Why are fairytales and folktales so easy to read and remember, let alone rework in your own writing and imagination? How come at 50-plus years old, I can still remember every part of a tale that I read when I was 10 and that I read to my children when I was 30? Is it part of the human psyche? Or is it because these engaging morsels are…short?
Historically, tales, both fairy and folk, have been short because they derive from an oral tradition that wasn’t consistently documented until the 1800s with the Grimm Brothers. Prior to that, in the 1600s, certain fairytales were documented by Charles Perroult and Giambattista Basile. However, the popularity of fairytales and their use as stories for children rather than adults didn’t take off until the Grimms started documenting the regional tales and publishing them for mass consumption.
The transition from spoken to written stories could have led to an increase in story length. Yet, for the most part, tales in this genre retain their length, their message, and their mental longevity. The brevity of the tales provide three primary characteristics that make them impactful; the number of characters, their singular purpose, and the clear, but changeable, message of the story.
