Retelling Stories
V eggieTales is one of the best children’s entertainment brands out there. One of the techniques they use in story creation is retelling Bible stories. Unlike the original stories, the VeggieTales version has vegetables as the characters. Obviously, they have to make modifications to fit their situation. Because they are operating in a world of fantasy already, it isn’t a far stretch for the writers to place the characters in which they are using swords to play out the skit one time and drive a car in another, giving them the freedom to follow the Bible version of the story quite closely. Things get more complicated when we try to fit a retelling into a realistic modern world, but the technique is worth considering. I used this technique in For the Love of a Devil and I’ll tell you that it wasn’t easy. We read the Bible and it doesn’t seem so strange to see a woman leave Hosea for other men, see him continue to care for her and eventually buy her back when she becomes a slave. We so...