Good Afternoon All,
I am sort of obsessed with the idea of created creatures or expanding on creatures from mythology. Fairies, fey, dragons, mermaids, and the like. Adding these creatures into writing and describing their looks and behaviours really help to create a solid platform for the readers to land on in this new world they are exploring.
I have always found then fascinating and intriguing. Ever since I read my first vampire novel a part of me began to believe or to speculate about the possibility of their existence. Writing about these creatures and captivating your reader and forcing them to believe in the reality of these creatures creates a whole new branch in their mind. You’ve opened up their thoughts to manipulate their minds. They believe what you want them to.
And some may say that that would be giving writers far too much control, but it’s not because a writer’s control comes from the empty page before them. As soon as the reader puts down the book they are reading, they can believe or not believe whatever they want. But until that happens, the writer is given their full attention and their permission to delve into their minds and control the thoughts and emotions they feel while reading.
So, if you think about it that way, in a way, a book that a reader reads is in fact, a mythical creature in and of itself. It was created by the writer and for the reader’s enjoyment, but everything they read about could be read or could be completely fantastical or could be a mixture of the two. Readers trust writers when they open up a new book and begin reading. They are giving up the part of them that controls everything they think, do, feel, see, and it opens up an entirely new world to them beyond the page.
I always find myself feeling the desire to research mythical creatures and to try and discover new ones I haven’t heard of before. I find they bring me inspiration to write something that hasn’t been heard before or perhaps hasn’t been heard in the same way before. I love the idea of creating something truly unique, but if you think about it, even the Greeks, Romans, and the Minoans got their beliefs from somewhere else. They adopted other groups’ religions and created their own from it. So even their beliefs weren’t truly of their own creating.
The job of the writer is to see what they see and to form it fully in their mind then play with it and change it and warp it into something almost completely different from what they originally saw. When a writer has been writing for a while, they are able to do this almost instantaneously. I can look at a couple at a table and create a story from their expression or the secrets you can almost make out in their eyes. Or from a text I receive from a friend that is something normal, I can recall in my mind’s eye, the past of a character I am writing about or will be writing about.
Writing is something no one can ever learn completely. Because there is no completing all there is to learn about writing. Even if you’ve done it for ten thousand years and lived through several people’s lifetimes, there will always be more because things are always changing and evolving into better versions of themselves, as writers do on a day-to-day basis.
Rose Marie