“Life is like a box of chocolates: you’ll never know what you’re gonna get.” (line from the movie ‘Forrest Gump’)

 

When I was younger, I played in a band with some friends. No concerts, no record deals, no fame and glory, just making music and having fun. One thing we liked to do was to play all kinds of versions of one well-known song: a reggae version, a hard-rock version, a folk version, a disco version, a rap version, a blues version, you name it and we played it.

Writing has the same possibility. If we take one well-known story, ‘Snow White’ for instance, we can try to write a different version of it for each and every genre we can think of. To illustrate how much fun this is, I did this exercise for you.

First, I did the research. The draft of the tale was written in 1812 by the German brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, who finished it in 1854. The main character is Snow White, a beautiful princess. She lives with her stepmother, The Queen (played by Freddy Mercury). In the first chapter, there is a small role for the Huntsman, a character who has a problem with following orders. In the last chapter, we see a flash of Prince Charming, who has no text and his action is limited to kissing Snow White (when she’s dead… ugh...). The real heroes of the story are the seven dwarfs: Doc, Happy, Bashful, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy and Dopey. To avoid problems with Walt Disney, who paid billions to Public Domain for the copyrights of this story, I can’t tell you the original plot, but it has something to do with a poisoned apple.

 

Life and death of Princess Snow White (biography)

Princess Snow White was born on the first day of April. When her father, the King, looked at his newborn little daughter, her white feet, her tiny white hands with tiny white fingers and her snow white face, he thought: “I’m the King of Africa. I’m black as the night. This is either a dirty trick with white magic or the rumours are true about my wife having an affair with Santa Claus.”

His wife panicked and said: “Santa Claus does not exist.”, but the King did not believe her: “No? Santa Claus doesn’t exist? And who puts all those presents in my socks, when I leave them near the fire to dry?”

“The taxman does that. It’s the taxman…”, cried his wife.

The King drew his conclusions, drew his sword and killed her. That cleared the road for his mistress to become The Queen. She married the King right away, so he didn’t have to go to the funeral all alone…

 

The Princess Of Wonderland (Chick-Lit)

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, you know that I tell you all my secrets, that I share all my dreams with you, but today I met this boy, and he is so marvellous that I couldn’t even dream about him. Compared to him Brad Pitt is one of the seven ugly dwarves. He is so handsome that a mirror will not show his reflection, afraid it will not be as perfect as the original. I have to put on 50 pairs of shades, to avoid his brilliance blinding me. He’s so beautiful that my stepmother wants to forbid him to enter our kingdom because several elderly ladies have already died of heart attacks after looking at him.

But I don’t want to talk all the time about his looks. You’ll think I just love him because he’s so gorgeous, which is not true. He has lots of other qualities: he’s rich, he’s good looking, he is from a good family (his father is in the kingdom business), he has beautiful blue eyes that you drown in when you look into them, he has his own stable of race horses and his own castle in every major city in the country, he’s handsome, he has no job so he can go shopping with me every day and he has all the money to pay for everything… and did I already tell you that he is beautiful?

Oh, mirror, I’m so excited. I think… that I’m in love.”

The mirror looked back and answered: “To me it sounds suspicious, all those qualities combined in one person. It looks like a trap. Take care, young princess. Before you know it you’ll fall into the hands of a nasty man who spends every weekend in bars, watching football with his friends. Are you sure you’re woman enough to dominate him, make him lie at your feet every evening while whispering sweet words in your ears?”

Snow White clinched her fists and shouted at the mirror: “You! You!... You are just jealous. I bet you work for my stepmother, who would do everything to poison my future…”

 

Dead Prince Walking (Zombies)

“Mirror, mirror on the wall… Why do I look like the walking dead today?”, Snow White asked.

“Because you should use real make-up and not that cheap baking powder that you steal from your stepmother’s bedroom.”, the mirror answered.

The squeaking door interrupted Snow White’s morning rituals. “Why is there not even one servant in this whole castle who has enough initiative to check the doors and feed them a drop of oil every now and then? Do I have to do everything myself?”, she complained, without looking at the door and the monster that entered.

The walking corpse reached out and moved slowly in the direction of the innocent princess and her mirror: “Aaaaahhhh!”

“Can’t you be a little bit more polite? Nobody ever taught you to say ‘Breakfast is ready’? I will need one more minute, just finish with this apple-red lipstick…”, Snow White said, distracted.

“You’d better look behind you. It seems that breakfast is you.”, the mirror advised.

Snow White turned her head and got the shock of her life. She lost the healthy colour in her face, turned pale, turned snow white and shouted: “Go away, you creep.”

The zombie opened his mouth and went straight for Snow White’s face. Snow White wanted to step back, but she already had her bum against the wall. There was no way she could escape…

She cried out: “Do you want me to kiss you? Do you want a kiss with tongues, on a first date? Are you sure that one kiss is enough to wake up a dead prince and bring him back to life?”

 

The Princess Wears Snow White (Glossy Magazine Article)

At yesterday’s party in the Royal Castle, the princess made her entrance at 22:00 exactly. She wore a long silk dress, made by Sleeping Beauty, her Cinderella shoes were of the finest glass, her hair was done by Rapunzel and her head was decorated with a little red riding hood.

The princess was accompanied by the Huntsman, one of the trusted men of President Whatshisname and hired to guarantee her safety in case of an attack by illegal aliens or a bad wild wolf. The entrance of the princess was interrupted by a march of the World Wildlife Fund to protest against the announced treatment of this endangered species.

Prince Charming was overwhelmed by the beauty of the princess. He said: “You are definitely the fairest of them all. Is it alright if I kiss you?”, but the princess was not impressed by this bad-mannered behaviour. She lifted her nose and answered: “I’d rather die first.”

The seven most influential magazines were represented by their senior photographers, who were only taking photos of the princess, ignoring all the other guests. The Queen-stepmother was angry that she didn’t get the attention she hoped for. She left the party early and retired to her estate in the woods.

 

S stands for Snow White (Who-Dune-It Detective)

“So, my dear Doc Watson, we have an empty bedroom, a missing princess, a huntsman without an alibi, a stepmother who practices whole days looking innocent before her mirror, a king who tells everybody that he is the leader of the country but there’s nothing he can do to solve the problems, we have a handsome prince who claims that he will only do something when the whole story is over and last but not least we have seven suspicious little chaps with beards so long that they can’t be anything else but disguises.”, Sleepy Holmes resumed. He lit his amber pipe and blew a cloud of smoke into the room.

Doc Watson looked puzzled: “I checked everywhere, my dear Holmes. I went up the tower of Rapunzel, but couldn’t find one hair of the missing princess. I visited Hansel and Gretel’s restaurant, but not one bread crumb. I borrowed the boots of the cat with the boots to walk as fast as Thumb Tom with giant paces to the hotel of Sleeping Beauty, but no guests there either. It’s an enigma. I don’t have a clue where she might be. She disappeared like white snow before the sun.”

“Elemental, my dear Doc Watson. You have to look at the facts. If you just use your little grey cells, it is all so simple… We should arrest… the Stepmother.”

Doc Watson looked surprised: “The Stepmother? But… Why?”

“HaHA!”, Sleepy Holmes cried out: “Because she has claimed child support for a child that is missing and that is not even her own. That’s a crime, Watson. She deserves to be put in jail…”

 

The Black Pearl and The White Snow (Pirate Adventure)

“Load all cannons and prepare to fire, Mister Huntsman. We’ll have only one chance to stop the Black Pearl. If we fail… they will escape to the Pirate Bay with all the books of The Queen. That will cost Her Royal Highness a shipload of fictional Royalties…”, Captain Stepmother shouted.

“But… If we hit the Black Pearl, we will cause a fire or sink the ship. All those books will be lost forever.”, boatswain Huntsman objected.

“We must prevent those Pirates from giving them away to the people. It’s the right of the Queen to earn money with the wisdom of others. They shouldn’t give away all that good advice for free. By the way: you are not hired to think; you are paid to do what I tell you. Do you have a problem with following orders?”, Captain Stepmother screamed.

Boatswain Huntsman remained silent. The captain looked through his looking glass, raised his hand… waited… waited a little more… and shouted: “FIRE! Burn those books!”

The explosion of the cannons made it impossible to hear, gunpowder dominated all smell, and the air was so full of smoke that it was impossible to see, but the goose bumps on captain Stepmothers arms gave him the feeling that they scored a hit. He put the looking glass for his eye and tried to find a peephole through the mist, to see if Captain Jack Sparrow, Elisabeth Snow White Swann, Mister William Shakespeare Turner and their crew of seven bearded midgets had survived the ferocious attack.

The wind started to arouse from the west, slowly blowing the smoke and the mist away. Captain Stepmother was furious. He shouted: “Mister Huntsman. We gave them a full hit with 53 cannons, but the Black Pearl seems to be without any damage. How is that possible?”

The Huntsman shouted back from the deck below: “Someone changed our cannonballs for apples, Captain. All I can find here are apples, painted black. I advise not to eat them. That paint can be poisonous…”

 

DR sNOwwhite (Spy Story)

The seven dwarfs looked up from their work. That was strange…

“Who’s that fellow that’s coming out of the woods? I never saw him here.”, Grumpy said.

“It’s the Huntsman. You better take care. ‘Killing’ is his middle name.”, Doc warned.

The dwarfs slipped out of the mine and hid in the bushes. The Huntsman looked over his shoulder as if he suspected that someone was following him, cleaned his bloody sword in the brook, took his horse that was parked behind a tree, started it and drove off.

“We should follow him.”, Dopey whispered.

“We should contact M and wait for instructions.”, Sneezy reported.

 “We should go home and bake an apple pie. I’m hungry as a wolf.”, Happy smiled.

“We should go into the woods, to find out what he was doing there.”, Doc suggested.

“That can be dangerous. We should investigate first.”, Bashful feared.

Grumpy didn’t say much. He acted. He stepped out of the bushes and entered the woods. When the other dwarfs started to move, he looked over his shoulder and grunted: “Don’t follow me. I have to pee.”

 

Black Money In Snow White Pockets (Political Thriller)

They found the girl sleeping on the ground, on a bed of flowers and moss.

“What do we do with her?”, Bashful asked.

“We can kill her. Nobody will miss her.”, Sneezy said.

“We can rape her. Nobody will hear her.”, Sleepy said.

“We can take her to our house and let her cook for us, and make the beds, and clean the floor, and do the gardening and wash our clothes and take care of our kids…”, Doc said.

“That’s a good idea. She’s not from here. She’s an illegal alien. We don’t have to pay her minimum wage. We let her work three times as hard and we pay her three coins per hour. If we don’t tell the Queen, we don’t have to pay taxes for her.”, Happy sniggered.

Dopey was shocked: “Would you really do that? Killing or raping is ok, I see that every day on the news, but… We’re supposed to be the good guys of this story, you know?”

 

Once Upon A Time In The Snow White West (Western)

“There is gold in them hills, boys.” Sneezy pointed with his mattock to the blue shadows on the horizon. The hot midday air vibrated like the stove of a blacksmith.

“Them hills belong to them Sue, the stepmother of that bird that cleans and cooks for us.”, Grumpy grunted from under his broad-rimmed hood.

Dopey stopped cutting slivers off the stick in his hand. He looked at the vultures that dropped dead from the sky like roasted chicken.

Sneezy continued: “We can start a war with them Sue.”

Doc looked at him, careful, taking his time before he answered: “War is bad for business. Them Sue come here every Saturday night, for booze and poker. We’ll get that gold anyway.”

Happy scratched the back of his head and spat on the ground before the porch. The spit vaporised immediately.

Bashful cooked up a better plan: “We can order a shipload of them little mirrors in New Orleans. Trade them with them Sue for gold. They do nothing the whole day but look in mirrors and paint colours on their faces.”

Slowly the sun went down, making the shadows longer while it disappeared behind the hills.

The door of the house opened and that bird that cleaned and cooked stepped out on the veranda. On her snow white cheek, she had a lick of red tomato sauce: “Dinner’s ready, boys. Beans and roasted horse.”

 

Wars of the Snow White Stars (Science Fiction)

“Prepare for landing.”, captain Snow White announced.

A small bump later lieutenant Bashful told the speaker: “A small step… I mean… Welcome to planet Earth. We just landed on an island that is called The Big Apple. Please remain seated until all security checks on the environment have been concluded. The air is poisoned with dangerous pollution, the levels of stress of the local aboriginals are unacceptably high, severe obstructions in the traffic arteries hinder every access to the heart of the city and prices of fresh fruits are so high that only royalty can afford them.”

Captain Snow White waited with patience until the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign was switched off. She thought about her home planet and the reason why she had to fly from there: the gossip magazines made her life impossible with all their stories about her fading beauty. Last week Star Light opened with an article about her weight (severely overweight forced her to follow a strict diet of apples), her photo on the cover of Princess Principle made it clear that the nice tan from her last ski vacation had fully disappeared and Miss Ogyny published three pages full of lies about the bad relationship she had with her stepmother.

Here on Earth things would go better. Here people judged you on the quality of your character and not on the colour of your snow white skin. This was the only planet in the whole universe where plastic surgery was paid by the social security. Here everything was available for a happy end.

An explosion interrupted Snow White’s thoughts. See looked out of the window and saw fireballs coming her way.

“We’re under attack. Safety shields activated. Everybody remain seated. I repeat: we’re under attack.”, shouted lieutenant Bashful through the intercom.

“What’s going on? I want a full report, immediately.”, ordered captain Snow White.

“It looks like Whatshisname won the elections. His first order as a President was to close the borders for illegal aliens. That includes us…”

 

Grand Half the Snow White Sorceress and the Seven Hobbits (Fantasy)

It was a sunny day in the Shire. The seven hobbits prepared the table for dinner.

“I’m looking forward to the fireworks this evening. Grand Half the Snow White Sorceress has worked on them for weeks in her little house in the woods.”, Happy said.

Dopey put the plates on the large table and asked: “Do we have enough fruits for desert? The sorceress likes fruits, apples above all.”

At that moment, Doc rounded the corner, with a large and heavy basket in his hands: “Golden Delicious, Pink Lady, Summerred, all fresh picked. The sorceress will be delighted.”

“Oh. How many apples do you have. Can you spare one for a hungry old lady?”

The seven hobbits looked up from their work. It was the old witch Granny Smith.

“Too bad all those apples are fresh. If we had a rotten one with worms in it, you could get it from me… I would throw it at your ugly face. Go home, old witch. We don’t want you here. Go find a way to Mordor.”, Dopey shouted.

The old witch didn’t back off, but put on her friendliest face and asked with her sweetest smile: “I can pay for it. Look. I can give you this golden ring…”

 

White Snow, Brown Sugar and Black Velvet (Mafia Crime)

“Are you alone? Did nobody follow you?”, Sneezy asked. He looked suspicious, nervous, even a little desperate. He had never done business with this woman before. He only knew that others called her ‘The Stepmother’, and that she was a member of the family of The Godfather, an old and respected business associate.

The old witch looked over her shoulder. Outside the mine, there was nothing that gave reason to worry: “I gave Hansel and Gretel a handful of bread crumbs and sent them on a mission. That should distract anyone with bad intentions. Do you have the merchandise?”

Sneezy nodded but didn’t move. The Stepmother took a leather pouch from under her black coat, opened it and let the content roll on her wrinkled hand: “I have the gold to pay you and the papers in which Goldman Sachs guarantees its value during the next three crises.”

Sneezy calmed down and made a sign with his hand to someone who hid in the dark shadows of the mine: “You can come and show the forbidden fruits, Dopey.”

The Stepmother flashed a smile of amusement: “Forbidden fruits?”

Sneezy explained: “Yes. We hid the dope in the heart of a few kilos of apples. An apple a day keeps the cops away. But be careful: this is high-quality stuff and very concentrated. When you eat a bite, it might kill you…”

 

The apple of your eye… (Infomercial)

Old witch: “Good morning. Today we have something really spectacular. It is healthy, tastes delicious and a whole kilo costs less than the cheapest menu in any hamburger restaurant.”

Snow White: “Really? That’s fantastic, old witch. Tell me all about it.”

Old witch: “It is called ‘an apple’. There are about twenty different classes, from yellow to green and from pink to red.”

Snow White: “Really? That’s fantastic, old witch. Tell me all about it.”

Old witch: “They grow on trees, like money, but we sell them in sacks of one kilo each. You can eat them right away, but the best news is: you can use them in delicious plates like apple pie and apple sauce, even make apple juice.”

Snow White: “Really? That’s fantastic, old witch. Tell me all about it.”

Old witch: “Only today and only when you call right away to the number that appears on your screen, we’ll have this fantastic offer you can’t refuse: two sacks of apples for the price of one. But you have to hurry because this is a very limited offer. As soon as those seven nasty bearded chaps show up, the offer is over.”

Snow White: “Really? That’s fantastic, old witch. Tell me all about it.”

 

Death of a Princess (Psychological Thriller)

“It doesn’t make sense.”, said Inspector Sn