Fairytale Endings

After talking a little about both my paranormal and non-paranormal mysteries last week, I was unsure about what to write about today. I was tempted to do a miniseries on local hauntings, like Elaine’s Outer Banks Series, in the vein of ‘Most Haunted’ (which I still haven’t managed to catch an episode of yet), but thought better of it. The “ghost” where I work freaks me out as it is (and I’m certain the bumps and bangs are from the buildings either side of us) so I decided against purposely walking into possibly haunted places. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing this blog, I do, I just love my sanity more.

After placing my amateur ghost hunting career to the side, I asked my sister for some ideas. Big mistake. Her reply? Fish. Don’t ask, just don’t ask. Then she suggested frogs. Finally, she settled on fairytales. I think she just likes words that begin with ‘F’, but then she’d had a bad day at work so her ‘F’ word fixation made sense, if you catch my drift.

Credit to her eventually though, because I think fairytales are actually an interesting topic and, when I scanned back through my blog from last week, I realised I hadn’t actually mentioned why I write paranormal mysteries. Weirdly, the two topics tie in together.

I write paranormal (and really just write in general) to escape into a world that makes sense. That sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? A fairytale world that makes sense. But if you stop a minute and think about it, you see I’m right.

Fairytales (the Walt Disney kind not the Grimm Brothers) are where Good always triumphs over Evil, where bad guys always get their arses whooped, where bullies always get their comeuppance, where the hero always gets the girl and where the story always has a happy ending.

People don’t commit random, unfathomable acts of violence or bitch about a co-worker because she has an unusual taste in shoes. The world is simple. There are good people who live long and happy lives and there are bad people who live miserable lives because that’s how the fairytale universe balances.

Of course, growing up in a world of Walt Disney cartoons and women fighting (and mostly winning ) for the right to be accepted as equals, doesn’t always go hand in hand. For example, if a man holds a door open for you, what do you do?

I’m pretty sure, in the fairytale world, you’d smile, politely thank him and be married in a few short months (of course that’s where the fairytale would end because once a girl’s snagged her man the rest is all a dream come true. Yeah, right.).

In real life, however, I’m pretty sure you’d just accuse him of being a chauvinist and give him an informative dressing down about Women’s Lib. That is, if he wasn’t holding the door so he could peek down your blouse as you walked past. I’m fairly certain that would earn him a kick in the shin.

My point is that life is simple in fairytales. You recognise the bad guys by their maniacal laughs and their ugliness (bad people are ugly, it’s a fairytale fact). The hero is easily recognisable from his six foot, broad shouldered physique and gleaming smile. I would elaborate about how to recognise heroines here but, seriously, how many cartoon heroines have you seen? Walt’s people need to pull their fingers out.

Yeah, there are books out there that don’t follow the fairytale rules but it’s rare I read one. Life’s depressing enough, just listen to the news. Why spend your free time wallowing in someone else’s misery, a fictional character’s no less, whose story you can’t change?

The worlds I write might not follow all the same rules as Walt’s (I prefer heroines to heroes myself), but one thing’s the same, I always, always write a happy ending. I’m all about the positive. I’m not saying I won’t put my protagonist through the wringer to get her there but hey, that’s life, real or fictional, and it makes the happy ending that much sweeter.

Jordaina