Who I do it for.

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview miss Golden’ The young boy looked nervous, nervous the way she had once been nervous during her first interview. She had just published her first book, her first fairy tale retelling, a combination of ‘little red riding hood’ and ‘frau Holle’. Her publisher said it was new, fresh, and needed to be shown to the world, she had done about twenty interviews just for that story alone, but she had always hated interviews. After that first story had been published and the promotion for it was finished, she had only ever done a handful of other interviews. She had build an impressive portfolio of ‘combination fairy tales’, she had published multiple new books over the year, most containing a collection of fairy tales, and she had become quite well known, but she didn’t do interviews. There were a few exceptions of course, like this one, a sixteen year old boy that send her a handwritten letter expressing his admiration for her. He had grown up reading her stories and said he would love to know more about them and her writing process, he wanted to be a writer himself, she couldn’t refuse him. She remembered when she was his age, how she had looked up to writers, wanted to be just like them, she would have given anything for an exclusive interview with those writers and she could never turn this boy away when he reminded her so much of herself back when she was young.

‘Of course, lets begin at the beginning.’ There were two lists, the list of all fairy tales she knew of, sorted by author, and the list of fairy tales she had ideas for, some of them already coupled up with one or sometimes two other fairy tales, others that didn’t have a partner yet. She always looked at the second list first, she picked whichever story interested her the most at that moment, not the first on the list necessarily, in fact, at the moment ‘bluebeard’ had been stuck at the top of the list for the past twenty years.

‘I’m not really supposed to tell anyone about this, but the story I’m working on now is a combination of ‘the nightingale’ and ‘the emperor’s new clothes’.’ The nightingale had been on her list since the beginning and finally she had decided it was time to use it. It had been on her list on its own, not partnered up with any other story and so the progress of selecting a partner begun. This is where the first list came into play, she used it in phases. First she read the titles only and sometimes a connection would form immediately and she would realise a way to connect the two stories. If that didn’t happen she went back to the beginning of the list and looked for any possible connection, in this phase she usually found a couple stories that could be connected to the first one and she made a separate list. Lastly she went back to the new list and made rough drafts for some of the stories, whichever came most naturally was the story she picked, but every now and again she did add one of the other pairings to her list of future stories, after all, each combination would form a new and different story.

‘The connection between the two stories is the emperor, an emperor that is materialistic in a way, and whose materialism leads to their downfall.’ She looked for a connection, any connection, even a connection as simple as both stories involving an emperor could be a way for the stories to fit together. After the connection was found the next step was to try and figure out what role the connection played, would the emperors still be two separate people, would they be merged into one emperor? All those questions had to be asked, sometimes, the answer came to her immediately, sometimes it took some tweaking to find the right answer.

‘Two materialistic emperors become one, that part was easy, but then they weren’t the only players in this story, this is where the hard part begun.’ Now that the connection was set, two emperors become one, that meant that both stories, the clothes and the nightingale would have to happen to one person instead of two. Two separate stories are too complicated in a fairy tale, the two stories had to become one but for this particular story they still had to retain their own characteristics. In some stories it was enough to place one character into another story, that is what she had done with little red riding hood, she had put the girl into the world of frau Holle, and then she only had to tweak the original story of frau Holle to make little red riding hood fit in this new world. The story didn’t always have to be equal parts of the two fairy tales, they only had to be recognisable, however for this new story there did have to be equal parts of both fairy tales for the stories to really shine through. Something else had to be merged than just the two emperors.

‘The nightingale has to become a tailor, she has to be a mysterious girl whose skills bring the emperor joy, but somehow her replacement by someone who seems like a better version of her should lead to the emperors’ downfall. The nightingale would have to become the tailor, who gets replaced by the person that gives the emperor his ‘new clothes’.’ Her being the tailor was always the obvious decision but it was not as easy to figure out how she would take the place of tailor. To figure out how this story would take place she decided to make a rough outline of both stories, in order to visualise how they could be combined.

‘The nightingale is a story about a bird that can sing like no other. The emperor falls in love with its singing and asks it to sing to him every night, the bird does so until the emperor receives a fake, golden nightingale as a gift. He dismisses the original bird as this one is so much more beautiful, but the fake bird eventually breaks down. This leads to the emperor falling ill, when he is on his deathbed the original nightingale came back and cured him with its singing. The emperors new clothes is a story about an emperor that is very vain, he wants to look his absolute best and for people to admire him for how he looks. He keeps wanting more expensive, more interesting clothes, one day some tailors come by claiming they can make clothes from a fabric only smart people can see. The emperor can’t see the clothes but he pretends he can so no one will think him dumb. He wants to show off his new expensive clothes to his people and is shocked to find that the clothes are a scam and he stands completely naked in front of his subjects.’ Now the question is which parts of the stories are the same and which have to be picked from which story.

‘In both stories the emperor is betrayed by their materialism. In the nightingale there is something good that the emperor lets go in favour of something more expensive, that comes back to save the emperor after the betrayal. In the emperors new clothes the emperor does not get saved.’ She decided to use the tailors aspect of the emperors new clothes but keep the letting go of something good that later comes back to save the emperor after his betrayal.

‘A mysterious girl gets discovered for her beautiful clothes.’ She is a normal girl, an average girl with a talent. She resembles the nightingale in that way. She is sweet, trusting and wishes to do well, when the emperor discovers her clothes he asks her to work for her and she is glad to do so. She makes him the most beautiful garments but the emperor keeps wanting more and better, it is never good enough, but she works on without complaining.

‘The emperor gets an offer, a tailor who can make clothes from a fabric only smart people can see.’ Of course the emperor asks his own tailor to make clothes with that fabric but she can’t see any fabric. The new tailor convinces the king she is too dumb and the king believes him, of course he can’t see the fabric either but he won’t tell anyone in fear of being made out to be stupid.

‘There is a big gala a week after the new tailor shows up and he convinces the king to wear his new clothes.’ The king shows up to the gala completely naked and everyone laughs at him.

‘Now here is the part I’m not sure about yet, I want the tailor girl to come back and save him at the last minute, but I don’t know how she’s going to do it yet. I have a couple of ideas but to be honest I already told you way too much, if my publisher hears I told you all of this she’ll be livid.’ The young boy was looking at her the way he had been looking at her this entire interview, like his dreams were coming true. He assured her he would never tell anyone she had told him all of this, of course he wouldn’t, he was just so honoured she trusted him with this information.

‘When will it come out?’ Well, that is the question isn’t it. She still had so much to do, she still had so many more stories she wanted to write, maybe it would become part of a bundle, it could take years for it to be published. The boy was looking at her with such hope and admiration though, and he looked like he would cry if she told her he had to wait another two years to read the full story. She thought of herself at that age and decided.

‘I don’t know, but I will send it to you as soon as I finish it, if you’d like that.’ He looked like he could cry, and she realised that this was the reason why she wrote, she wanted to inspire, to be someone who kids like this could look up to, this was her passion, and people like him made it worth it.