Retelling Fairy Tales from a Different Character's View

Why tell it from the other side?

Fairy tales are the perfect training ground for young writers, precisely because everyone already knows them. Your child doesn't have to invent a plot, decide on a setting or work out who the villain is. That scaffolding frees them up to do the really interesting thing: get inside a character's head and speak in their voice.

Retelling a familiar tale from a different point of view builds three skills at once. It develops empathy, because your child has to work out why someone behaves the way they do. It develops inference, because the new narrator only knows part of the story. And it builds voice — that elusive quality where you can hear the character on the page. Best of all, it takes about twenty minutes and needs nothing more than a pencil and a kitchen table.

Choose a character with something at stake

The trick is to pick someone who wants something badly. Ask your child who in the tale never gets to speak, or who gets only one line. That's usually where the gold is.

• The wolf in The Three Little Pigs — was he hungry, or just lonely, or was he simply after a cup of sugar and got carried away?
• The giant's wife in Jack and the Beanstalk — she hides a boy under a bowl, then watches her husband fall. What does she think of Jack afterwards?
• The forgotten sister — the one standing behind the prince at the ball, the one who mends the cloak, the one who is never named.
• A stepsister in Cinderella, who has spent her whole life being told she is second best.
• The mother duck in The Ugly Duckling, watching her odd little cygnet swim away.

For younger children, keep it playful: the gingerbread man's button, the bridge under the troll, the spinning wheel in Sleeping Beauty. For older ones, encourage a character who is morally complicated rather than simply good or bad.

Ask three questions before you write a word

This is the step most families skip, and it's the one that makes the writing sing. Put your child in the hot seat — literally, if they'll allow it — and interview them as the character. You ask, they answer in role.

• What do you want more than anything? (The wolf wants a warm room. The giant's wife wants a quiet life.)
• What are you afraid of? (Being caught. Being forgotten. Being laughed at.)
• What do you wish people understood about you?

Add one more for comedy or tension: What do you think is actually going on? A character who has completely misunderstood the situation is wonderfully funny, and it teaches your child that a narrator can be unreliable.

Write one small scene, not the whole story

Resist the urge to retell everything. A single moment — the knock at the door, the moment the beanstalk shakes, the second before midnight — is far more powerful than a rushed summary. Set a timer for ten minutes and aim for around 150 words.

A few practical nudges to offer:

• Write in first person and present tense. "I press my ear to the straw. I can hear him breathing."
• Start with a line of speech or a physical detail, not with "My name is Wilfred and I am a wolf."
• Include one smell, one sound. Damp straw. A roasting smell. The creak of a beam.
• Let the character justify themselves. Nobody is the villain of their own story.
• Leave it slightly unresolved. End on a question or a turning away.

If your child stalls, write alongside them. There is nothing more motivating for a reluctant writer than seeing a grown-up scribbling away and crossing things out.

Read it aloud, then make a fuss of it

Reading aloud is the reward, so treat it as a performance rather than a test. Dim the lights, sit under a blanket with a torch, and give everyone a part. The child who wrote the wolf's scene reads it in a gruff voice; someone else reads the pig's reply.

Then do the thing that turns a one-off into a habit: keep it. Staple the pages into a little book, add a title in felt tip, and put it on the shelf next to the original. A wall of "voices" — one sheet per character, in different handwriting — is a lovely thing to build over a half term.

Keep the ideas flowing

Once your family has the hang of it, the variations are endless. Try the same tale from three different viewpoints over a week and compare them. Write the villain's diary entry for the night before. Write a letter of apology from the wolf to the pig's mother. Write the giant's version of events as a formal complaint to the local council.

You can also flip the format: a text message exchange between the two stepsisters, a newspaper report on the beanstalk, a job advertisement for a castle housekeeper. Each one stretches a different writing muscle.

Above all, keep the tone light. The aim isn't a polished piece of prose — it's a child discovering that stories are not fixed things handed down from above, but living things they are allowed to pick up, turn over and tell again in their own voice.