Hello everyone and happy Thanksgiving. I didn't have a post prepared today for Thanksgiving so instead I am going to be talking about the difference between basing your story on another story, retelling it, and mashing it up with a different story. But I do plan to make a post for Thanksgiving next year, and I do have a post planned for the winter holidays. ;)
Basing on
If I were to base a character on another character as I did with Phoenix, who was inspired by Newt Scamander, I would create a character who is loosely inspired by that character but not make them into the same character.
 |
| (Image from wiki, https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Newton_Scamander?file=Newt_Theseus_Leta_and_Bunty_at_Flourish_and_Blotts.jpg) |
Generally you do not take information from your inspiration character and use it directly in your character. For example, Phoenix was inspired by Newt, but he does not have the same hopes and dreams as Newt. He is an activist, but not for the same reasons as Newt is. And most importantly, his name is
not Newt Scamander, it's Phoenix.
The same thing happens when you are basing a character on someone you know (who is not a character). Washington Irving's inspiration for Ichabod Crane was a close friend of his, named Jesse Merwin.
 |
| (image from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Merwin#/media/File:Jesse_Merwin_1783-1852.jpg) |
However Irving didn't go out of his way to give Ichabod the same name as Jesse and therefore he wasn't "retelling" his friend, but using parts of him for the character of Ichabod Crane. (Though, there
was another person with the same name as Ichabod, who Irving may have taken the name from, but it is unclear. I don't believe any personality traits were taken because the real Ichabod was a soldier, and Ichabod in the book would not want to fight.)
Retelling
As for
retelling characters, they are somewhat the characters from the book, but you take information given to you by the author or what the fairytale gives you and you add or subtract information to your own liking. But if you are saying your retold character is "based on" the character from the book or fairytale that you are retelling, that would be a false statement. Basing a character on another does not mean they have the same name as that character (usually) or the same hopes and dreams. As for retelling a character along with a story, you tend to keep some of the character's characteristics. Like if you were to make a female version of "Jack and the Beanstalk," you would take some of the information you got from the fairytale of what the character was like, and then develop it further. Though probably in turning Jack into a woman in the retelling you would have to change the name of the character, but, if you were retelling "Jack and the Beanstalk" and placing it in a science fiction world, you would modify Jack for his or her surroundings, but not modify them to the extent that they aren't the same character anymore. The same goes for retelling a fairytale from a different character's point of view:
Maleficent is a good example of this.
 |
| (image from wiki, https://maleficent.fandom.com/wiki/Maleficent?file=Maleficent_Arrives.jpg) |
They keep Maleficent's personality as it was in the original movie. But they give her other characteristics and a backstory, while still retaining the given information that was there in the original movie. This process, however, is much more
complex if you are retelling something like
The Canterbury Tales or even a classic novel. You have a lot of information that the author gave you on the personality traits and quirks of the character. And you still want the keep that information while giving your character their own quirks and habits. But there is a bad example of this, where the screenwriter keeps
none of the character's personality traits and makes them go off the edge in terms of this.
 |
| (image from wiki, https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jim_Hawkins_(Treasure_Planet)?file=Profile_-_Jim_Hawkins.jpeg) |
In the movie
Treasure Planet, they don't really succeed in sustaining the personality traits that Jim Hawkins has in Robert Louis Stevenson's book and instead turn him into a rebellious teenager (which he was not). He was forced to grow up fast in the book due to all the murders that were happening and the way he was treated by the other men. And don't forget that he had to kill someone at one point. But he didn't want to rebel against his family. If anything, that was the last thing he wanted. As for this "retelling," I would say they didn't succeed in making it a retelling and turned it more into a movie that was based on the story rather than a different version of it told through a different lens. And not only that, but there were so many drastic changes that took place with the crew. For example, they made Doctor Livesey (Doppler in the movie version), who viewed himself as a gentleman in the book, into a very weird person and someone I am sure the doctor from the book would consider to be a fool, or at least someone who isn't very clever or sophisticated. While I did like the captain character (Captain Amelia), I found it frustrating that they had to create a romance between her and the doctor, which really didn't happen in the book. I feel like to create a good retelling you have to sustain the character's original personality traits, though if you do it well, you can make small changes to the story that you want, like what
Maleficent did with
*spoilers* having Maleficent wake up Aurora with a true love's kiss that was motherly love instead of romantic love. *end spoilers* That is an example of a change done well. But with
Treasure Planet's huge changes to the characters and even the destruction of the island, er, planet I can't exactly say that was done particularly well. While a retelling can be set in a different genre, or with a male or female version of the main character from the original, you do still have to take into account the stuff the author set up for you, and not just throw it to the wind.
If
Treasure Planet had made Jim Hawkins into a more caring character, who took in what was going around him and then was shocked by what horrors he faced in the flying boat in space, this would have suited the character more than to turn him into a rebelling teenager.
 |
| (image from wiki, https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Sarah_Hawkins?file=Cliptreasure17.gif) |
So, it feels more like the writers of the story based the character on Jim Hawkins and just happened to name him Jim, even though his persona doesn't match up with the original book.
Another example of when someone bases their story on another story, but doesn't retell it is Disney's
Hercules, which messes up the Greek gods' family tree. It is so complex already that to change it tends to make it really confusing. While I do not think it was good of Zeus to cheat on Hera, I think that it does really change the myth in a bad way to have Hercules be the son of Zeus and Hera, instead of Zeus and Alcmene, because it removes Hera's motivations to be the goddess she is. (If Hera hadn't been angry at Zeus, Io wouldn't have been turned into a cow, Leto wouldn't have had to find an island unattached to land to give birth to Artemis and Apollo, and Hercules wouldn't have gone through most of his labours.) To make her into a happy mother really diminishes what Hera was like as a character. Hera did have children, so she is a parent, but not really the kind of parent you would exactly
want. After all depending on the version of the myth, she was the one who threw her child Hephaestus off of Mt. Olympus because he was ugly. So for Disney to present her as a smiling and happy mother...really does not work well with the story.
And Disney's
Hercules isn't really a retelling. It modifies the myth, and not by expanding on given information from the writer, but instead saying they were wrong in a way. Disney also changed how Pegasus was born. In Greek mythology he was originally born when Perseus cut off Medusa's head, and he sprang from her body (having been the unborn son she had with Poseidon). However, Disney changed it and made it that Zeus created Pegasus out of a cloud, which really changes the feeling of the birth of Pegasus. However, an example of a writer actually retelling a story is if they expand on the information that the author gave them. In
Sleeping Beauty "the fairies argued." The writers of
Maleficent took this further and turned it into "the fairies argued, and in the midst of arguing became terrible parent figures to Aurora." This is taking it a step further by adding on to given information, instead of taking a step backward and modifying the given information to a ridiculous extent.
Mash up
While I do think that the TV show
Sleepy Hollow did an awesome version of Ichabod Crane's character, I would not necessarily say that this is a retelling. I only watched one episode of the show, so my views of it are mostly based on what I saw of the pilot. The reason I don't think it's a retelling is that the character is very different. The book version of Ichabod would probably not desire to fight in a war or work as a spy for General Washington. (Ichabod is a little bit of a coward in some ways).
Even though I did like the portrayal of this character, I think it would be important to say that this character is based on Ichabod in some sense, and took his name. But it wouldn't be
exactly a retelling of
the Legend of Sleepy Hollow from what I saw of it. Instead it took the characters, changed them a lot, and put them into a different setting (two different settings to be exact: the 21st century and the American Revolutionary War). If anything
Sleepy Hollow took an element from another of Irving's stories, Rip Van Winkle, by having Ichabod wake up in the 21st century instead of having him disappear by the way of the Headless Horseman. In the pilot, Ichabod didn't seem in any way superstitious, as he was in the book. However, the screenwriters did capture the feel that Rip Van Winkle had upon waking up and seeing that there
"were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors—strange faces at the windows—every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched." ("Rip Van Winkle" p.18)
Ichabod did have a similar experience upon waking and seeing that the world around him had changed over the past hundred years. They also include Ichabod's emotions over his wife, Katrina's "death" (it is unclear whether she actually died or not) similar to Rip Van Winkle. However Ichabod's emotions are very different from Rip's. Instead of having the "henpecked" husband reaction Rip had, Ichabod feels a deep sorrow. Upon speaking to Abbie about it in a very disbelieving way, "
I thought I'd actually awoken in the future and that my wife had been dead for 250 years" (from the episode, "Pilot"). While the TV show isn't faithful to the story in the first episode, it still was a retelling in some sense even if the retelling it was wasn't of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and it instead somewhat retold "Rip Van Winkle." It added in elements from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and it included a modified version of Ichabod, Katrina, and Headless Horseman...making it in a way a mash up.
So next time you write, think about whether you are telling a story based on another one, retelling a story, or doing a mash up. Because sometime stories that are based on other stories are being labeled as "retellings," and I think we should be careful as writers not to mislead our readers, by confusing retellings with stories based on others.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which do you prefer to do: retell a story, base your story on another one or mash up multiple stories?
-Quinley
