I wrote my first story, Two Lucky Lovers, based closely to the original story by Shakespeare because I wanted to give my audience a background of Romeo and Juliet. The inspiration of the title stems from the original nickname for the pair, "star-crossed lovers." In Shakespeare's story, we see the two young characters not being given a chance at love due to family conflict and a really bad lack of communication. The city's two prominent families, Capulet and Montague, are in a constant fight over who knows what. As time goes on in the story various fights break out. One of these causes Romeo to be banished from the city after killing Tybalt, which leaves Juliet deciding to fake her death to be with Romeo. Yet her plan didn't end so well. The flaw to the plan came when Juliet neglected to tell Romeo. This caused Romeo to actually believe that Juliet had died, which she had really just taken a serum that made her "dead" for so long. Upon visiting her body, Romeo was so heartbroken that he decided to take his life. Juliet awakens to find Romeo dead and ultimately decides to take her life as well. Therefore, I wanted to put a twist on the ending and allow them to actually be given the chance at happiness. I decided to rid the story of all the bad events and fighting and focus solely on Romeo and Juliet's love. I incorporated the Tybalt/Capulet scene into the story to show that no matter how much a family may dislike another, personal happiness can't be decided by those not involved. Also, that true love is something very rare to come by and when it is found, the opportunity should be taken. Lamb Version: Tales from Shakespeare
For my second story, A Coincidence, I wanted to take the original Shakespearean play of Romeo and Juliet and place them today's modern day society. This decision was based on how there hasn't been a recreation to the story since Baz Luhrmann directed Romeo and Juliet in 1996. I decided to use specific things from today's world such as use of online dating to influence Romeo's search of love since online dating is a popular avenue. I wanted to give the story a twist and have Romeo catfished by Mercutio due to previous talk based on Shakespeare's original story in which he has Mercutio make small claims of love towards Romeo. The catfishing part was inspired by how the modern day (online) search for love is and how people don't put their true identity in hopes of not getting rejected by the person at hand. Overall, I felt like ending the story by an accidental run-in with the real Juliet is something the audience would have wanted, and me personally, due to the emotional bond that is built between Romeo and the audience. Having such great emotion in this story is one trait I wanted to keep similar to Shakespeare's writings, however this story also gets a happy ending! :)