I initially wrote this for one of my creative writing classes. The assignment was to take a fairytale and add a new element. Coming up with an idea that didn’t feel like it’s been done before was a struggle. Red Riding Hood was already in the works of being my main character; I just didn’t know how to make her unique. I ended up googling the most popular fairytale characters. Seeing the list of these characters and in proximity guided me to think of the characters as a unit. Every one of them had interesting stories, and I began envisioning them in a room together. Still, adding myself in a little, my experiences in a mental institution and it just… clicked. Giving classic fairytale characters mental illness was only natural. That was all I needed.

      My favorite part of writing is when the scene is so vivid, I turn back into a child having in-depth conversations with my imaginary friend. This was one of those days. The dialogue spilled out of me in fifteen minutes. Once the dialogue was safely written, I went back through and fleshed out the descriptions and gathered the diagnoses that made sense for the original stories. Through gathering diagnoses, I realized the only person who would have access to that information would be the psychologist. This was a significantly important change, because in most stories around mental illness, the psychologist is the antagonist. I wanted to humanize everyone.

      If I were to choose a favorite character, I loved writing Ariel. Writing Ariel was so fun because she’s the type of crazy that both warms my heart and scares me. Another character I have a lot of love for is Red Riding Hood, and I’m not ready to let them go. You’ll definitely see more of them, just not in short story form.