"Fractured Fairy Tales" Activities
Fractured fairy tales, popular since the mid-1980s, is a parody of famous fairy tales which changes the story’s characters, setting, plot or point of view. Usually adding humor to the original piece, this trend has become a useful tool in writing classes, encouraging students to be imaginative and improving their writing skills in the process. Writing fractured fairy tales can be easy, there are a handful of activities that can help students squeeze their creative juices.
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Role Plays
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Role plays are one of the better ways to engage students with the topic than full participation in the story. The key is to play with the original story’s character. Making the character a different type of person is one. And since there could be more participants than needed, adding a character to the story or even having two or more famous fairy tale characters meet is another. Describing the life of a secondary character in detail or making an entirely new story about her will also be interesting.
A Not-So-Happily-Ever-After Ending
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Changing how the story ends could be a very interesting writing activity for the students. The possibilities of how the story ends are unlimited. It could be a happy ending with a twist, a not so happy finish, or even a tragic conclusion. They could read their desired endings in front of the class afterwards. Beginning another story where a classic fairy tale ends is also another activity. For example, ask students what happened to Cinderella and her stepsisters after the story ended. Instead of them changing how the story ends, the students could tell how the character’s life had been after the “happily ever after.”
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Impromptu Act
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Changing how the story ends is not new to fractured fairy tale writers. But changing every step, dialogue, and scenario in the middle of the play is something new that can sure bring out the laughter and fun. For example, somebody narrates and the clueless actors just go with the flow. And since this is an impromptu act, the way the story will go has no limit. Remember that the goal of this act is to construct a hilarious version of the original tale.
Show and Tell
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In this exercise, students display an item in front of the class and talk about it. In the case of a fracture fairy tale activity, students can create a painting about a scene and tell a made up story about it. They can also make a series of 5 to 10 drawings that depicts the major events in their fractured tale. It is best to change the point of view and the plot to make the audience thrilled to see what is going to happen next.
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