their stories, or multiple storytellers commenting on each others' stories with their own.
I'm not really a storyteller myself - I tend to get all tangled up when I try and tell stories.