How to Retell a Myth in a Fresh Way
Mythology has survived the centuries because even though these stories often involve larger-than-life characters dealing with fantastical problems, those characters also undergo painfully human experiences. They fall in love; they lose their children and parents; they’re betrayed by their closest friends; and they fight to get home to their families against impossible odds.
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We may not be battling gods and monsters in 2024, but we can relate to the core of the struggles the heroes of these stories go through. The way mythology continues to strike a cord with us is why I chose to retell the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in my newest YA novel, Death’s Country.
But how do you decide the way you want to retell a myth? How do you make such old stories fresh while still keeping the elements that make them so resonant intact?
1. Tell the myth from a different POV
One increasingly popular way of retelling myths is to adopt the perspective of a secondary character or even one who is traditionally villainized by the narrative. By doing this, we can offer the reader a new story that is nonetheless familiar.
Joanne Harris makes the trickster god Loki from Norse mythology into her protagonist in The Gospel of Loki. Angrboda, the mother of Loki’s three monstrous children, is the main character of Genevieve Gornichec’s The Witch’s Heart when she’s barely mentioned in the original stories at all. Spin by Rebecca Caprana makes Arachne of Greek mythology into a sympathetic figure instead of a woman who was arrogant enough to challenge the gods. Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel centers the villainous queen in the Ramayana, while Margaret Atwood turns Odysseus’s wife Penelope into the heroine of The Penelopiad.
2. Tell the myth through a diverse lens
In the last 10 years, readers have become vocal about their desire to read books by marginalized authors and to see marginalized groups accurately represented in the stories they pick up. As a result, we’re seeing more and more diverse protagonists—including in retellings.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is told from the perspective of Patroceles, the lover of Achilles from The Iliad, and their epic romance is the heart of the story. In Maya Deane’s Wrath Goddess Sing, Achilles is a trans woman rather than the cis male hero we’re used to, and the events of the Trojan War are seen through her queer gaze. In Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, a Black teenager must embrace her heritage as a descendant of the Knights of the Round Table—and the burdens that come with it.
In Death’s Country, I have not one but two Orpheus figures: a pair of queer Latine teenagers. To retrieve the third member of their polyamorous triad, they descend into a Miami-inspired underworld using ancestral magic and connect with a version of Death who resembles Santa Muerte more than the European Grim Reaper.
Drawing from our own diverse experiences can give new life to old tales.
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3. Modernize the myth
Myths have a timeless quality, even if the original stories are rooted in a specific culture and history. By bringing these myths into the modern era, we can use them to talk about our world and make them even more relatable to our readers.
Neil Gaiman retells the story of Odin’s son Balder as a road trip narrative in American Gods. The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie recasts Orpheus as a doomed 20th century rockstar. In Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block, Odysseus is a teen girl in 21st century L.A. who is trying to find her family after a natural disaster. The musical Hadestown takes place in a setting heavily inspired by the Great Depression in America, with the underworld as a factory.
4. Reinvent the myth
What makes certain myths fascinating to you personally? Focusing on those elements instead of retelling a story beat-for-beat can take you and your readers surprising places.
I’ve never been overly interested in the tragedy of Orpheus’s story; I was far more interested in the idea that he loved Eurydice so much that he was willing to go into the ultimate darkness for her, without knowing if he’d ever return. And it was that element that I chose to focus on in Death’s Country, using the bones of the myth as inspiration for the book. I also drew from other stories about the underworld, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Jewish folklore about the purgatorial afterlife, Gehenna.
Mythology endures because we are always reinventing it and making it relevant to our lives. And I think it will continue to endure for that very reason.
Check out R.M. Romero’s Death’s Country here:
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