What I Tell You Three Times

One of the annoying things about trying to write a story based on a fairy tale is the three-times things. Trebling, Vladimir Propp called it in Morphology of the Folktale, but he only had to analyze it, not try to make it work in a short story.

It's the psychology, mostly. You can get Cinderella to the ball three times, but why oh why does Snow White never listen? And in stories like The Pig King, even in the fairy tale you wonder why the second and third daughters consent. And try writing an actual story, where the readers expect the characters to have actual motives.