Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

A disembodied horse head—one that still speaks. A princess who doesn’t lift a finger to stop her identity being stolen, and then never tries to end the nightmare and go back home. A queen who sends her daughter away for an arranged marriage, and then makes no effort to contact her again.

These were only some of the massive plot holes I had to fill when I looked at retelling the Brothers Grimm tale, The Goose Girl.

In addition to ensuring that the narrative makes sense to modern readers, one of the challenges of a retelling is that it needs to bear some striking similarities to the original tale. Yet at the same time, it also needs to bring something new, some insight concerning character or setting that hasn’t been tried in the framework of this particular narrative.

For my story, I decided to center both of these issues on…