Why So Many Stories Begin With 'Once Upon a Time'
'Once Upon a Time' appears in many fairy tales and stories. The phrase has a long history and a practical narrative purpose.
I am an academic-turned-writer who covers literature, film & TV, history, and travel. I earned a PhD in English Literature (specifically Renaissance drama) from the University of Stirling at the end of 2021, after which I left the world of academia to work as a freelance writer. I live in not-so-sunny Scotland with my greyhound, Misty.
'Once Upon a Time' appears in many fairy tales and stories. The phrase has a long history and a practical narrative purpose.
Filled with castles, quests, and princess brides, these books take the fairy tale formula to new and exciting places...
We've put together a guide for the best scary novels that take place in the wilderness. These are about about survival, supernatural occurrences, and reimagined tales of horror that are perfect for Halloween.
This is all wrong. This is not how the story is supposed to end.
Not all cemeteries are sad, especially the one dedicated to forgotten ice cream flavors. Hundreds of thousands of cemeteries are sprinkled across the world, and many are somber places that conform to roughly the same template. Purpose-built burial grounds tend to be located in grassy fields and feature rows of stone grave markers to commemorate the deceased.
Unusual deaths aren't just found on the page. A number of authors have themselves died in bizarre ways-and sometimes, they seem even stranger than fiction.
The chances of me reading a book or watching a movie rise by about 50% if a dog is featured as a main character. Put a dog in a post-apocalyptic setting and it rises to 100%. I love seeing how char...
No prior familiarity with specialist climbing equipment (beyond walking boots) is required to tackle these 10 scary hikes, but nerves of steel are a must.
Movies that are known for being so bad, they're good form a loose genre, but it is one that can be hard to define. Sometimes these films are classed as guilty pleasures or cult classics, but straight-up terrible movies can occupy the former category, while genuinely great movies can occupy the latter.
Have you ever read a book that described a location so vividly that you wished you could visit it? Well, sometimes you can. Often authors are inspired by real-world places when crafting their book settings, whether based in our world or a fantasy one.