What if your story was less Harry Potter and more Disney Princess? It's time to change your style!

Have you seen the Art Style trend where artists draw their characters in the style of multiple artists? That's what this is. Only instead of copycatting artwork, we're going to copycat story styles. Respectfully of course. (No copyright infringement intended.) For this exercise, we're going to dissect the stories we love and use their styles/theme/moods to inspire our own creations.

Guidelines:

1)Pick an inspiration. Preferable, something you're really familiar with and love.

2)Find the voice of the story. Is it a mystery? What's the hook? What are the rules of this world. What feeling does it give you.

3) Take your characters/premise and put them in this world.

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Example:

1)Inspiration: Riverdale

2)Style: Riverdale is a dark mystery centered around high school kids, set in a modern version of the 50s. I feel like it's a cross between, of course, the Archie comics it's based on and the DC show Gotham.

3) In the Riverdale version of Fabriella Starr, Ariella Clarke hopes to sign up for the talent show and show off her designs, but is discouraged by threats from the schools multi-talented star, Torin Lazlow. Meanwhile, Caleb (star baseball player who dreams of interning at the local space station while making breakfast at the Big Dipper waffle house) and his best friend Danny Lockhart (king of the drama club) are hiding a secret that involves the disappearance of Justine, the voice of Crestview's morning announcements. Now Mae Mendoza (candid researcher for the school news) is left to report the Daily Pawprint on her own, but she is no Justine. What really happened to Justine on her night of stargazing? And could it have something to do with the argument she had with her shadow lurking boyfriend Zeke? Or are the conspiracies she exposes on her podcast The Stargazer's Report true? Are there aliens among the citizens of the small town of Great Bear? Find out on... Crestview.

Example #2:

 1) Inspiration: Stranger Things

2) Style: Nostalgic 80's references, sci-fi with mental abilities, horror, teen romance and drama

3)Process: For this, again, I started with characters using Ariella and friends as templates. One of the first scenes I wrote involved Ariella's new character blind-testing ice cream from Caleb's new character's family ice cream truck and I wrote the rest of the scene from there.

 New Story: After a group of friends discover a mysterious crater in the earth, they dare each other to get a closer look. Daring to be brave, Ariella Clarke takes the plunge and finds herself sucked up into a pit of glowing rocks deep into the core. When she finally resurfaces, she learns that she has developed a new abilitiy. She can read minds...(Insert 80's synths intro)...

Title Card: BiZARRE

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Note: This exercise is meant to help you play with styles and genres. It's not a challenge to write fanfiction. You want to make sure you're creating your own characters and stories, not just copying the ones from the original. It's going to take a lot of creativity, but when you get into the flow it's a lot of fun.

Now it's your turn to try on something new!

In the Style of:

(Disclaimer: I've listed a lot of movies/TV shows here because each have distinctive voices/styles that interest me. Feel free to choose your own novels or movies if they are not listed!)

Riverdale

The Breakfast Club

Stranger Things

Life is Strange

Groundhogs Day

Disney/Pixar

Divergent

The Hunger Games

Harry Potter

Disney's Descendants

Willa Wonka the Chocolate Factory

WWE

This Is Us

MCU

DCEU

Monster High

Ever After High

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Homecoming

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

High School Musical

Camp Rock

Roswell

The Walking Dead

Survivor

Goosebumps

Hallmark Channel