The following post was written by Starre Vartan. Starre is one of the editors on Current Events magazine here at Weekly Reader and this is her first time blogging for Word ... but certainly not her last.

A.S. Byatt is a writer who really knows how to spin a yarn. In her short story collection from 2005, The Little Black Book of Stories, Byatt explores the world of dark fairy tales. Fanciful stories are not just for little kids anymore. They are a much overlooked genre of their own, like science fiction or mystery. Historically, fairy tales were meant to be cautionary or moral tales, not necessarily bedtime stories.

Like the original tales of the Brothers Grimm and the color fairy books (The Red Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book), the stories in the Little Black Book of Stories are not cute or necessarily pleasant, though some do have happy endings. Instead these stories are crafted with an eye towards understanding humanity through creative prose and a step-outside-of-normal unreality.

Why not try your hand at writing a fairy tale? Like Byatt, you can set your tale in the present day, or you could try a more traditional setting from the past. You can even write a futuristic fairy tale, like several of Margaret Atwood's novels.