Activity

@aborland I once read two Beauty and the Beast retellings by the same author that were practically identical! I have also read the Melanie Dickerson books you are talking about, and I didn’t think they were that creative, although they never used magic so I didn’t think they stuck that close to the original stories either.

However, I do write fairy tale retellings, so I do absolutely believe that they can be done. There is so much room to do creative things with. I have four Beauty and the Beast retellings alone planned, and they are all unique.

1. One is from the POV of the enchantress, as she realizes what a mistake the curse was, and how she hurt all the servants that were now forced to serve a jerk of a prince for forever, and were totally reliant on him to save them, more than she hurt the prince himself.

2. One is about Beauty as she travels the world with her huge Beast of a dog. Beast transforms into a human every night and asks Beauty to marry him. She refuses, and he says “Great, I didn’t want to marry you anyways. The curse made me ask.” This one has a really cool magic system I like a lot too. 😉

3. One is where the magical house is the antagonist. It traps people and transforms them into Beasts. The only way they can escape is by passing the curse onto some else, via falling in love. Beauty and Beast are trapped in the house together, and spend the book trying not to fall in love so that the cycle will stop. I don’t know how this one ends, and it is pretty twisted, so I probably won’t ever write it, but it is an idea.

4. My current WIP is about a Beast who is using his huge empty house, unlimited invisible workforce, and immortality (until the curse is broken) to create an orphanage. Beauty is the governess, and they fall in love, but they can’t get married, because that would break the curse and the orphanage would be shut down. What will they do?!?!

These stories are all hugely different from each other, but they are all still Beauty and the Beast.