When people think of fairy tales they think, "Once upon a time," or "There was once a time." Fairy Tales always start the story by saying this. The story tales are usually written in a more exaggerated way, like including Magic, Gods and Goddesses, talking animals, and more of a kid based story, even though fairy tales were not written for children. They were written to inform, and illuminate the meaning of the story and apply it to the real world.
Common elements of fairy tales are repetition of words, phrases, chants, fortunes and misfortunes, numbers, good and evil, and many others. A lot of knowledge comes from fairy tales. Morals like greed, redemption, courage, jealousy, caution, and pretentiousness are a part of our everyday knowledge. Fairy tales are commonly short and its purpose or moral of the story is rather obvious. Instead of trying to decipher the moral of a story, the fairy tales are more succinct, and they are more pragmatic than short stories. For example, the moral of The Fisherman and His Wife is pretty obvious; don't get too greedy. Since the tales are so short, everything happens so quickly. For example, The Fisherman and His Wife, the fisherman at one time in the story was going to the flounder about 6 times, the same day, asking favors from him. .
If you ever read a fairy tale, you would know that the tales do not consist among a contemporary time frame. The Fairy Tales usually are set along the time line of people like Robin Hood, Little Red Riding Hood, and others. Sometimes people are not sure if some fairy tales have taken place in this world. A lot of fairy tales are all old wise tales past down from generation to generation in order to instruct or simply entertain. .
The fairy tales are mostly written in third person narration. It's very rare that you will see it written in first person or second person. Because of the intention of the tale, the tale is written in third person to tell of something that happened to someone else, not to tell of what happened to the narrator.