In the story "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" published in 1697, is about a spell cast upon a princess by a fairy who is asleep for a hundred years until a prince comes along and saves her. Narrator one wanted a similar ending in "There Once Was" but Narrator two argued for a more realistic tale and the story being told is about both narrators' voicing their opinions. "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" helps develop the idea for the story "There Once Was" by basing the stereotypical fairy tale type on the original story of Sleeping Beauty.  Both stories start off with having a young girl in a predicament but has the intention of a happy romantic ending. This is where the stories differ but also become similar because between the two fairytales "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" and "There Once Was", they both have foreseen endings that changes whenever a character does not like the way the story is being told. The narrators of both tales alter important details and remove key plot points to narrator molds the stories to his or her own bias. 

Fairy tales seem to always have a "damsel in distress" or the typical true love conquers all. Atwood tells an opinion about the annoyance of the common fairytales and wants to change the heroine to be more relatable. In the beginning of "There Once Was" the main character is described as "beautiful as she was good", and the second narrator in the story retaliates by commenting that the word "beautiful" should be changed to "more average" because of the highly competitive society woman live in (Atwood 305). Sleeping Beauty is described as a beautiful princess with angelic qualities "One would have taken her for a little angel, she was so very beautiful" (Perrault 298), which is hard to compare to because not all young girls are of royalty and possess perfect qualities. The tale "There Once Was" wants a story that will captivate the readers with a main character who has the "right image of our society, today" (Atwood 305). A more normal role model would be more relatable than someone who is physically intimidating so that the readers can put themselves in the story. 

Perrault plot changes throughout the story because the characters do not like when the story has a twist to the predicted ending.  In the fairytale "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" the clerk of the kitchen saves the children and Princess because the Queen requested for those people to be killed and served to her as supper (Perrault 301). Switching up the children and Princess for lamb creates a relief for the clerk of the kitchen because he cannot stand the thought of killing innocent people so he takes matters into his own hands. Atwood has narrator two arguing throughout the story of how exhausting it is to keep hearing all the same kind of stories over and over again. "I am so tired of negative female images! And stepmothers  --  they always get it in the neck! Change it to stepfather, why don't you?"(Atwood 306). By suggesting to change stepmother to stepfather the view of the whole story changes because according to the second narrator of "There Once Was", middle age men and women have different ways of parenting. It has been observed that men are more competent whereas women are emotionally dependent. Taking that into account Psychology Today explains, "Fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children." Meaning that if in the tale of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" the King told the clerk of the kitchen to kill the children or it was up to the King about what to do with the children and the Princess, the story could have gone in a completely different direction. Atwood didn't want the same view point as an original fairy tale such as "The Sleep Beauty in the Wood", so to make it different from typical evil stepmother the suggestion of a negative male image was proposed.

When deciding how to write a story, the author has to know that he or she cannot make every reader happy. The narrators in "There Once Was" have a dispute over the skin color of the main character. While narrator one describes a vague girl, narrator two wants a more specific detail main character.  The two argue "I don't know what color...But this isn't about me! Everything is about you" (Atwood 305), and end up moving on to a new subject in the story because they cannot agree on the tiny details that seem so important only to the one telling the story. In "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" the old Fairy gave the newly born princess a fate of death, "the Princess should have her hand pierced with a spindle and die of the wound" the whole kingdom was very upset by this gift bestowed on the newborn and the other fairies did not like the sound of the Princess dying. So the young fairy quickly changed the destiny of the Princess by altering the spell to "instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last a hundred years, at the expiration of which a king's son shall come and wake her" (Perrault 297). The young fairy was trying to please the crowd despite her fellow companion's wishes. Making everyone happy is nearly impossible because everyone likes and dislikes things differently. "Knowing your audience before you write will make the process of writing easier because it simplifies the decisions you have to make" (Hale), instead of making every single member of the audience happy, an author could focus on what type of audience he or she is wanting to focus on relating to.

The ideas from "There Once Was" was very noticeably based off "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" because of how narrator one describes the situation of the female main character. Both authors Perrault and Atwood change the plot of the story once one of their characters do not like the direction the story is going. From the important details to the key plot points the story alters to favor the narrator's liking of how the story goes. In conclusion one of the stories gets to tell the ending while in "There Once Was" never gets to the finish the tale or even ever start it. A bigger question is drawn from these two texts over the idea of is it worth it to please every reader or for the writer to satisfy him or herself when writing a story. In "There once was it can be decided that trying to make everyone happy does not make a good story seeing as the two narrators could not finish telling the story but in "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" focuses on a certain type of audience. 
