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Savvy Saturday: A Typology of Magical Creatures

phillipsauthor:

What kinds of magical creatures should populate your fantasy world? Well, that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself, but there are three basic categories you can use. First, there are types of magical creatures that a reader is already familiar with (e.g. fire-breathing
dragons, unicorns, etc). Second, there are types that the reader may be
slightly familiar with but that an author has imbued with distinctive
characteristics (e.g. the basilisk in Harry Potter). Third, there are
types that have never been seen before (e.g. fire spiders in The Quest of the Unaligned, or chulls and axehounds in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive). Each type comes with its own advantages and disadvantages for fantasy authors who want to use them.

Standard magical creatures

The
major advantage of using types of creatures that readers already know
about is that, well, readers already know about them. You can make a
passing reference to a town being laid waste by a dragon, and readers
fill in the gaps: a fire-breathing winged lizard, likely with an
inordinate desire for gold and a heated temper, flew out of his cave in
the mountains and burned down the village. Just like you don’t have to
tell readers that kings outrank peasants, or that bread is a food, you
don’t have to tell them that dragons are dangerous and likely only able
to be bested by a hero (or your protagonist). If the point of your story
is its characters and their interaction rather than its worldbuilding,
if the creatures in question are not vital to the plot, or if your story
is set in a version of our own world where legends are true (e.g. Harry
Potter), then including standard magical characters in a plot can give
your story a fun twist, without too much work on an author’s part.

The
problem with using standard magical characters is that it can make a
story feel derivative. There are only so many ways to slay a dragon, and
they’ve all been written countless times. That doesn’t mean you can’t
have a fresh take on dragon-slaying, but it does meant that you have to
work harder to show readers why your story is different. Similarly, if
you are focusing on building a magical world that is very different from
Earth and its classic mythologies, it can be jarring to readers to have
creatures show up that have no logical reason to be there. Finally,
once you start importing magical creatures from a given culture, you are
almost making an agreement with a reader to stay within given cultural
guidelines for the rest of the story. Having leprechauns (Irish myth),
sirens (Greek myth), and kitsune (Japanese myth) all running around in
the same world, for instance, would seem strange, if not even wrong to
reader sensibilities.

Adapted magical characters

In
this category lie all creatures that are trope subversions, spin-offs,
inspirations, or even just distant cousins of their more standard
magical counterparts. These creatures all have the same name as commonly
known magical critters (e.g. dragons), but they are different in either
a minor or a major way from what readers expect. One great example in
print is Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons series, in
which readers learn that dragons are honorable creatures who enjoy
cherries jubilee, choose their own king, and are in a constant struggle
against a society of wizards whose staffs can absorb dragons’ magic. The
advantage of using this category is that authors can surprise and
intrigue readers who are looking for something “familiar yet different.”

The
disadvantage of using adapted magical characters is that readers can
get confused or even irritated if an author changes too many things that
are traditionally part of that character’s makeup. Major physical
characteristics are typically the last to be changed – a centaur, for
instance, must be half-horse and half-man to be considered a centaur.
Traditionally, they are seen as wise, mysterious prophets and/or
astrologers. But in Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted,
centaurs don’t even have human intelligence, much less exceptional
wisdom. Instead, they are kept in zoos and are fed apples by human
visitors. Are these “real” centaurs? Should the author have written them
this way? As a more extreme example, suppose that an author writes
about creatures called “goblins” who are small and ugly in appearance (a
traditional goblin description), but live in trees, eat berries and
nuts, spend their days playing music and dancing, and are kind and
generous to all who can look past their external appearance. Are these
actually goblins? If an author is writing about a race like this, it
might actually do the reader a disservice to give the creature a name
that will bring to mind a large number of attributes that will be
inaccurate. Instead, this brings us to the third category…

Original magical characters

Now,
to start off, we should note that simply calling an already established
magical species by a different name does not make it an original
character. If you have a fire-breathing lizard with scales hard as
diamonds that loves gold and has a mean streak, please just call it a
dragon, a wurm, a wyvern, or whatever your myth-based name of choice is.
But don’t call it a Snarglax or a Death-Lizard just because you want to
avoid having “dragons” in your book. Your readers will see through you
in a second, and they won’t approve.

Good original magical characters might combine two (or more!) creatures that actually exist on Earth (e.g. flying horses/monkeys), give more or different
powers to a creature that actually exists (e.g. horses with human-level
intellect, vultures that spit lightning, or octopuses with mind control
powers), make a creature abnormally large or small (e.g. Shelob the giant spider), make significant physical changes to
a real creature (e.g. a two-headed dog or an alligator with a dorsal
fin and six legs), combine some features previously mentioned, or
actually just make a creature up. Even made-up creatures, however, are
typically modeled after real-life physiology to a certain extent, if
just to give readers enough mental cues to be able to picture the
creature you’re describing. The good thing about this category of
creatures is its uniqueness. An author can use original characters to
add breadth, depth, and a sense of wonder to a story. They raise new
possible puzzle solutions, plot twists, and reasons for characters to
interact in different ways. They keep the reader guessing and enthralled
in the world an author has created.

What’s the downside, then?
First, it takes a lot of work for an author to create realistic original
magical characters that make sense in a world. Second, it can be a lot
of work for readers to interact with a world that incorporate original
magical characters. The more new things readers have to carry around in
their heads, the more likely they’ll be to get confused and forget some
of them.

So what type of magical creature should you put in your world? Now that you know your options, it’s up to you!

archiemcphee:Look closely, these frilly mushrooms are made of...

archiemcphee:

Look closely, these frilly mushrooms are made of books. Although they look like something Alice might’ve encountered during her adventures in Wonderland, they’re the creation of Chicago-based visual artist Melissa Jay Craig. Entitled (S)Edition, this delightfully strange installation features 99 books made to look like common Amanita muscaria mushrooms. Each bookshroom is made of cast and hand-shaped abaca, also known as manilla help, embellished with cotton rag paper.

From Craig’s artist statement about this installation:

Fungus is an agent of change. I’m fascinated with its myriad forms, and I love to go in search of it. I can become more excited by discovering a beautiful fungal growth than by perusing artwork ‘discovered’ for us by curators in contemporary museums. When I was a child, the first time I had the intriguing feeling that the planet carried messages (texts, if you will) for those who were curious enough to look, was when I came upon a group of Amanita Muscaria, huddled together in a dark, secret space under tall pines.

Visit Melissa Jay Craig’s website for additional photos of her fascinating fungal books and to check out some of her other creations as well.

[via Colossal]

promptsgalore:Write something that takes place in a hospital and includes the...

promptsgalore:

Write something that takes place in a hospital and includes the following:

uncontrollable laughter
a stray catthe smell of maple syrupbirthday cakea broken wheelchair

models-fashion111:Detail at Zuhair Murad couture spring 2015...

models-fashion111:

Detail at Zuhair Murad couture spring 2015 runway.

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writeworld:Writer’s BlockA picture says a thousand words. Write...

writeworld:

Writer’s Block

A picture says a thousand words. Write them.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.

Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!

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- Nick Cave
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