Aladdin Central Messageboard

[Chaos]

I love to write short stories couple page stories and anything you can think of I am writing this book and I need a couple of good ideas. What I am planning on doing is bringing stories myths fairytales together. I love harry potter and I find mythical things once in awhile but want more Know any webises tips

[Syera]

It seems like as of late, everyone's been bringing fairy tales together with varying levels of success.

As self-titled Muse of the Unexpected, here is my suggestion.

Go ahead and use ideas from pre-existing fairlytales; that's fine. But run them through a filter and/or twist them so as to make them almost unrecognizable from their source. Or take tiny aspects from various fairy tales and grow them into something entirely different.

Also, here are some other ideas to get your creativity running.

-Read up on traditional fairy tales, blood and all, from around the world.
-Read up on assorted mythologies.
-Study real-life cultures; learn how they functioned both in society and technology.
-Figure out the mechanics of your world. Technology. Politics. Countries. Races. The whole shebang. How they relate to each other.
-Draw a map. It helps.

Okay, magic is probably a given... or IS it? What if this fairytale world was unmagical? How would fairytale-like events occur then?

Don't be afraid to throw non-conventional elements into the mix. Fairy tale worlds are almost always set in a pseudo-Medieval or Renaissance-like world; what if they were set in the seventeenth century? In the Victorian era? What if they were set in a world where a bunch of people with relatively low technology (think gunpowder and not-too-complicated mechanical devices) were trying to colonize a warm, tropical place?*

You're probably tempted to set it in a beautiful kingdom with lots of pretty forests... but what if there were no forests to be found? What if it was tundra, plains, or sagebrush steppe? What would be different?

One of your first instincts as far as fairy-tale creatures go is probably dragons, pretty little girls with wings, and horned horsies. What if you had something else?

What if dragons were relatively small creatures (or at least, a small variation existed) often used to guard the grounds of wealthy people? Imagine getting chased off by a bunch of dog-sized dragons!

*That really happened on Earth... in the Caribbean.

And one personal feeling on the matter: keep the pop-culture references out of the picture. It was good in Aladdin, okay in Shrek, but nowadays, there's no excuse for it.
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[Chaos]

Thank you for the advice.

[Emmlei]

What Syera wrote is good, so these are just additional suggestions. Read. You'd be amazed what you can come up with if you keep your mind open. Some topic that seems utterly mundane can provide the germ of a story if you consider changing some aspect ("The Empire of Unreason" series was focused around a world where Isaac Newton made a breakthrough in alchemy, which he did study IRL).

Free-write and brainstorm. Write things down, no matter how silly. It may be a dead-end, but you'll have it down and you can always come back to some part of it that may work elsewhere.