Everything Old is New Again (Take Your Story Back to Basics)

An obsession among writers is that many of them feel their work has to be new, different, or unique in some way. They are always striving to re-invent, to re-imagine, or to alter the perception of an idea, a genre, or a story. And sometimes that genuinely leads to fresh perspectives and fun concepts that hadn't been explored on the page before... other times, though, it just leads to contorting something to try to make it look different without asking if it's actually more interesting to see it from that perspective.

So I wanted to take this week to suggest a trick I've been using a lot, and which I've had pretty good results with. In short, take whatever genre, tropes, story, world building, etc., you're using, and examine what it was before its latest incarnation. Because sometimes going all the way back to basics can really make you stand out.

You want vampires in your book, you say?

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Elves, Vampires, Magic, and More!

Practically everything we use to tell our stories is built off of things established by earlier creators. Whether you're taking inspiration from the works of Tolkien, Howard, or Burroughs to write fantasy, you're drawing on folklore to populate your stories with monsters, or you're looking at folk heroes and ancient propaganda to form your semi-historical narratives, all of us are getting our ideas (if not our understanding of the raw elements of story) from somewhere.

However, as time has gone on, the ideas present in a lot of these stories have grown and changed, becoming different from what they originally were. And though it seems paradoxical, you can actually make a story feel more unique and different from its contemporaries by using something old in a new way.

Because I took my own advice on this one.

Folks who've read my novel Crier's Knife have said it has a distinct feeling of the bastard child of a pulp fantasy novel combined with a Western, which was very much what I was going for. However, in order to give it that old-time, sword and sorcery feeling I rewound the clock on how magic has often been depicted in fantasy novels. Rather than using Vancian magic (which became extremely common thanks to its prevalence in fantasy RPGs), or more modern "spell point" magic (where wizards, sorcerers, etc. have a certain pool of power they can draw on to achieve whatever effects they need), I used more ritual magic that was far more common to stories in the 1940s and before. Where the method of the magic isn't explained at all, and where the ingredients, actions, and sacrifices demanded are meant to give the audience the feeling of the spell rather than walking them through the internal logic of what it is supposed to do.

Aesthetic magic, if you will.

This is far from the only example of me using this method in my own work. It's also showing up a lot in my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age setting for Pathfinder and DND, and you can clearly see it in the elves and orcs books I've released where I've attempted to take some elements of Tolkien's original creation and show them in a different light. However, you've also seen this strategy at work if you've read Salem's Lot by Stephen King, where the celebrated author eschews the evolution of the sexy, tortured vampire and gets back to basics with a riff that's much closer Bram Stoker's original novel. You see this in more modern werewolf stories that reach back to the idea of a curse where the host has no control over what happens, and you could even see it in romance novels where the Norseman is the love interest because of his grooming and personal care just as much as because of his sword arm or linguistic skills.

There's two reasons this strategy works.

The first is that for older readers, they're seeing something familiar in a new light. It can bring back nostalgic feelings, and give them a new twist on an old recipe. The second is that for some readers, either due to their age or experience (or lack thereof) in the genre, your work will be the first time they've seen things written with those older aesthetics, rules, or sensibilities in place, which will make it feel new and unique to them.

In either situation, you come out ahead.

So if you're wracking your brain trying to re-invent the wheel, consider for a moment if you might actually make more progress (and get more interesting results) using an earlier design rather than attempting to build off of the version everyone already knows today.

Looking For Additional Reading?

If you're looking for additional stuff to check out before you go, might I recommend the following?

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities: I've been up to my elbows in professional fantasy world building for most of this year, and these are the tips I've found most useful for making sure places feel organic, no matter how fantastical they are.

- The Silver Raven Chronicles Part One: Devil's Night: A free fantasy short story, this tale begins in the old quarter of the city of Kintargo. A rumor whispers in the corners of a ghost risen from the past to take Cheliax to task for allowing devils into its heart, and its throne room. Most don't believe it... but one of the city's dottari finds this ghost is all too real when it steps out of the shadows with a message for her to spread to her fellow enforcers. They are no longer welcome in his city.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Fantasy Writers, If You're Just Changing Something's Name, Don't Bother

How many times have you been reading a book, and come across what sounds like a really unique fantasy race? They're mysterious, they seem to be powerful, and there are whispers about fallen empires and hidden civilizations that might provide a clue to the current plot. Maybe you start getting excited, wondering when the big reveal for the Gethredgi is going to happen. Then, when our heroes find themselves in the depths of a darkened forest, they're suddenly surrounded by strange, shadowy shapes. Then one of them steps forward... and it's just an elf.

Ears? Check. Strange instruments? Check. Perfect hair? Big check on that.

It doesn't just look like an elf, though... it's an elf through and through. Nature loving, aloof, unusual but alluring, etc., etc. Basically the only thing different is the name, and it turns out that all the smoke and mirrors about lost empires or shadowy rumors was just a trick to keep them off-screen long enough that the reader didn't realize your big lead up was to a copy-paste of the same creatures we've seen since Tolkien put his stamp on the genre.

This is a problem that a lot of fantasy writers run into. They want their world and setting to feel different and unique, but they don't want to stretch too far outside of the tropes established by Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and other fantasy mainstays. Because yes these short, burly, bearded master craftsmen who live in the depths of the earth and tend to be warriors are still a thing... but we're calling them the Sha'an instead of dwarves. And these big brutes who like to fight, are hard to hurt, and have a lovely combination of green skin and tusks totally aren't orcs... they're, uh, the Miskai.

If you've ever found yourself doing this, I want you to slap yourself in the face. Hard. Now stop doing this, because you're not doing yourself or your work any favors.

The Name Isn't What Makes You Unique

Too often writers confuse changing the traditional name of something with actual innovation (note that this also applies to minor cosmetic changes, like giving your elves silvery hair, or making your dwarves gray-skinned). If you haven't actually gotten down under the skin of a story element and altered the way it works and functions, then you haven't actually made something new or unique. You've just stolen a car, spray-painted it a different color, and are now trying to tell us it's a different car.

What's worse is that nine times out of ten you're just going to piss off readers because you're essentially expecting them to treat these minor alterations as if they somehow get you away from the accepted mythology surrounding these creatures.

Make your orcs rum-running, dirtbike-riding anarchists, and NOW you've got our attention.

Interestingly, though, if you leave the names the same but change everything else, you'll find that you both have a whole new monster on your hands, and that your readers will be excited about it.

As an example, take vampires. There have been a lot of different versions of them over the years, and we've seen them re-invented time and time again. We've seen them portrayed as the undead, the strigoi, as shambling, zombie-like creatures, as carriers of a plague, as immortal beauties, and we've seen them as split-faced, whip-tongued monstrosities.

Any time there was a huge change in these creatures, they were still called vampires. Whether it was moving from a mystical to a biological explanation, taking them from monsters to sex symbols, or making them from beautiful creatures into hideous freaks, there were huge shifts in the mythology, weaknesses, strengths, powers, and even appearance of these creatures. But they were always called vampires as a way to deliberately play on audience expectations, which would then be subverted.

By changing superficial things, though, you're doing the opposite of that. You're promising your audience that your creatures, magic system, wizards, what have you, are totally different, but then giving them the same old same that they're used to.

Don't Be Afraid To Stay The Same (Or To Change)

Too often genre writers are overly concerned with uniqueness and originality in terms of the tropes they're using. While you should definitely think about those things, what's more important is the story you're telling, and the characters whose journey we're following. As I said back in Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, and Professor Awesome's University Explains Why, everything about your setting is the backdrop against which your story is actually happening. So while unique cities, bizarre magic systems, or a ground-up re-imagining of fantasy race mainstays will be unique, they won't be the things that keep your readers reading.

They'll read for your story, and your story is (or at least should be) about characters.

So if you get too bogged-down in worrying that your elves are too Tolkien, or your demons are too Moorcock, and your rebellious princess just feels like punk rock Disney, take a moment, and ask the important question; are your characters compelling? And if you feel the answer is yes, ask if leaning on these other tropes weakens your story.

If it doesn't, don't give yourself an ulcer over trying to re-invent the wheel.

Because sure, if your orcs look just like the Uruk-hai, and your elves are master archers, some people are probably going to roll their eyes a bit. But if your characters are good, and your story is solid, people are more than happy to walk down a road that has a few familiar sign posts on it.

And if you really want to give them a different experience, don't just throw on a different coat of paint. Dig deep, and go nuts with it!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing installment. If you have examples where a creator tried to seem new and different by just slapping some new labels onto existing tropes, and it really didn't work, leave them in the comments below! For more of my work, go check out my Vocal archive where I write about gaming, sexuality, geeky things, horror, and a ton of other stuff, too. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider either Buying Me A Ko-Fi to leave a one-time tip, or consider joining The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, which is my bread-and-butter for making content just like this. Either way, there's a free book and my gratitude in it for you.