WriteNight Meeting 23rd February 2015

Last night's WriteNight, was hosted at 15 Queen Street by the fabulous Emma Kittle. 

Emma brought along a really interesting exercise which focused on the conventions of traditional fairy tales. It was inspired by the 'Londonist' competition Emma posted in the Facebook group on February 16th, which asks for writers to submit a 'new fairytale for modern London'.

Initially, we put together a mind map of our knowledge of the fairy tale genre. Amongst the ideas listed were the following:

• hero/heroine
• wicked stepmother
• old crone/witch
• transformation
• true love's first kiss
• romance
• implausible deaths
• magic
• moral lesson

After this, we read the Brothers Grimm's tale 'The 12 Brothers' which proved very entertaining, as we were forced to suspend all logic and all our knowledge of the 'rules' of writing as we read it. We examined the fairy tale conventions which were present in the story.

Finally, we spent time writing our own 'new fairytales for modern London'. It was a very challenging exercise, as it fell outside of all our comfort zones but this made it all the more enjoyable.

Thank you to Emma for a thoroughly entertaining and interesting session. If you missed it, feel free to have a go at the exercise and enter the competition, following the link above.

The next WriteNight meeting will take place at 15 Queen Street Colchester on Monday 9th March 2015 from 7:30-9:30pm. We hope to see you there!

by Annie Bell