I am currently working on a LGBTQIA retelling of The Little Mermaid and have the roles reversed, as in the human is the one who does the saving and later seeks out a witch etc. I am now at the point where it is now time to introduce that witch. At first I had planned for the witch to simply demand money for her service. But it would be a better story if there is a bigger stake here. However, I am not very happy with my own ideas so far. My question for you guys is, how would you go about this? All ideas are welcome.
That's a hard question for anyone but you to answer, because it can have such a strong thematic importance and relies on both the characters and the plot. For instance in The Little Mermaid the cost is her voice because of two primary reasons. It is her greatest gift and sacrificing it shows how important this is to her. And it is something she needs to successfully seduce the prince, and without it her efforts are doomed to failure, which is what the sea witch wants. For your story, what does the witch want out of this exchange? What is something that your protagonist values greatly, but might, in the moment, think is an acceptable loss?
Well, if the mermaid was left longing for the sea, and every step of her new feet was like walking on knives, shouldn't the human have to make a similar sacrifice? He'll be longing for the land, and perhaps he remains a mammal, having to surface like a dolphin for air every once in a while, unlike merpeople. The "price" for the witch's help should be consequential. It may seem innocuous at first, but manifests later. I always got a laugh from Piers Anthony idea of a manmer - the head/body of a fish, the legs of a man. (I'm sure he's not the only one to mention a manmer; he's just the first time I've seen it.)
@TheOtherPromise @Alcove Audio @Joe_Hall Thanks so much for all your replies, guys! They have gotten me thinking in an entirely different direction than I had previously planned on taking the witch character, but that was likely the way it had to happen, so I am very grateful for the points everyone has made.
A lot of times this issue can happen to writers who are too narrow in their source material. Many, you don't have enough places to draw inspiration to ever come up wtih anything fresh and original. If your thought process is, "This will be an LGBT version of Disney's The Little Mermaid" then that's a problem. If you haven't read the original story by Hans Christian Anderson, then read the original by Hans Christian Anderson. But also read other Germanic fairy tales that involve witches. They are pretty facinating archetypes in Germanic fairytales, ranging from tricksters, to helpful beings. Most of the time, these magical beings don't "bargin" anything. They just do and often times their help comes with a catch. For example, a childless couple looking for a child, only to have it born as a frog. The thinking behind this is that the world is more or less at their whim and often times any explanation as to why is lost. Rumplestilskin asked for the maiden's jewels. Why? Why would a being that could literally turn straw into gold need any of that? Who knows? He's a puck. That's what they do! So my advise is to stop watching Disney. Get the original story if you hadn't read it already and start to look at other fairy tales and try and come up with something original.
It will hopefully ease your concerns to know that I am not having a retelling of the Disney version as my goal. I have even reread the great Andersen's tale in Danish (the original language) more than once while working on this story, although I am deviating a bit from that version as well, adding my own conflict of humans hunting and eating merfolk because of a belief that consuming their flesh will make you immortal (a detail I've borrowed from Japanese mermaid lore). Thanks a lot for your input, Kallisto, I will certainly go and search out some other fairy tales and see what might trickle some ideas.
Cool. You're way ahead of most. Usually when I get this question, I see a lot of "No, I was basing it off of [insert popular thing here.]" I guess my question is now what tone are you looking. Are you looking for a very fairytale look, but with a darker twist, or are you looking for a more fantasy feel with a touch of fairytale? Neither is good or bad. A fairytale feel would mean to keep some of the details vague. There's a lot of "that's just how the story goes" look in a fairytale. For example, in the Frog Prince and Hans the Hedgehog, there was never an explanation as to what the witch got from helping the couple. Or in the case of Rumplestiltskin, it begs the question as to why. What does an all powerful being even need with a ring or a bracelet or even a child? No real explanation or motive is given. Why put a boy in a stove with the challenge of having some maiden cut him out? And that's the magic of fairytales is in the obscure, not well explained details and left as merely "That's just how it is." And they're meant to be taken as that. So, it might serve your story's tone if it's just "that's what happened" and leave it at that. That's because they're not really stories as much as morality tales. They represent, usually a young woman's, encounter with chaos. In the Seven Swans, for example, the young woman is tasked with sowing shirts to free her brothers. And that's all well and good, but her real encounter with chaos is when she meets the prince. While prince himself is a good guy who holds out faith in her, her mother in law isn't. And she is the one who conspires against her and kidnaps her children. This all threatens to throw her off her goal. (And that story is great because she starts the journey as a young girl and succeeds as a woman, who is married and a mother.) Fantasy is written for more sophisticated audiences who do want to know the why. And that's when you have to do the three degrees. This is where you are going to look at specific fairytales that do deal with a motive. Many times it's a form of a bargin. A prince is lost in the woods and agrees to marry the witch if she helps him find his way. You can almost sense that perhaps she's trapped him there to begin wtih. It's the preying on the desparation of people.
I would say I am going for a fantasy story, so in that case, fleshing out the witch a bit is a good idea
