Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--W is for Who, What, Where, When, Why (and How)

From an "ugly" stepsister's
perspective

I suspect the most widely known rule when it comes to writing an article is that you must answer the six W questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why (and How). 

Answer these six questions, and you’ll have a complete article. Don’t answer these six questions, and your readers will be left asking questions you should have answered.

Fictional stories answer these six questions, too, but there’s one very important difference: the answers for an article are supposed to be based on fact, but the answers for a work of fiction can be anything the author chooses. 

Cinderella, for example, has an evil stepmother and evil stepsisters in the original fairy tale, but in your version? You can do anything you want.

This Cinderalla is running away
from the prince

The truth is every existing story has an infinite number of story possibilities. All you have to do is change the answers to the six questions.

Who? In the original, it’s Cinderella, her evil stepmother and evil stepsisters, her fairy godmother, and the prince. But what if you make one of the stepsisters the main character? Or the fairy godmother? Or what if Cinderella isn’t so good? What if she’s kind of mean and she chooses to sleep in the cinders to embarrass her step family?

What? In the original, she gets magic clothes, goes to the ball, falls in love with the prince, loses a glass slipper, and is found to be the prince’s true love when the glass slipper fits her. But what if she doesn’t have a fairy godmother, or magic clothes, or any of that stuff? What if she doesn’t even like the prince? What if she doesn’t want to go to the ball?

All she wants is to get rid of the
curse of obedience

Where? The original takes place in a fairytale land. But what if it didn’t? What if it took place in the 21^st century? (Time is a part of the setting, not the “when.”) What if it took place on another planet? What if it took place in the Wild West?

When? The story begins with Cinderella being mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. But what if it started before all of that happened? Or what if it started after? And how much after? What if starts with Cinderella trying to adjust to a royal life and being unable to accept how the servants at the castle are treated? What if it deals with political intrigue behind the scenes as noblemen and women try to get rid of Cinderella? Or what if it skips ahead a couple of decades as the daughter of Cinderella and the prince has doubts about marrying a prince?

Why? Cinderella gets her happy ending because she’s good and obedient and doesn’t complain despite all the hardships she endures. But what if she isn’t so good and obedient? Or what if she is obedient, but not by choice?

How? The “how” of a story is about how the story is told: in other words, its style or genre. Cinderella is fairytale, but it doesn’t have to be. What if you turned it into a mystery? I mean, how did Cinderella’s parents die (or at least disappear) anyway? What if you turned it into a screwball comedy? Or into a science fiction novel with robots?

Six questions, infinite answers, and infinite story possibilities.  

Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--J is for Justice (and why we need it in stories)

I’m a middle child.

You can go ahead and think of all the stereotypes about middle children having an overdeveloped sense of justice. In my case, they’re entirely true.

It’s one of the things I liked about fairy tales when I was growing up. I loved seeing brave and good heroes and heroines (especially the heroines) get rewarded. Even more, I liked seeing bad things happened to the bad people who deserved them. I wanted justice to be served, and like the boy in my favorite movie, The Princess Bride, it bothered me when it wasn’t. It bothered me because it just wasn’t fair.

“What did you read me this thing for?!”

When I was little and pointed out that my dad was being unfair about something, he replied, “Life isn’t fair.”

Well, I never expected life to be fair. I expected him to be fair. Just because life isn’t fair, that’s no excuse for people to be unfair. Heck, if anything, that’s even more reason for people—especially parents—to be fair, to make up for the injustices of life.

And I feel that’s even more true when it comes to writers and the stories we tell, particularly stories for children.

What’s the point of telling a fictional story if doesn’t right the wrongs of life? What’s the point of telling a story if it doesn’t give us something we don’t get in real life: justice?

Of course, not all classic fairy tales have just endings. The original Little Mermaid doesn’t. I hated that story when I was little. I hated how the Little Mermaid, who only wanted to love and be loved, had to pay for her bravery and devotion to the stupid prince with her life. That was so unfair!

 Of course, years later, Disney fixed it. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt that story needed to be fixed and justice needed to be served. Someone at Disney felt that way, too.

One of the things I’ve done time and again in this blog is show writers easy ways to come up with story ideas. Here’s another: if there’s something in a classic story that you don’t like—whether it’s a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, an ancient Greek myth, or a Shakespeare play—write a story inspired by it and fix the part that you don’t like.

I did that with Don Quixote when I wrote Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey. I love Don Quixote, but I hate the ending. Why does he have to give up on his dream and die? Actually, I know the reason. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in parts, and while he was still writing it, readers said that the main character needed to wake up and stop dreaming. Of course, once he gave up on his dreams, there really was no reason for him to keep living. Hence the tragic ending to what should be a comedy. When I wrote Dan Quixote and put the story of Don Quixote into a modern middle-school American setting, I fixed the part I thought was wrong and gave it the just ending it deserved.

A lot of the adaptations we see today are about righting literary wrongs.

The Wicked Witch of the West, for example, was never actually shown to be evil in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. Sure, everyone hates her, but why? The worst thing we see her do is take Toto away from the girl who killed her sister (yes, it was an accident, but still) and stole her sister’s magical shoes. Can we really blame the witch? And why is Oz so great? He manipulates a girl to kill someone for him. He basically turns Dorothy into a mercenary. Really? So I’m glad to see adaptations like Wicked, adaptations that right the wrongs.

 The same goes for the movie Maleficent. Originally the character was awful, but we never got to hear her side of the story. And Aurora? All she does is sleep, and we’re supposed to root for her? And her happy ending is that a prince kisses her while she’s asleep? Yeesh! The new movie fixes all of that, and I’m glad it does.

I also like adaptations that fix social injustices in fairy tales, the way Ella Enchanted and Disney’s latest live action Cinderella movie attempt to fix the inherent sexism of the original Cinderella fairy tale.

So if you’re looking for an easy way to write a story, just look for a story old enough to be in the public domain that has something unjust about it and make it just. Fix it. Right the wrongs.

Life might be unfair, but you don’t have to accept it. You can be a literary superhero.