Writing roundtable #4

Be bold, be bold! In your Bluebeard retellings ...

Writing is a lonely business, but it doesn’t have to be. At The orange & bee we are focused on building a safe and inclusive space for writers to explore themes ranging from serious and sensible to wacky and whimsical. For how else can it be? We are all called to different topics, and we come to those subjects from unique (and often powerful) perspectives.

Recap: What’s a writing roundtable?

The orange & bee’s writing roundtables are opportunities for you (our paying subscribers) to engage with the editorial team, and with each other, as fellow writers. Each writing roundtable includes a prompt, provocation, writing exercise, or conversation starter.

We invite you to dive into the comments thread/s to post your responses, and to engage with each other in respectful, supportive, and generative conversation. We’ll also be dipping and diving into the comments, reading everything, and offering our own contributions to the conversations as they evolve.

Bluebeard mood board

Reframing Bluebeard

In Issue Four, we’ve been focusing a little on ATU312 The Maiden killer (commonly known as ‘Bluebeard’). Perrault’s version of this tale is this issue’s traditional tale (with introduction and commentary), and our reading roundtable for Issue Four is focused on Nalo Hopkinson’s reimagining of Bluebeard: ‘The glass bottle trick’.

It is a deeply fascinating tale, and one that’s quoted and retold in many contemporary works of narrative art, from films like Jane Campion’s The Piano and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, to an almost endless array of short stories and poems. Most often, it’s used to tell stories about gendered violence, and perhaps in particular IPV (intimate partner violence).

The popularity of ‘Bluebeard’ as a source for contemporary retellings is one of the things that makes it a challenge for us, as writers. What else is there to do with this material that has not already been done to death? How can we approach/adapt the bones of this story in a way that’s fresh, or innovative?

While the possibilities are endless, I want to offer you a few ideas, and then invite you (in the comments thread) to:

• Add your own suggestions for how to reinvent the material in fresh, unusual, or innovative ways, and/or;

• Share your responses to either my prompts, or one shared by someone else in the comments (though, please, to keep things manageable, restrict yourself to about 250-300 words of prose).