Reads & Reels Tours: Backdoor Storytelling – And Sidetellings. And Retellings. Featuring Chauncey Rogers, Author Of Happily

I would like to thank Reads and Reels Blog Tours and Chauncey Rogers for providing me with this opportunity!😍

I’m was beyond excited that I was able to be part of this blog tour! I was happy dancing majorly(insert cabbage patch) when I received the invite about this tour  and it popped up in my inbox from the lovely Shannanigans @ Reads and Reels Blog Tours!!💃 Woot, Woot!!!😍

I have to admit I fangirl a bit too much over this novel and I am shamelessly guilty that I have already read this book twice. I loved it like that crazy fun kind of love the first time around and loved it just as much the next time around, if not more!
I have been battling that nasty thing called grief and this was the perfect story to read to help push me back into my obsession love of my books and blogging!😍 I highly recommend this book to anyone for any mood and/or occasion  It’s simply one you won’t want to put down! You can find my review of Happily by Chauncey Rogers here. Okay, Okay enough with me my mouth  , let’s get back to the tour!

• Today’s blog tour is a bit different today. Chauncey has been celebrating his release of his newest novel by sharing something similar to the story but also unique as well with every tour stop. I will be sharing the synopsis of Happily and then you will get to hear from Chauncey himself!😁 Hope you enjoy and thank you for stopping by.😉💖💯

Publication Information: 

Title: Happily

Author: Chauncey Rogers

Pages: 299

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

Genre: YA (MG-friendly) Fantasy/Fairy-Tale Retelling

If the shoe fits, wear it.
If it doesn’t, make it.

Laure is a teenage street urchin just trying to get away. Where the rest of the world sees an enchanting love story, Laure sees royal incompetence and an opportunity to exploit it. She’ll have wealth and a way out of a life she detests, if she can only manage to hoodwink the royal family and survive to tell the tale.

Backdoor Storytelling – And Sidetellings. And Retellings.

Thank you Dani! It’s great to be on your blog today!

We’re talking about the different variations of retellings today, and what it is about them that charms us so much. I’m going to make up some of my own definitions, because I’m of the type of person that does that.

So let’s start with the made up definitions for retellings, backdoortellings, and sidetellings.

A retelling follows the same character as the original tale, but twists major elements of the story.
A backdoortelling follows a lesser character through the same events, offering a new perspecitve.
A sidetelling follows an equivalent character, offering a new perspective andpossible twists.

The film A.I. is a retelling of Pinocchio.
The novel Ender’s Shadow is a backdoortelling of Ender’s Game.
The picture book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! is a sidetelling of The Three Little Pigs and the Big, Bad Wolf.

Think I’m making these definitions up just to look smart and unnecessarily subcategorize Happily?
You’re probably right.

But anyways, what is it about these new approaches to traditional stories that we love so much? Why do readers and viewers love to see a story they already know, told in new ways?

I’m sure there are many different reasons. One I’d like to talk about is predictability. We like these retellings because of their predictability.

It might sound slightly counter intuitive. Normally, when you hear “predictable” ascribed to a story, it’s a bad mark against it. And yet, there is a certain degree of predictability that we want to see in stories.

We can usually guess the ending—we still don’t want people to tell it to us and spoil it, but we have a hunch that the good guys are going to win, the lost dog will be found, the lovers will be ruineted, the athlete will overcome, etc. Does this always happen? Of course not. Is that okay? Of course it is. But generally, we can guess the outcome.

For example, in Star Wars: A New Hope, we know right from the beginning that there’s an evil empire, a group of rebels opposing them, a battlestation that can destroy planets, and plans that will reveal its weakness.

Does it take a genius to predict that the rebels will (spoiler alert, I guess) blow up the Death Star? Hardly.

But how will they do it? That’s what we don’tknow, and that’s what’s exciting to find out. It’s exciting to see our predictions be correct, and it’s exciting to see the twists that will make it happen (or will delay it happening).

And that is a rather roundabout way of explaining one reason why we enjoy retellings as much as we do. It’s because the audience has an even higher ability to predict what might happen, because we already know one version of the story. The fun, then, is in seeing how the storyteller is going to introduce the elements we’ve predicted. If they’re not creative or surprising enough, it feels bland. If they’re too creative or surprising, it comes off as untrue to the original story. But if it hits the sweet spot, where it provides the perfect twist on the reader’s expectations—a masterpiece!

There are other reasons, I’m sure, why we love retellings—nostalgia or familiarity being one, I’m sure, but I wanted to discuss one that people might not have considered, as well as a concept that applies to storytelling in general. It isn’t the often predictable outcomes that surprise and delight audiences. It’s how they got there.

Have your own theory of why people love retellings? Have a favorite retelling yourself? Or maybe want to say how upset you are with me for spoiling the ending of Star Wars: A New Hope? Let us know in the comments!

Bio:

Chauncey Rogers was born in Arizona, and since then has hopped back and forth between the mid-western and western United States. He married in 2012 while attending school in Utah. His favorite movie since he was three is Jurassic Park, and he wishes very badly that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster were real, though he doesn’t believe in them as much as he used to.

In March 2017, he published his first novel,Home To Roost. In October 2017, he published Cleaving Souls.

He currently lives in Kansas City with his wife and two children.

You can find Chauncey Rogers on his WordPress blog and author website @ chaunceyrogers.com

Day 9 of 13 of Happily’s Release Blog Tour. See the full schedule here.

Happily on GoodReads
Purchase Happily on Amazon!