Guest Post from Gwenda Bond: On Reinventing Legends
I asked Kristin for a suggestion of what to write about here–because it gets hard coming up with topics sometimes and I would always rather write a guest post about something someone else is interested in. She suggested I talk a little about working with established legends, history, and mythology, since both my books draw on them, and so that’s what I’m going to do.
Strange Chemistry, September 2012.
Probably the biggest single reason for this commonality in my work so far (and my next book, while set in the modern day also draws on the history of the circus) is that I write from my obsessions and interests. As a writer, I’m first and foremost a reader and a magpie–I think most of us are. And we all have certain shiny objects or topics that attract us more than others. If you’re a writer, published or not, I bet you have at least a couple different rows of books (if not more) that would count as “Research” on any given topic. And, of course, there are also kinds of stories that attract us, as readers and writers.
So, when I have an idea and it begins to accumulate the kind of mass that tells me it’s a book, often it comes from a combination of these things. It has one of my obsessions or interests at its core, and that comes together, like magnets attracting, with a story that feels right for it. Even though I hate beginnings, and they’re always hardest for me, my favorite moment in the writing process is still probably that time when an idea starts to become a story and it begins to unfurl in my mind…snatches of scenes, character moments, dialogue. None of them may ultimately end up in the story, but that’s when I know I have a story. I promise I’ll get around to the working with established legends and mythology part, but first one more larger thing.
There’s a term I came across years ago that stuck with me, and got bound up in the way I think about and create stories: mental real estate. I believe I first encountered this via Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s Wordplayer site (and if you google, you can find the column). But it essentially points out that in a world filled with stories competing for people’s attention that one thing that can help you is if the stories you tell also bring with them elements that already own a piece of mental real estate in someone’s head. By writing from my own obsessions, I’m gambling there are some other people out there who might share them.
BLACKWOOD takes the well-known historical mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke and transports it to the modern day. It’s a mash up of the old and the new–historical figures like Eleanor Dare and John Dee crashing into our modern world and two very modern protagonists. People often ask me about the pop culture references in BLACKWOOD, and they are so much a part of Miranda’s character and felt really necessary to me to rub up against the historical references. The friction of worlds colliding. It wasn’t until well into the research for that book that I came across the reference to John Dee that provided me with the connection to alchemy–another long-time fascination–that ultimately unlocked the whole story.
Strange Chemistry, October 2013.
THE WOKEN GODS is quite a bit different. For those who don’t know the set up, the book takes place in our world, where five years earlier the gods of ancient mythology woke up around the globe. The protagonist is a teenager in a transformed Washington, D.C., where she gets pulled into high stakes intrigue with the Society of the Sun and the seven tricksters who negotiate with humanity on behalf of the gods.
Obviously there are several oceans worth of mythology when you’re talking about all the gods of ancient mythology. And I went through several incarnations of this book along the way to the one that comes out next week. Ultimately, it was thinking about my favorite parts of mythology and a nonfiction book I’m obsessed with, TRICKSTER MAKES THE WORLD by Lewis Hyde, that led me to the idea of using a handful of tricksters that were the ones who’d volunteer to work with humanity. I knew I wanted the book to be set in D.C., and that I wanted a (no longer) secret society, but I also wanted to add my own twists to those things. There’s a big difference, to my mind, of being aware of mental real estate and engaging in lazy storytelling because it’s easier to default to the familiar.
Once I got to that concept, I still had to decide which tricksters and other gods I wanted to use and also create them as characters. Because here’s the thing–mythology is not internally logically consistent. Much of it developed over long periods of time, and that means that gods morphed into other gods, migrated into new pantheons, that personalities changed along with political circumstances, that the gods themselves behave differently in different myths. Because I’m working with gods generally less familiar to many people, I had more freedom to not have to battle existing ideas of them. But, still, I had to decide which pieces I wanted to take and which to leave, and then, the hardest part, make them into new myths, the versions in this new world. One of the things that makes me happiest so far is that many of the early readers seem to read the Tricksters’ Council and all its attendant architecture almost as something I borrowed… And I love that, because it means it feels mythical to them.
I have rattled far beyond my welcome, I’m sure. But thanks for hosting me!
Gwenda Bond.
Gwenda Bond is the author of the young adult novels BLACKWOOD (Strange Chemistry, out now), THE WOKEN GODS (Strange Chemistry, Sept. 2013), and GIRL ON A WIRE (Skyscape, 2014). BLACKWOOD is currently in development as a TV series by MTV, Grammnet Productions, and Lionsgate TV. She is also a contributing writer for Publishers Weekly and regularly reviews for Locus. She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and their menagerie. You can find her at www.gwendabond.com or on twitter at @gwenda.
