Exploring the Magic of Fairy-Tale Writing Inspiration

Fairy tales have always been more than just bedtime stories. They are stories of wonder and magic, sometimes of warning, retold across different media all our lives.

When it comes to creative writing, fairy-tale writing inspiration can be a rich source for even the most modern of stories, and on the blog today, we have a fairy godmother in the form of writing coach Ella McLeod.

You’ll learn how to look at old tales to unlock fresh ideas, use classic archetypes as a basis for new characters and settings, and add layers of magic and meaning to your own story without lecturing your reader in a moral lesson. Plus, there are magic beans in the form of some recommended reads and fairy-tale writing prompts.

Ready to visit somewhere ‘once upon a time’ to shape an original story of your own? Let’s lace up our boots, grab our cloaks, and begin...

Why start with something small, like a fairy tale or a nursery rhyme, when you dream of writing a novel?

These stories may be small, but they’re powerful and pack a punch. I often think of them rather like a stock cube. Concentrated, rich, and flavorful, as well as being tried, tested, and universal. They can be adapted and used by a variety of cultures and milieus and are ubiquitous because they contain something essential.

Fairy tales, folklore, even the humble nursery rhyme—these all speak to something true and indelible about the human condition. These tales wrestle with mortality, interrogate the nature of power, and throw up vital questions about good and evil, beauty, love, and fear. They have been passed down in the most efficient way possible—trimmed of excess, refined by repetition, and remembered because of their sharp emotional impact.

I had an ancient Grimm’s Fairy Tale book (that I still possess) with the proper blood-curdling tales in them. It was all there – murder, kidnap, abandonment, assault... The list goes on. However much it was wrapped up in fairy princess colours, my eight-year-old reader’s soul knew that these were dangerous stories – and that’s why I loved them.
—Kate Hamer

The truth about fairy-tale ideas

If you’ve kept yourself from writing a novel because you haven’t yet thought of something ‘original enough,’ you’re not alone. Many writers fall into the trap of believing they must create something entirely new, but here’s the secret: there is no such thing as a completely original story.

Every novel you’ve ever loved was built from familiar ingredients because the best writers understand that what readers crave more than originality is resonance. Familiarity provides a foundation—it creates an emotional echo that readers can respond to instinctively. A fairy-tale idea, myth, or nursery rhyme is a perfect place to start because it comes pre-loaded with emotional weight and symbolic meaning that makes sense in a human world. You’re not beginning from scratch; you’re building on shared memory.

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Three magical elements of fairy tales writers can use

If the fairy tale is as packed as a stock cube with familiar and reliable flavors, then your job as a writer is to take those familiar elements and twist them. Subvert expectations. Change the setting. Update the stakes.

• What if the wicked witch in Snow White is seriously misunderstood?
• What if Red Riding Hood, like in Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, needs to stray off the path and encounter the wolf in order to go through a bildungsroman of sorts?
• What if, as indeed in my own debut, Rapunzella, Or, Don’t Touch My Hair, the damsel in distress is given the tools to rescue herself?

When thrown into a pot with your voice and ingenuity, your fairy-tale stock cube can bubble away into something truly delicious.

Unlock the magic: Try The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter for a powerful fairy-tale punch!

1. Pick Your Fat: considering your theme

A theme in storytelling is like the fat in cooking: foundational, transformative, and often invisible—until something goes wrong. It seeps into every part of the story, binding disparate elements into something coherent, flavorful, and satisfying. Used carelessly or heavy-handedly, it overwhelms the dish—or in this case, the story—demanding attention when it should be silently enhancing everything around it.

A story’s theme is its unspoken argument, its emotional resonance, and its moral architecture. But the brilliance of a theme lies in how it whispers, not shouts. Readers don’t want to be lectured; they want to be immersed. If they sense the author’s finger wagging at them, they’ll recoil.

So, how do you choose the right theme? Well, as with cooking, you need to have a sense of both the end product and your personal taste; I’d probably select olive oil for risotto, coconut oil for curry, and butter for something on the creamier side! Things to think about:

• What world are you creating?
• What do you want your reader experience to be?
• How are you taking your fairy-tale stock cube, made up of all its juicy base elements, and binding it together with your Aromatics (your voice, setting, and angle)?

Because here’s the kicker: the theme isn’t just about the story. It’s about you. Your theme is the bias you carry into the narrative. It’s your worldview, your private defiance, your unreasonable conviction that this is the way things ought to be. It’s not meant to be noble, balanced, or even logical. That’s the job of an essay.

A story’s theme is its unspoken argument, its emotional resonance, and its moral architecture. But the brilliance of a theme lies in how it whispers, not shouts. Readers don’t want to be lectured; they want to be immersed. If they sense the author’s finger wagging at them, they’ll recoil.
—Ella McLeod

In fiction, your theme should be emotional, unprovable. Raw. Maybe it’s your quiet rebellion against societal expectations. Maybe it’s your stubborn belief in redemption. Whatever it is, it should feel dangerous to say aloud.

So, how do you find it?

Start by asking yourself what you would never say at a dinner party. What belief of yours would derail polite conversation? That uncomfortable, indefensible opinion—emotional, irrational, messy—that’s where the magic lies.

Remember, an argument you cannot win in speech is one you can win through a story.

Get thinking in order to start writing

Select from your best-loved stories from childhood. Try to think of three to five.

• What do they have in common?
• What lines or phrases do you recall from them that have stayed with you, and why?
• Who is the most sympathetic character whose shoes we might walk in?
• What themes do these soundbites address? Taboo? Temptation? Desire? For what? Consider whether you can borrow from them for the extreme (or magical) elements of your story.

Now try picking three characters from these best-loved stories and use them as a mouthpiece for this idea. Why does it feel unusual, coming from them? Does it set them at odds with society? Why is it intriguing?

For example, you could start with:

• I’d rather be beastly than boring. (Beauty from Beauty and the Beast.)
• I hate my brothers. I’ve always known I was cleverer than them. (The last pig standing in The Three Little Pigs.)
• The world is a terrible place for a young woman. (Mother Gothel from Rapunzel.)

Next, try a few confessions from your own fairy-tale-inspired main character, using this formula:

I’d rather be X than Y.

Now, try framing it this way:

X is better than Y.

Y is where your story starts, and X marks the spot of the ending, when you come into your kingdom both as the author and the hero! Delve deeper by reading Melanie Conklin’s detailed blog on theme.

Unlock the magic: Try Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes for some wonderful and wild declarations from beloved fairy-tale characters, whatever your age!

2. Adding Your Aromatics: developing the story

Fairy tales offer a perfect opportunity for developing your ability to write fiction. They’re short, self-contained, and follow clear narrative arcs. They help you practice the art of discipline in storytelling—how to say the most with the fewest words, how to create tension quickly, and how to deliver satisfying resolutions.

And because they’re so well known, you can focus on what makes your version unique—your voice, your angle.

These are your Aromatics: the key ingredients you’ll throw into the pot to make this recipe your own. A stock cube is all good for a base of flavor, but when you add in the ingredients that you love, well... Now we’re cooking!

• Go back to your fairy tales from earlier.
• Describe how they start in one sentence.
• Then elaborate on them using this format to cover the first half of your story, taking your main character into the new world of your story:

When X (type of person) is put in Y (circumstance or setting), and gets Z (opportunity), they must make a choice/are confronted with a decision/must take action...

Now for the fun part! 

Finding your voice or angle in fiction is about uncovering what’s already yours. Your emotional truths, your contradictions, your humor, your hurt. It’s not about style alone; it’s about perspective. Ask yourself what obsessions, fears, or questions you return to again and again. What kind of characters fascinate you? Use them to write the story only you can write.

Voice often emerges most clearly when you stop trying to sound like a ‘writer’ and start writing like yourself, unfiltered. Fairy tales, which are so familiar to us that they’re lodged in our literary muscle memory, can be a really helpful tool for allowing this freedom.

How many of us, as children, played strange reimagined fairy-tale games? I remember versions of Rapunzel where she (in other words, I) climbed aboard a dragon (my poor, long-suffering cousin) to freedom. Or versions of Red Riding Hood where the little girl’s hood was actually pink (a crucial detail to seven-year-old me) and had magical powers of invisibility. I didn’t know it at the time, but in this creativity, baby Ella was developing her writer’s voice—one that clearly valued female agency and empowerment! 

Writing works in strange ways. It was only after I’d finished the first draft [of The Girl in the Red Coat] and glanced up to an old Victorian print of Red Riding Hood in our hallway that the realisation came: I’d written a version of that very tale... My point is, I guess, how much writing comes from a subconscious place, a gut feeling that we ignore at our peril. In my experience, anyway, it’s at its best and most enjoyable when I follow that instinct down the rabbit hole.
—Kate Hamer

That’s why these things are your Aromatics—the base flavors that you love and rely on are core to your palate!

Unlock the magic: Try Maria Tatar’s Secrets Beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives. While this is specifically about Bluebeard, the Bluebeard fairy tale itself lies behind many psychological thrillers that pivot on the husband’s secret, from Jane Eyre to Rebecca and many modern novels, including The Book of You by Clare Kendal. Read more on this in our detailed analysis and celebration of Rebecca.

3. To Marry and To Marinate: aging up your story

You might be thinking: Well, this is all very interesting, Ella, but I’m writing a novel for adults (or young adults) and these fairy-tale tricks are for kids!

You would be wrong!

While Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes are, indeed, an excellent time, there are plenty of ways to age up your story. For example, blurring the lines of the absolutes and binaries that fairy tales usually deal in, such as:

• Good versus evil
• Right versus wrong
• Curses and kisses
• Heroes and monsters

Conflict stops being symbolic and becomes psychological. Evil isn’t physically manifested in a witch in the woods or the stereotypical evil queen; it’s generational trauma, corruption, greed, or self-destruction.

This is true even when you’re writing a fantasy, where a witch in the woods might be commonplace. In fairy tales, evil just is. As you allow your fairy-tale stock cube to bubble into something new and unique, your complicated characters will be rooted in motive, backstory, and fallibility.

Magical creatures with helpful advice can become long-lost elderly relatives wanting to pass on wisdom. The cursed prince can become the quiet coworker who isolates themselves from others for a specific reason. Perhaps dark magic can come to represent the worst parts of how we communicate in the modern world.

Aging up a fairy tale means asking: What happens when we take fantasy seriously?

What if Little Red Riding Hood...?

The original tale externalizes conflict through the wolf—a literal predator lurking in the woods. But in an aged-up version, the woods are the site of a trauma.

Perhaps the wolf was in sheep’s clothing; a person Little Red trusted.

Maybe she is the wolf, her Jungian shadow-self that she cannot quite confront. Has this young girl done terrible things all in the name of never straying from the path? Is she, then, an unreliable narrator?

An adult or young adult protagonist can be unreliable or even unlikable in a way that a fairy-tale protagonist isn’t. They are not a symbol of an absolute—the handsome prince, the wicked stepmother, the good girl, the prideful king, the fairy godmother—but a vehicle for the reader to explore the way everything becomes that bit more complicated as we grow up and away from the clear-cut stories of our childhood.

An unreliable narrator allows the reader into a singular worldview while hinting that not everything adds up. In your grown-up tale, you’re allowed to let your protagonist be selfish, bitter, contradictory. In fact, it’s more honest if they are.

Anyone can be the evil stepmother

Think about your setting—a place that allows all of the bold, unsaid things you’ve been thinking to play out on the page.

• Do you relocate the story from an enchanted forest to a sleek dystopia where the evil witch is really a biotech tycoon selling sedatives to induce centuries-long comas?
• Are the three little pigs competing landlords in a contemporary satire about gentrification?

The setting must echo the emotional space between your character’s wants and needs—this emotional space is your catalyst, the fire flickering away beneath your bubbling pot.

And so, to return to our very extended cooking metaphor—I do love a long metaphor!—we have our stock cube, our tried and tested fairy-tale starting point.

We have our Fat (our theme), that we’ll use to steep and sauté our Aromatics, bringing our voice, perspective, and setting to sumptuous fruition.

We have the Fire, a catalyst for the chemistry of creation, the space between our characters’ hamartia and resolution.

And we have our big grown-up choices (our Marinated Meat and Potatoes), the hearty bulk of our story that takes something familiar and comforting and turns it into something spicy, surprising, and unforgettable for the reader.

A few more fairy-tale writing prompts to get your thoughts brewing

If you’re in a fairy-tale mood but are still struggling to get started, have a crack at these prompts!

• A giant’s peaceful existence with his wife is intruded upon by a small, wicked thief from a land far, far below.
• A young boy, the firstborn son of a beautiful princess, doesn’t know his true origin, having been raised by a faerie lord called Rumpelstiltskin.
• A girl, kept all her life in a tower by her overprotective witch mother, escapes to find that perhaps she was not being protected from the world but that, in fact, the world was being protected from her.
• A young girl finds herself waking early from an enchanted sleep to find an empty world full of dangers.
• A young man on a solo journey around the world takes an off-the-beaten-path route and falls in love with a dangerous older woman.

Unlock the magic one last time: Two more titles for you to try!

Swoony and Little Mermaid-inspired, in Skin of the Sea, Natasha Bowen draws on Yoruba folklore to bring us this gorgeous Young Adult novel. This tale—full of complicated morality, tensions between love and duty, and the irreconcilable difference between parts of ourselves—is a perfect example of a story that takes fairy-tale elements and ages them up into something darker.

The romantasy phenomenon that is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas draws on elements of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, but reimagines our damsel as a huntress in a world populated by fae, where the beast is not the most monstrous thing one can encounter...

Your creative writing apprenticeship: The Classic Storytelling Class

You can explore these magical tales even further here on our blog at The Novelry, in Harriet Tyce’s exploration of how great thriller stories often originate from fairy tales and Kate Hamer’s reflection on noticing themes from her favorite childhood stories in her own books today.

Harriet and Kate, both Sunday Times bestselling authors with fairy-tale foundations in their own books, aren’t the only ones who know what fairy tales can do for writers.

Our Classic Storytelling Class investigates why the greatest stories are rooted so deeply in the classics, including fables and fairy tales. There is a reason why these stories have stood the test of time, echoing still in the bestsellers on today’s shelves. In this novel writing class (which is perfect for beginners, but also helpful for old hands who can make time in their schedule to go back to the basics), we show you exactly how you can extract these magical secrets to write storytelling gold.

Wherever you are on your journey as a writer, our novel writing courses offer the complete pathway from the idea to ‘The End.’ With personal coaching, live classes, community support, and step-by-step lessons to fit your schedule and inspire you daily, we’ll help you complete your book with our unique one-hour-a-day method. Learn from bestselling authors and publishing editors to live—and love—the writer’s life. Sign up and start today. The Novelry is the famous fiction writing school that is open to all!