Fairy tales.

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Fairy tale characters need to be carefully moulded in our minds before we cut along the perforated lines and let them loose in the world of make-believe. In terms of literary theory, these characters are usually defined as 'flat' as opposed to 'rounded'. But wouldn't it be wicked if some of our childhood icons stepped beyond the normal characterisation so typical of children's stories?
Imagine the prince. Perhaps he is tall, dark and handsome. But maybe he fought with the Royal Marines in Iraq and suffers from Gulf War Syndrome. He charms the princess with his bold performance poetry but ocassionally s-stutters s-s-slightly when speaking in public. Although the prince professes to be a soldier for Truth and Honour, he almost faced a military inquest after an incident in Belfast, but the claimant, an unnamed 16-year-old Catholic girl, suddenly dropped the charges.
Now take the princess. She is pure, beautiful and dyslexic. She is also fascinated by the simmering conflict in Northern Ireland. The pretty princess is an agnostic but her embarrassed parents tell their friends she has simply 'strayed from the church'. She hopes to study political history in Dublin but her parents will probably send her to Oxford. (She also subscribes to anti-globalisation newsletters on the Internet and sometimes even sneaks into teen chat rooms.)

And by the way, do fairy tales have to unfold through the eyes of a third-person narrator? Imagine the immediacy and rawness of first-person narration. The narrator could be the dragon or the witch's scrawny cat that is dying of Aids. First-person narration would open up opportunities for internal monologue and even stream-of-consciousness techniques. What about product placement? Hmm. Watch this space.

Every respectable fairy tale should have a genie. Perhaps the genie lurks at the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle. Yes, product placement can work! Our princess, disillusioned by her parents' wishes, spirals into depression and represses her emotions during a blurry night of booze, MTV and chocolate-chip cookies. She wakes up with a galactic headache and an empty bottle of whisky under her bed…

But we digress. A prince. A princess. A genie. What about a witch? Is the wicked witch really a hunchback? Does she shuffle across the forest floor in a pall of smoke, while bats and wild animals shriek in the shadows? Perhaps the enchanted wood has become an endangered wood. But more likely, the witch's dark wood has already been levelled for a new business park. Although she joined environmental vigils and protests - and was named 'Britain's first Green Witch' in the local papers - the new e-commerce development was still approved.

Pehaps she was arrested with a group of suspected satanists performing strange rituals at Stonehenge. She was released after extensive questioning and returned to a council housing estate in the North-East. (Perhaps she can still communicate with the satanists through encrypted emails.) Does she really have a hook-nose and rabbit-like eyes? I'm not so sure. I'm looking at her features reflected in the green glare of her laptop screen and her smile is beginning to captivate me.


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