Traditional tales – myths, legends, folktales, fairytales – are the inspiration for most fantasy stories and lots of other genre and literary writing.
Lari Don, author and storyteller, will discuss using aspects of old tales to create new stories, which might be close cousins of the original sources, or such distant relatives that only the writer knows which old tale first sparked the idea.
She will help you explore ways of rethinking, recycling and interrogating the narrative, characters, creatures, magical lore and even plot-holes of old tales, to come up with original and intriguing ideas of your own.
There are no absolutely right or wrong ways to be inspired, to work with ideas and to write your own stories, so this isn’t a workshop about how to do things, more a chance to discover new paths and experiment with magical notions.
If possible please arrive at the workshop with one or two old stories in mind, traditional tales that you’re familiar with and keen to play with.
Your Workshop Leader
Lari Don is a Scottish children’s author and storyteller. Lari has written more than 30 books for children, ranging from picture book retellings of fairy tales and folklore (eg The Secret of the Kelpie, The Legend of the First Unicorn) through fantasy adventures for 8-12 year olds (eg First Aid for Fairies, the Spellchasers Trilogy) to collections of traditional tales (eg Girls Goddesses and Giants, The Dragon’s Hoard) and a YA thriller (MindBlind) which was inspired by a story about the fairy queen, though it’s impossible to spot any fairies past the fight scenes and chases. Lari also loves telling traditional tales to live audiences, preferably in caves and forests. But she’s currently writing very slowly and telling tales only very occasionally, because she’s having to learn to do it all differently round long covid.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.