Recent Comments
Kassan Warrad: Defining Human
Kassan Warrad’s latest post at Mythic Scribes seeks to ground fantasy races (orcs, elves, etc.) in real-world evolutionary framework. This is ground I covered in fleshing out the various groups depicted in Into the Wonder—and for the same reasons Kassan suggests. Namely, to achieve a greater level of lifelikeness:
A systematic approach to defining your races will help shape the underpinnings of your world. How are the races related to one another? Do they share a common ancestor? Can they interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring?
These questions help define your races’ distinct sociopolitical boundaries. The world will feel more authentic, and many readers will appreciate the invested thought.
At the bottom of all of this is the issue of relatability. Do members of these groups have the same sorts of goals, aspirations, and emotions as the readers (who are all, at least in theory, human)?
The question of who counts as human is a theme underlying my third novel, Oak, Ash, and Thorn, which will be coming in February 2016.
Sunday Inspiration: Dignity
A person’s a person, no matter how small.
—Dr. Seuss
Uncanny Georgia: The Georgia Mothman
The Mothman, a purported giant winged humanoid, is associated with a string of sightings in West Virginia in the 1960s. A similar creature, however, was sighted in recent years in north Georgia. A woman who wished to remain anonymous reported an encounter on an old country road. She says,
Suddenly, something flew in front of the car and hit the windshield with enough size and force that it totally mangled the grill and hood. I immediately stopped the car. I heard what sounded like wings flapping on the roof, but then something rolled down the back window onto the trunk then eventually on to the road. I thought I killed whatever it was. A woman in a truck had pulled up from behind and said she saw the thing hit the road. She said that it’s eyes were glaring bright red. As we looked more closely at this thing it resembled a man with large bat-like wings….
This thing had the body of a well-built man. It had no feathers but charcoal gray skin like that of a bat with some hair on the shoulders and around the eyes and legs. When it spread it’s wings, it had the span of 12 foot or more. I estimate it was about 8 foot tall. It had no head however, just the eyes embedded on the shoulders that had brows. I didn’t noticed a mouth or nose.
Someone else in northern Georgia apparently had a similar encounter and managed to snap a photo of a glowing, winged creature. (Though it’s probably a fake.)
Ten Commandments for Epic Fantasy Writing
If you’re a budding Epic Fantasy author, you’ve likely read quite a lot of advice about how your novel should start. Having read thousands of submissions and more than my fair share of published novels, I’d like to share with you ten openings that should be avoided. So here, in my opinion, is how not to do it…
-
Make sure you get all that pesky world-building out of the way up front. How can I ever enjoy your story unless I know everything about the world? What is that clasp on the archer’s tunic made from? Where and when did she get it and how much did it cost? If you want you can put all this in a lengthy prologue, but we need to know this stuff.
-
Is it raining? Describing the weather is such an dynamic way to start your novel. Nothing says ‘Epic Fantasy’ like a light breeze. We need a least three pages before we can even think about those characters.
-
The Family History. An extension of 1) really. Ok, so this guy is running for his life. But when was his grandmother born? Quick, I can’t possibly invest in this until you’re told me. That leads us to…
-
Introduce all of your characters straightaway. Fortunately readers all have photographic memories, so cram in as many names as you can in the first few pages. Better still, give them names that are impossible to pronounce like Horguur’thzogh and Ek’mazikav’tx so they will really stick in the mind.
-
Describe absolutely everything. ‘She deftly flicked the thin strand of her glossy raven hair from her cold green eyes and purposefully and steadily raised the bow of ancient, dark yew and meticulously…’ Whassat? Sorry, I think I nodded off for a second there.
-
And it was all a dream. A great way to make your world seem tedious to put a vivid dream right up front and get the reader to invest in it. Then wake your protagonist up, and you can rub it in the readers’ faces that it was all pretend and simultaneously make the ‘real’ world seem really boring. Result.
-
Waking up. Or you can skip the dream and just open with someone waking up. Every day starts with someone getting up, so why not every novel? Then they can have breakfast, which is one of the mainstays of Epic Fantasy.
-
Try hiding your info dump in dialogue. ‘My brother Rak, you know how our father, the Emperor, sent us on this quest six moons ago? Well, as we heard those outlanders – our sworn enemies – near our camp last night, if your twisted ankle is up to it, perhaps it is time to lay down the swords that once belonged to our grandfather – a famous hero of his time – and take the long road home through the mountains.’ Smooth, huh? This works well with internal monologues, too.
-
Use plenty of metaphors. Although you’re writing a Fantasy novel and everything is up for grabs in the first chapter, don’t be afraid of using metaphors from the off. Of course the beast isn’t literally a hundred feet tall or the protagonist really has eyes that shine like blue fire on a dark night. It’s obvious. Your readers are smart; they’ll figure it out eventually.
-
The epic battle. They say you should open with a bang, so why not a twenty-page action sequence? Who cares that we don’t know who anyone is, aren’t bothered if they live or die, where they are, or what’s at stake! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Uncanny Georgia: The Ishkitini
The origins of the legend of the ishkitini are hard to pin down. Apparently, it was first described in Choctaw legend, but it was also known among the Creeks and Seminoles. It is a given that the Creeks and related peoples of Georgia would have believed in such creatures. Ishtikini, stikini, stigini, etc. are all variations of the same word.
Ishkitinis are malevolent shape-shifters. Although they might take on the shape of any sort of wild predator—wolves, coyotes, bears, etc.—they strongly favor owls. In fact, their name means “horned owl.”
These creatures are classified as “witches.” In much Native American lore, a “witch” is not a human practitioner of magic but rather an inhuman monster that is able to pass as human. By day, ishkitinis look like ordinary humans. By night, however, they prey upon their neighbors. The Seminole version of the legend is the most disgusting. According to this version, ishkitinis change their shape by vomitting up their souls—along with their internal organs.
In some stories, mentioning these creatures by name puts one at risk of becoming one. Therefore, stories about ishkitinis are only told by certain medicine men and women. In other communities, however, they are more of a bogeyman figure casually discussed to frighten children.
An ishkitini appears in The Devil’s Due, though he is never identified as such. One character describes him as “a pooka with a bad attitude.”
Uncanny Georgia: The Horned Serpent
Horned serpents are powerful magical beings in many Native American mythologies. They feature in the legends of both the Creeks and the Cherokees. Both groups apparently got the idea from what is called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, network of cultural influences that spread across much of what is today the United States. As such, the creature is known by a number of names in various languages of the American Southeast, including:
cetto-yvprakko: Muskogee
chintoosakcho: Alabama (“crawfish snake”)
olobit: Natchez
sint holo: Chickasaw, Choctaw
sinti lapitta: Choctaw
uktena: Cherokee
The horned serpent is a creature of chaos, the underworld counterpart to the “thunderers” or “thunder beings” who represent order and live in the sky. Beyond that, there are some distinctions between the Cherokee and the Creek horned serpent.
In Cherokee mythology, the word for horned serpent is uktena. These malevolent and deadly monsters inhabit deep underwater pools as well as the high mountains.
An uktena is as large around as a tree trunk. Its scales glitter like sparks of fire. It has horns on its head, naturally, and a bright, diamond-like crest on its forehead. This crest is greatly prized, as one who can retrieve it is supposedly imbued with the power to become a great wonder-worker. This is a dangerous quest, however, because the uktena’s dazzling appearance draws people toward the creature when they should be running away.
For the Creeks, the story is pretty much the same, though their horned serpent does not seem as outright evil or destructive as that of the Cherokees. It might even appear to wise young men. The Creek horned serpent is a huge creature armed with crystalline scales, with an extremely bright crystal adorning its forehead. As with the uktena’s diamond crest, this crystal is said to grant mystical powers to whoever might retrieve it.
The Creeks have another supernatural serpent called the tie snake, and accounts differ as to whether they two are the same or whether they are, in fact, distinct creatures—though sometimes called by the same name. I’ll tackle tie snakes in a later installment.
Are The “Real” Mines of Moria in France?
In 1916, a 24-year-old British soldier named J.R.R. Tolkien went off to fight in World War I. He was stationed near the village of Bouzincourt, took part in the nearby Battle of the Somme and writes about the area in his diaries.
Jeff Gusky, an explorer and photographer who maintains a site called “The Hidden World of World War I,” believes Tolkien may have visited Bouzincourt’s caves, places where hundreds of soldiers took refuge during the Somme — and that some of his impressions ended up in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Others aren’t so sure. At any rate, no one questions Tolkien’s experiences as a soldier during World War I had an influence on The Lord of the Rings. He once wrote in a letter that “The Dead marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme.”
Uncanny Georgia: The Ghosts of Fayetteville
I’m not a big fan of ghost stories, but I thought I’d include at least one on my tour of “uncanny Georgia.” This one has to do with the Woolsey Road Bridge in Fayetteville, which is just south of Atlanta. According to StrangeUSA.com,
In the early 1920’s the sheriff of Woolsey, use to kill black people and he would dump there bodies into the swamp by his house. It is said if you park by the bridge and walk to the edge of the swamp that you can see the ghost of the people that were killed carrying lanterns through the swamp.
Like many ghost stories, this one involves the spirits of murder victims continuing to haunt the place where they were killed and/or buried. As brief as it is, I think this story intrigues me because there is more than one type of “ghost” to contend with: there are the ghosts of those who were murdered and there are also the “ghosts of the past”—the history of hatred and racially-motivated violence—that the story forces hearers to deal with.
Uncanny Georgia: Pterosaurs
Yes, pterosaurs. Apparently, there have been several sightings of large flying creatures in north Georgia that strongly resemble pterosaurs, prehistoric flying reptiles believed extinct for 65 million years.
Sightings have been recorded in Waltonville/Gwinnett Counties (Loganville), Barrow County (Winder), Heard County (Franklin), and Towns County. According to one eyewitness,
[In] July of 2010, My wife and I were sitting outside when motion from above the tree tops to our left caught my attention; it’s very hard to explain how I felt at that moment. We were looking at two extremely large birds flying together and heading north . . . I can only guess to be 15-20′ wing spans and the motion of their wings as they flew was very slow. The head was long and ended in a point; wings ended in a point and appeared to be featherless . . .
Anyway, it happened again yesterday [Dec 9, 2012], this time there were three of us who saw this bird fly over, in plain sight, in daylight, up close . . .
. . . I have been trying to contact a whole lot of people (with not much success) I don’t know how to say this any other way except that I have seen these very large birds that don’t even come close to looking like anything else I’ve ever seen. I believe them to be Pterosaurs or something similar to them. . . . I have seen three of these birds in the past year and a half, I have also heard them. . . .
This last sighting has sparked me to do something about it. There were two other people with me when I saw the last one; this was three days ago. I am intent on identifying these large birds. This is not a joke, I, we have seen something that is not supposed to be here! (emphasis added)
Other accounts (linked under “Sightings” above) report the presence of a long tail on at least some of these creatures.
Sunday Inspiration: Brilliance
Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
—Diane Ravitch
Darrell J. Pursiful 