Retellings: Abigayle and Andora's Folly

Today marks the last day of my retelling blog series. It has been fun for me to get to know these lovely authors and their works. I know my TBR list has grown!

Meet Abigayle...
Abigayle has picture proof of being enchanted by books since before her first birthday. Jotting down her story ideas in spare journals and word documents came later, leading her to self-publish her first novel at eighteen. Now she’s dedicated to not only creative writing but to helping fellow storytellers refine their own words … when period drama films and wild mushrooms haven’t sidetracked her. None of her successes—from completed drafts to winning awards—would be possible without the support of her large family, online community, and Savior.

Website: www.abigayleclaire.com
Blog: www.theleft-handedtypist.blogspot.com
Social Media: @abitheauthor

Abi's Retelling...

A Pandora's Box retelling

Andora is a beautiful young woman with insatiable curiosity. Raised in splendor, she is spoiled by her privileged life. When a love letter is slid under her door, her life takes a drastically unromantic turn. Nothing makes sense--her arranged marriage, the gifts her parents bestow on her wedding day, or her new husband's temperament. 

As Andora begins to unravel the mysteries around her, she ignites a chain of events that have the power to sabotage her entire village forever. Only her new-found wisdom as a desperate peasant's wife can save her from her folly.

A Note from Abi...

If Amanda’s blog series has taught you anything, it should be that retellings are pretty common these days! When I decided to give a retelling a try for a writing challenge, I set out to find an obscure fairy tale to retell. Everyone retold fairy tales, right?

I struggled to find anything that caught my interest among the obscure fairy tales and anything that hadn’t been retold a million times among the common ones. Even most Disney princess stories are retellings, as the originals are much darker.

Then I remembered my love for Greek myths. Choosing a myth rather than a fairy tale was something a little different. Yet I decided on Pandora’s Box, a concept people are generally familiar with, even if they don’t know the story itself. This allowed an air of familiarity to play in my favor without giving my audience a whole bunch of pre-conceived notions of how my version of the story “should” to go. This also meant I could spend time developing the details.

Purposeful Details

One of my favorite parts of storytelling is infusing the details with purpose. For Andora’s Folly, I did this particularly with the character names. Andora was an easy substitute for Pandora, and for several characters, I used their original Greek (or sometimes Roman) name. However, most names are too cumbersome, so Prometheus was renamed Rome and Epimetheus was shortened to Theus. This was a fun way to draw parallels to the Greek lore and still give my own twist. 

Since I set Andora’s Folly in medieval England, I tried to keep it as historically accurate as possible. Because Greek lore is already so fanciful, I spent my energies grounding it in the real world, thus making it more relatable. I still blended some cultural traditions (like the names), historical elements (a potter and a shepherd), and myth with reality where I could. This meant most people consider my novella non-magical fantasy than true historical fiction. That sort of creative liberty is where the fun—and the challenge—came in.

Creative Liberties

As with any retelling, you have to eventually commit to departing from the original story in order to really make it your own. Come to find out, this was the hardest part for me. A well-done retelling merely springboards of some element of the original. The Pandora’s Box element I chose to anchor my version was the theme: a naive girl caving to curiosity and unwittingly unleashing a myriad of horrible “creatures.” 

Pandora’s Box itself is a retelling of the biblical story of Eve and the Fall. But Pandora’s story ends after she releases evils into the world. I wanted to write the end to her story. I set my character Andora in an already fallen world so she could have a character arc where she faced the consequences of her actions and learned from them. This was a fun theme to build on, easily lending itself to drama. And that’s finally where the pieces of my story were invented, falling into place to produce Andora’s Folly.