Sleeping Beauty

Genres

  • POST-APOCALYPTIC with the full hundred-year curse and waking up to ‘oh no, something decimated my kingdom and wait, what do you mean I’m not the princess anymore?’ ~ Arielle
  • COMEDIC FANTASY a la The Princess Bride. In this case, the princess wakes up to find she no longer has a kingdom because everyone went republican and/or democratic while she was sleeping. ~ Arielle
  • WEIRD WEST with Sleeping Beauty inside the caves of a butte/lava field. I just got done hiking my favorite lava field with some friends earlier today, and it struck me how few stories really incorporate a lot of western terrain. ~ Arielle
  • TIME TRAVEL – Literally of any kind. More realistic sci-fi type of time travel or fantasy world magic time travel, IT DOESN’T MATTER. But this story screams timey-wimey to me. Such a prominent part of the story is that the princess and her castle is cursed for 100 years. But it’s kind of weird that the prince just swoops in and kisses some sleeping girl he’s never met and they fall in love. So the solution? TIME TRAVEL. She and the prince fall in love during their young years and then she falls into a sleeping curse that can’t be broken for 100 years so ol’ princey has to find a way to time travel to get back with her? Mmmm yes. I wants it. ~ Christine Smith + Hayden Wand, Kirsten Fichter
  • POLITICAL INTRIGUE – This came up while we were doing our commentary. Apparently Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom got turned over to another royal family that wasn’t her own at some point during the curse, but the tale doesn’t specify HOW. Not to mention there’d be so many repercussions to a whole kingdom falling into a 100-year sleep. Can you imagine how messy the politics for that kingdom and its allies were during those first years? I want a story about that. Forget the sleeping princess. What all were her parents dealing with at the time? I NEED TO KNOW. ~ Christine Smith + Tracey Dyck
  • EPIC FANTASY – If you really examine it, there is so MUCH to this tale. From fairy courts to political intrigue, like I said, to ogres to the bad fairy to the mention of seven-league boots and DRAGONS to the whole story literally taking place over the course of 100 years. Most retellings seem to just choose one element or keep to a very straightforward plot. But I feel like there’s enough material for a very long, deliciously complex epic fantasy series. ~ Christine Smith
  • FANTASY HORROR – I’m not even into horror BUT the idea of a castle being asleep for 100 years just begs for a good ghost story of some kind. It could be an eerie haunted house tale except the haunted house is the CASTLE. And some unsuspecting kids stumble into it and are attacked by thorny vines and haunted by sleeping people and maybe the evil fairy shows up for good measure. I don’t know. Seems like it’d be fun. ~ Christine Smith
  • CONTEMPORARY ROM-COM – Sleeping Beauty wakes up – only to find her prince is a modern day guy (probably a CEO, you know how this goes) and the world around her is very much different than when she went to sleep. Then the fun begins with Sleeping Beauty as a beloved fish-out-of-water heroine who learns the modern world and of course falls in love. ~ Faith White
  • CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY – “Sleeping Beauty” wakes up out of her coma with no memories of her past or her current fiancé. But as she explores her home town, dark mysteries begin to surface along with multiple new enemies. What really did happen to her family? How did she end up in a coma? And is there someone in town that wants her dead? ~ Faith White
  • REVERSE GENDER FANTASY – Just a story that switches all the roles, so we have a sleeping prince instead, a vengeful angry male fairy and a princess who wakes the prince up with a kiss. I think there could be a lot of fun twists here. ~ Faith White
  • GOTHIC – I mean, a true Gothic in the classic literature sense because HELLO, a girl asleep for a hundred years is such an eerie picture! You could do so much with that with all the tropes and trappings of a Gothic Romance. ~ Hayden Wand
  • SPACE OPERA – This is prooobably because this was one of my early ideas that I’m not sure will ever see the light of day, but I’d love a sweeping, Star Wars-like interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. In fact, go ahead and make it a saga that incorporates other fairy tales, too. I mean, adding an alien Rumpelstiltskin into the story would work SO WELL. ~ Hayden Wand
  • SPY/HEIST – I’m actually thinking of this more along the lines of a fantasy novel in the manner of say, Six of Crows, where a group of (perhaps morally gray??) thieves/rebels are either 1) breaking in to a secure location to awaken the rightful ruler and start a revolution or 2) just breaking in to steal something and find a sleeping princess instead. It shifts the whole dynamic from “prince and princess” to an entire ensemble cast, which I think could be really fun and is a major element of all my attempted retellings of this tale. Great, now I have even MORE ideas. ~ Hayden Wand
  • HISTORICAL MYSTERY/ROMANCE – I’d love to see our Sleeping Beauty in history. I’m leaning muchly toward the mystery side of things with this one; for example, let’s imagine the beauty falls asleep during one portion of history and awakens 100 years later only to discover whatever mystery she struggled with back then is still very present. Add on some big, small-on-actual-details historical events and presto! What kinds of mysteries could span a century?? You’d get to explore two parts of history and not just one. #twoforonespecial. What if she fell asleep during the American Revolution? Or the Black Plague? What would she discover 100 years later when she awoke? ~ Kirsten Fichter
  • POLITICAL/EPIC FANTASY – There’s so much to the original fairytale that so many retellings skip entirely. What happened to the kingdom for 100 years while the princess slept? Why was the ogre queen so desperate to eat her grandchildren? I want a tale that explains it all. ~ Kristen Fichter
  • SPY/HEIST – I’m in love with Hayden’s Six of Crows-esque idea, even though I haven’t even read Six of Crows yet. An ensemble cast and some fantasy burglaring (shh, we’ll say that’s a word) would be way too fun. ~ Tracey Dyck
  • SCI-FI – After reading (and loving) Out of the Tomb, a Sleeping Beauty novella by Ashley Stangl, I want a novel-sized story along similar lines. ~ Tracey Dyck

Authors

  • CLARA DIANE THOMPSON – She wrote such a delightful fantasy world for Five Glass Slippers, and I would really like to see her take on this. ~ Arielle
  • ANNE ELISABETH STENGL – Do I want her to retell every fairy tale ever? Yes, yes, I do. I’m so sad she’s kind of stopped doing her Goldstone Wood books and things. She does such a fantastic job writing long, sweeping stories that often span over the course of years. I think she’d make such an amazing, clever, absolutely gorgeous take on Sleeping Beauty. ~ Christine Smith + Tracey Dyck
  • S.E. PAGE – Her writing actually reminds me a lot of Anne Elisabeth Stengl, with that rich, grand flavor. I’d love to see her do an epic fantasy version of this tale. ~ Christine Smith
  • VIVIAN VANDE VELDE – Her middle-grade fiction is always a riot. I can imagine she’d come up with a great, hilarious take on this tale and its many plot holes. I don’t think she’s taken on this fairy tale yet…? ~ Christine Smith
  • JOANNA RUTH MEYER – Her book, Echo North, is one of my favorites. I feel like she’d make such an interesting, richly magical, semi-dark take on this fairy tale, and I’d be HERE for it! ~ Christine Smith
  • SHANNON HALE. I want to see her tackle my contemporary rom-com version of this fairytale. I think she’d so a delightful job. ~ Faith White
  • KATE STRADLING – I’ve gushed so much about her books, which are mostly based on obscure (or not often retold) fairy tales, as well as her own original fantasy novels. I think she could do an EXCELLENT spin on Sleeping Beauty that would be so unique! ~ Hayden Wand
  • HANNA SANDVIG – I recently read her novel The Rose Gate, which is a contemporary fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I don’t normally like contemporaries, so I was thrilled at how much I enjoyed this one! I think she could do a really great version of Sleeping Beauty. ~ Hayden Wand
  • A.G. MARSHALL – Yeah, I know she just came out with a Sleeping Beauty short story, but we seriously need a long retelling from her. ~ Kirsten Fichter
  • BRITTANY FICHTER – I’m amazed that she doesn’t have a Sleeping Beauty retelling yet; with all the romance and magic, this would be right in her niche. ~ Kirsten Fichter
  • CLAUDIA GRAY – I adored her sci-fi Defy the Stars, and I think she’d do a great job re-imagining our slumbering princess in space! ~ Tracey Dyck
  • NEIL GAIMAN – Weirdly enough, he popped into my head as a potential candidate to write something a bit like the fantasy horror Christine talked about. ~ Tracey Dyck

Pre-Existing Story Worlds

  • Stephanie Ricker with her CENDRILLON CYCLE world. It’s a great sci-fi world and setting. ~ Arielle
  • The world of JANUARY SNOW by our very own Hayden. Sleeping Beauty in this mafia world would be fascinating. ~ Arielle
  • ANNE ELISABETH STENGL’S GOLDSTONE WOOD – As previously mentioned because I think it’d work so well in that magical, mysterious, dangerous world of fae folk. ~ Christine Smith + Tracey Dyck
  • MARISSA MEYER. Who wants Marissa to do a sequel series in her Lunar Chronicles world––this time with four/five new fairytale heroines? ~ Faith White + Hayden Wand, Kirsten Fichter, Tracey Dyck, Christine Smith
  • I mentioned Hanna Sandvig above, partly because I think this story would work so well in the world of THE ROSE GATE! ~ Hayden Wand
  • ELLA ENCHANTED. Did we all forget that Gail Carson Levine wrote ogres into this novel?? OGRES? You get where I’m going, right? It would just be too perfect. ~ Kirsten Fichter

Movies / TV

  • ANIMATED dream cast ~ Fairy Tale Central
  • POST-APOCALYPTIC but make it fantasy. Rather like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Mmmmmhmmm, yes please. ~ Arielle
  • I think that epic fantasy idea I had would make a really, really cool live-action series. Maybe Game of Thrones style minus the, well, mature rating. cough But plenty of court intrigue and magic and enchanted creatures and the complication of a whole sleeping castle having to sit there for 100 years and all that good stuff! Again, this story provides so much material! I think it’d make for a super intriguing TV series! ~ Christine Smith
  • I’d love to see some cute made-for-TV movies done of fairytales including Sleeping Beauty. Sort of like the Cannon films (but a little higher quality haha). I think that would be fun. ~ Faith White
  • I admit that I kind of wanted a more fleshed-out version of the animated Disney movie, but we got Maleficent instead, which I don’t hate I just…well, it wasn’t the kind of spin on the original movie I was hoping for, lol. Aside from that, I’d love an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure version of the story, sort of like the one I mention in my answer for the next question! ~ Hayden Wand
  • I’m still bitter that we didn’t get a proper Disney remake. Don’t get me wrong; the Maleficent films were great, but I want the original remastered and rethought and beautiful with all the music and more. There’s so much potential there, and they’ve skipped it entirely! I’d love to see Philip get his deserved screen time, perhaps break out of Maleficent’s dungeon on his own? Oh, and this—I never realized until I was an adult watching the film that Maleficent never planned to kill Philip or let him starve to death in the dungeon. Instead, she planned for him to live there for the 100 years, after which time he’d be released to wake his sleeping beauty. His kiss of true love would break the spell, but her curse would have kept her from aging while he aged naturally. So, he’d basically kiss her awake and then promptly die of old age. How wicked is that? Way to go, Maleficent! Where’s THAT story? Where Philip fights to free himself before he becomes too old to get his happily ever after with Aurora? I guess that could properly go in my book wish list retellings, too. ~ Kirsten Fichter
  • That Game of Thrones-minus-mature-content Christine mentioned? Yeah, I would gobble that right up! ~ Tracey Dyck
  • I’d also love to see a TV show step into the gap Once Upon a Time left; maybe with some kind of superhero twist? It could go totally off the rails and put some wild, fresh spins on Sleeping Beauty and other tales. And hey, maybe Sleeping Beauty is actually a supervillain and the good guys try putting her in stasis to prevent her from using her powers! ~ Tracey Dyck

Full Fairy Tale Central wishlist

MERRY WRITING!

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