I am writing a retelling of Little Women

[Guest]

.. that is set against the backdrop of the early 1980s recession. It's my first time as an author and I'm kind of lost. I want to make it my own version of Little Women Do you guys have any helpful tips for writing a retelling?

I'm not trying to copy from the original source material.

[Stephen]

Four sisters. I'd keep their relative ages, the fact their father is away (on a nuclear sub?), and play with the names -- Beth becomes Bette, for instance.

[Daan]

You already changed when it happens. The thing is, Little Women has a certain theme that I am not sure if it makes sense in 1980's. Does that theme still work then? Potentially it does.

Look a theme is something every story has, in a way, it pulls the story along much like the plot thread does. A theme allows you to make decisions, as writer, what goes in and isn't going in.

So you have to get the theme of Little Women working in 1980's. Which since that movie and book is so not for me I don't know... it might work. I don't know, never seen it, looked boring.

So, KNOW THE THEME and see what changes are needed to make it work in 1980's. And it might work.

And the naysayers, every book idea is already written. Little Women is a bit over done yes. But why not? It is at least good training! Making it your own and turning it into your own is good training!

[Jesse]

You know the gist of the story. All you need to do is change the names of the characters, talk about 80s things, change the relevant events. Change the location. There you go.

Shouldn't be too hard. Basically 4 young women coming of age. Some get married. That's it lol. That's the entire story. I haven't actually read the story and only seen parts of the movies but they bore the hell out of me lol. I think one of the women was kind of a feminist wanting to get educated. Probably would be more unusual in the 80s if one of the women doesn't want to go to college and would rather just become a house wife.

Actually most of my family didn't go to college that came out of the 80s.

There were still good jobs you could get and learn through on the job training and move up from within a company and retire with a pension with no college needed.

[Jane]

Rather than following the characters and events of the story too closely, look at the broader themes of the book and use those to underpin your 1980s characters and their motivations.

[Adele]

My current WIP is a retelling.

First, decide how closely you plan to follow the original. I started out trying to make nods and parallels to way too many things because one of my favorite retellings does that, but I found it wasn’t working for me and felt unnecessarily saturated with it.

I’m much happier with the direction it’s going now. My character names all start with the same letters as the original or at least reference them in some way, there are locations that have the same names as things, etc. Some moments are recognizable from the original, but not every little thing.