I was thinking today about the choices made in telling a story. POV, tense, framing etc. The same story could have a different impact and/or find a different audience by changing choices like that. Anyone able to think of someone who’s done just that?
Of the top of my head I could only think of Ender’s Shadow, which seems to really be a different story, parallel to Ender’s Game, and the evangelists, who aren’t really authors, or all that different.
Any real life examples of what I’m trying to describe? Or are is it only movies and visual art works that are recreated with minor differences.
Grendel is a telling of Beowulf (or the first part of Beowulf; I haven’t actually read it so I’m not sure) from the POV of the monster.
Frances Hodgson Burnett liked her romance A Lady of Quality so much that she re-wrote it from the guy’s POV as His Grace of Osmonde. The first book is rough around the edges, but delightful and progressive for its day. The second is a saccharine sack of s—.
I don’t know that I’d call it a real life example, but somebody took the old Beowulf story and wrote a book called Grendel, from the POV of the monster.
And Wicked is the POV of the witch in The Wizard of Oz. You get like the other side of the story.
Oh yeah and then there was The Wind Done Gone, which was a black/slave perspective of Gone With the Wind.
Someone wrote another sequel to GWTW which was the further adventures of Scarlet O’Hara, it was terrible. Someone also wrote a sequel to Rebecca, also pretty bad. I think this is more like giving somebody else’s story a different ending (and don’t even get me started on current mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes and, of all things, Jane Austen. Invent your own damn characters, please. I don’t mind if a real/historical person shows up in a cameo, but grr.)
And ninjaed. Also there is Wide Sargasso Sea, which is the story of (assumed) Mr. Rochester’s (“reader, I married him”) first wife from Jane Eyre.
Mary Stolz’s children’s novels The Bully of Barkham Street and A Dog on Barkham Street cover essentially the same story, one from the point of view of Martin “The bully” and the other from the point of view of Edward “the Dog”
(Well, not the dog. The kid who wants the dog. Let’s not be picky.)
There are a number of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, most of which seem to date from the 1970s-80s, written from Holmes’ perspective as a time traveler or something and retold some of the canon stories from another perspective.
(Not quite to the OP, but one had Holmes turn out to be the Ripper, and Watson kills him by pushing him into Reichenbach Falls. Another had Holmes and Moriarty as good/bad clones from the future, a la Time After Time, and Watson eventually figures it out.)
Mary Reilley is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the point of view of Jekyll’s servant. The book was made into an unsuccessful movie.
John Barth’s Chimera tells the tale of 1001 Nights from the point of view of Barth, who is magically transported to meet her. The other two sections of the books are retellings of Greek myths from the point of view of the aged hero reflecting on what happened.
Marvels was a graphic novel/comic book series that showed major events of the Marvel Comics Universe from the point of view of Phil Sheldon, a news photographer who witnesses them.
Ann McCaffrey’s Harper Hall trilogy portrays events of her first Dragon trilogy from the point of view of some children.
In the first five Incarnations of Immortality books Satan is the antagonist but then in the book For Love of Evil you see all five stories from Satan’s point of view.
Was it that bad? I remember reading it as a teen when it first was published, and liked it well enough (in a bodice-ripper way, which I guess sets the standards pretty low). But I may be confabulating it somewhat with the novel written about Rhett Butler’s early life.
Back to the OP, I’ve always enjoyed stories that are alternative histories to the Bible or other religions…Christopher Moore’s “Lamb,” James Michener’s “The Source,” the Terry Pratchet/Neil Gaiman stories featuring gods/religion, hell, even Anne Rice’s “Memnoch the Devil.”
In that vein, I even binge-read a Messianic Jewish version of the Bible with annotations a few years ago, in just a few sessions. Very thought provoking.
And T.H. White’s brilliant The Once and Future King. It’s absolutely the best of the Arthurian retellings. Even better than Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
The thing is, as a historical romance novel, it wasn’t that bad. As a sequel to GWTW it was horrible. Main character Scarlet, completely different. GWTW was not even a romance in the first place.
Not entirely the same story, but it fits a little: Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. The first is written from the POV of Louis, while the second is from Lestat’s POV. They cover some of the same events.
I actually read Lestat first, and was then surprised to read him portrayed as such a villain in Interview.
That’s more like two people were given a list of character names and some suggested plot points. And were told to turn something in by Monday.
Hugh Cook wrote a series called the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. Each book has a different set of protagonists. Sometimes the protagonist of one book will turn up in a supporting role or cameo in another book. They’re portrayed rather differently from one to the other.