Retelling vs. Reimagining: Is There a Difference?

[Disclaimer: this post may contain spoilers for the following: A Cinderella Story, Not Cinderella’s Type, The Princess Game by Melanie Cellier.]

Perhaps you have noticed that many retellings and reimaginings of fairy tales and classics are being published lately. Some books even say that they are a “twist” on whatever story it drew inspiration from. But what exactly do these terms mean? And how do you know if your story idea is a retelling or a reimagining? Is there even a difference?

These questions occurred to me when I began working on Galien’s story (my current work-in-progress that I tend to talk about more on my other blog). Galien’s story is inspired by the Cinderella fairy tale, but as I was plotting it, I realized that I didn’t know if it fit in the retelling category or the reimagining category. So in thinking about it, I decided to do some research and write a post on this topic.

Unfortunately, researching did not prove as successful as I had hoped. I thought I would be able to learn what distinguishes a retelling from a reimagining and then write this post, subtitling it “What’s the Difference?”. But no matter how hard I searched, I could not find anything that gave a definite difference between the two terms. In fact, many of the articles I read (which often talked about tips and ideas for retelling stories rather than telling me the difference between retellings and reimaginings) used the two terms interchangeably. But if the two terms could be used interchangeably, how do authors know whether to label their book as a retelling or a reimagining?

So that brings me to today’s post. Personally, I think there is a difference between retellings and reimaginings, but I also think that maybe the specific difference is open for debate, at least as of now. (Maybe in the future, we’ll get an actual definition for the two terms.) For the rest of this post, however, I’ll share my idea of the difference.

RETELLINGS

From what I’ve read, retellings seem to follow more closely to the original story. For example, in many Cinderella retellings, there is usually 1) a girl mistreated by her family (unless the retelling is gender-bent, in which case, the genders are reversed and a boy is mistreated by his family instead), 2) a ball, dance, or some special event that the girl wants to attend or participate in but isn’t allowed, 3) a popular or super good-looking guy she falls in love with, and 4) an ending where she escapes her unfair/mistreated life and obtains a better one. A Cinderella retelling does not have to include all these points, but for many that you find, they tend to. A good example of a Cinderella retelling is the movie, A Cinderella Story, starring Hilary Duff. This Cinderella retelling is set in the present day but maintains the same main aspects listed above with Sam (short for Samantha and representing our Cinderella character) being mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, wants to attend a school dance but is ordered to work at the diner instead, falls in love with the popular guy, and finally escapes her unfair life at the end.

Not Cinderella’s Type is another contemporary-setting Cinderella retelling movie. (There’s a book too, but I’m going to be referring to the movie for this example.) In this version of Cinderella, our main character, Indy, is mistreated by her uncle, aunt, and cousins. She falls in love with the popular guy, and leaves her abusive family at the end and is placed in a foster home. Although there wasn’t a special event that Indy was forbidden to attend in this movie, we saw that Indy wasn’t allowed to do anything fun in general. She couldn’t go to parties or join in on family events or even hang out with friends. So even though this aspect was a bit different from point 2 that I listed above, it’s similar enough that it’s recognizable for a Cinderella story. Since all the points fit closely to the original story, I would still call this movie a retelling.

My conclusion here would be that in retellings, the main aspects of the original tale are maintained in some way and are easy for readers to spot.

REIMAGININGS

Reimaginings, on the other hand, seem to change up/greatly twist more of the details or omit some details when telling the new version of the original story. For example, in Melanie Cellier’s novel, The Princess Game, Cellier reimagines the fairy tale, “Sleeping Beauty.” If The Princess Game were a retelling, it probably would include aspects such as an uninvited guest, a spindle (or another sharp object for the “Sleeping Beauty” character to prick her finger on), the girl falling asleep, and the girl being awoken by true love. Instead, Cellier leaves out some of these details (such as the pricking the finger part) and changes/twists others. My favorite aspect that Cellier twisted was the sleeping detail, which is the most prominent detail in Sleeping Beauty. Rather than being cursed to physically sleep, The Princess Game’s main character, Celeste, is cursed instead to appear “dumb” to the people around her (though she retains her intelligent mind). Cellier cleverly twists the sleeping part of the original tale by describing her character as having a “sleeping” mind. (Celeste is even nicknamed “The Sleeping Princess.”) 

The reason I tend to refer to Galien’s story as a reimagining is because I greatly twist the midnight and magic elements. In Cinderella, the magic is broken at midnight. But in Galien’s story, the magic (or in his case, a curse) begins at midnight—almost as if I reversed the fairy tale. Galien’s story still has recognizable Cinderella elements, such as his being mistreated by his guardian, a three-night ball, a princess that Galien feels he is not good enough for, . . . and maybe a happy ending. Oh, and his story includes a fairy or two! (hehe) But since I’m twisting a huge portion of the original fairy tale, I decided to label Galien’s story as a reimagining.

My conclusion for reimaginings is that they seem to have a greater twist on the fairy tale than retellings do while still including recognizable elements so that we know they still drew inspiration from the fairy tale rather than being a new story entirely.

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So that’s my idea on the difference between retellings and reimaginings.