Monday, September 9, 2013

King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Storytelling


I am a strong believer in retelling old stories. I believe there is whimsy left over from those old tales people once fell in love with, whimsy we writers can use to recreate these old stories and make them into something entirely new and wonderfully magical. When you use an old story like King Arthur and twist it up, recreate it, and make it into something modern, you are retelling an ancient story. And I think that is amazing.

There's also some ease to creating new stories from old ones. You already have a setting all mapped out for you: with King Arthur it would be Camelot an old medieval places, and with Robin Hood the forest of Sherwood and the town of Nottingham, etc. You already have the basics of your characters—unless you want to completely reconstruct them, you have all sorts of potential heroes and villains waiting in the souls of Lancelot, Marian, and Alan-a-Dale.

In my own writings, I've played around with recreating some of the oldest fables in history. In my Knights of the Round Table edition, Lancelot is my protagonist, and I overhauled his background and gave him a new one. In my head, Lancelot was the son of a low-ranking lord and lady who both died of an illness soon after he was born. A little rogue boy found baby Lancelot and raised him until he too died of the illness, and Lancelot was left on his own. He was a thief and a crook and a no-good-doer, and soon his name was posted all over the kingdom on WANTED signs. As a young adult he broke into a high-ranking lord's house and met Elaine, for whom he changed his ways and eventually married. Together they had Galahad, met King Arthur by running from Elaine's revengeful father, and soon Lancelot was made a knight.

This is just a sampling of what you can do with these old stories. I created an entire new clan of natives for the backstory of Lamerak, who came from his warring tribes as the last alive of his kind.

I am still having trouble imagining a new way to imagine Robin Hood. In my head, he is something his enemies mortally fear and his allies both fear (in a different way) and respect. Sort of like the Batman of Nottingham. I want to make Marian afraid of him at first, and have her related and living with the Sheriff of Nottingham somehow. I am both excited and eager to see where God takes me with these passions.

The best of luck,


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