What do we mean by "contemporary fairy tale?"
Maybe the most perplexing term on our website is contemporary fairy tale. For purposes of slush pile reading, we draw a clear line between contemporary and traditional. Moreover we strongly prefer reading—and publishing—the contemporary kind.
This is not to say we refuse traditional fairy tales out of hand, but a traditional work will have to be exceptional for us to consider it.
In order to draw a distinction between the two we first need to define fairy tale as a subgenre to fantasy. All of this is too long for a tweet storm, so here you go: our first blog post.
Fantasy defined
Merriam-Webster Online defines fantasy as “imaginative fiction featuring especially strange settings and grotesque characters.” The type of strangeness, and the reaction to that strangeness—among audiences and any protagonists within the story—are what set one genre aside from the other. In High Fantasy, strange, epic confrontations between human and rival species are the norm, both for the genre itself and for the inhabitants of the world. Think Tolkien: orcs, wizards, elves and humans wage near-endless war for a…ring.
In ghost stories, the strangeness of the soul’s return is minor compared to that of its behavior. Take The Sixth Sense as a key example. Cole Sear’s visions were not inherently frightening; ultimately Malcolm Crowe turned out to be a haunting, too. The events of the film were frightening because the souls were outraged, confused, frightened, at times bellicose. It is a wonderful detail of paranormal fiction that protagonists react to the strangeness quite differently. Some do not see the ghosts at all; others do, but write them off on scientific or religious grounds. Others can communicate with the ghosts but are reluctant to, and still others try to help. Readers see the events of ghosts stories differently as well.
The fairy tale
In a fairy tale, the world the author depicts is mostly our, normal world, however one element leaves the audience and the protagonists in terror. Take Frozen: there are no orcs, ghosts, or prolonged wars. A princess wields an odd, growing power, and nearly kills her sister by accident. That horrifies her parents and moviegoers alike. When the king and queen demand that the girls separate, and that Elsa wears gloves, the audience does not take exception to it at all, despite that we know there will be consequences.
We’ve reached a key detail in the traditional fairy tale: the magic must give the audience and the characters pause. This is not hard to pull off, but it also explains why stories are necessarily pre-industrial, set in remote castles, with protagonists who either can't be scandalized or are too isolated to get help. It's difficult to maintain urgency when the victims can either call the FBI or Google "how to kill ogres." We’ve all seen a few, key narrative arcs repeat with a thousand variations each: a princess is locked in a castle and then [elevator pitch]. A prince has to fight the sorceress because [plot]. A lost heiress needs to hide her true identity and live like a commoner after [tragedy].
As reader tastes evolve the traditional fairy tale will continue to lose appeal. A contemporary fairy tale, however, is not bound to the old limitations. Some of our favorite short stories of the last few years have been contemporary fairy tales by relatively undiscovered indie writers. Short fiction, especially flash, is a brilliant work-around for the Just Call the Police problem. It brings the protagonist down from the watchtower and, while she may end up contacting the authorities, it won’t happen on our watch.
Some examples
The Other Side of the Reservoir, by W.H. Rowe, is the perfect execution of this. In the opening sentence, a woman sees a lake monster in a reservoir. She is on her way to meet a friend and cannot get the other woman to believe it. The friend won’t even accept the part about “lake” and “reservoir” inhabiting the same sentence. It causes a rift in their friendship and both women are too stubborn to move forward from their early disagreement. Instead of notifying the media they camp at the reservoir, each trying to somehow one-up the other.
In The Rose Bride, by Serafina Rogers, a beautiful woman is born from a lonely bachelor’s rosebush. In this case the solution to the fairy-tale problem is the protagonist himself: the bachelor is not afraid because he wants to marry the woman. There is no terror in his discovery, at least not until the conclusion, which the reader suspects was fated, no matter what the lonely man did to prevent it. To put it simply, the bachelor should have been afraid, but wasn’t. The more prescient readers were fearful in his place.
In A Storm Kissed by Blackbirds, by Eva Papasoulioti, the protagonist discovers the speculative element over time. The reader, and characters, gradually realize a child’s abilities, and its true confirmation arrives in the final paragraph, with a painful death.
Wrapping up
In summary, a contemporary fairy tale is bound by the same requirements as always. A familiar world has an element of strangeness, which is troubling to both reader and protagonist. But instead of prolonging the conflict by tucking a princess away in a tower, or in a royal court, the writer explores other settings, solves the fairy tale problem in innovative ways.
It may seem like a sleepy archaic subgenre but the truth is the opposite. The fairy tale is a lively and modern literary form, where even small doses of innovation can produce wonderful results, palatable to contemporary readers.
