Want some new story ideas?

Sorry: you're out of luck. It's probably true, as they say, that every story has already been told... and retold... and retold. Like the people in marketing say, though, it's all about spin. And you could do worse than to re-spin some of the classics. I'm not talking Shakespeare: he's a little cliché by now. No: I'm going further back, to the fertile ground of Greek and Roman mythology. If you want stories with passion, humor, love and death, look no further. I'll just take one example to whet your appetite: one version of the Minotaur story goes like this:

Ariadne fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus, who had been charged with rescuing the youth of Athens held by Ariadne's father, the king of Crete; in the process, Theseus had to kill the Minotaur, a great beast held in the center of Daedalus's famous labyrinth. Ariadne helped Theseus (who in turn promised to marry her and take her with him to Athens when he left Crete) find his way through the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur by giving him two special gifts: a sword, and a string that would enable him to find his way back out. (In French, the clue to unraveling a puzzle is still known as the fil d'Ariane -- Aradne's thread.) As promised, she left Crete with Theseus and the rescued Athenian youth and they stopped on the island of Naxos. While Ariadne slept, however, Theseus apparently had second thoughts; he no longer needed her, and so he (and the youth he had rescued) sailed away in the night, leaving the Cretan princess alone on the island. Theseus's karma caught up with him later, but that's another story. In the meantime, back on Naxos, the god Dionysus took a good look at Ariadne and fell in love with her himself. When she died, he took the circlet of flowers she'd worn in her hair and flung it up into the heavens, thereby creating the Corona constellation of stars.

Tell me that isn't a brilliant story! How would you update it? Which stars in the sky can you make stories to explain? Mine some of the ancient stories for their truths and insights into humanity—even as just a writing exercise, it’s a lot of fun!