GETTING  IDEAS

This is the exercise Ellen Sabastian Chang gave us at the April 1998 meeting (reprinted here with permission from Ellen).

Get ahold of a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Now choose a fairy tale and update it to modern times. Ellen suggested that the plot of many popular movies are lifted right from Grimm's.

Ellen demonstrated this technique using the Grimm's story "The Frog Prince." Turn the frog into a homeless man. The princess is the daughter of a man that owns a shopping mall. Instead of dropping a gold ball down the well, she drops her American Express Gold card into the gutter and the homeless guy finds it. You get the idea. Now write the scene (or entire play)!