Tag Archives: Storytelling

Unintentional Parallels in Storytelling

One of the great things about writing fantasy is the amount of research needed to write a convincing story: i.e., very little. I don’t necessarily need to learn about how medieval feudal society worked in detail, because I can always just say that, well, my society is different.

Of course, even in fantasy there are advantages to research nonetheless; depending on how convincing you want your fantasy to be – and in particular how close to a real-world setting you intend it – it can be worth seeing how you can parallel ideas, concepts and actions from the real world in your own writing. For example, in The Redemption of Erâth, there is a lot of travel involved between towns, cities and countries, over vast distances, often by foot or by horse. It was important to me to set realistic timescales for these travels, so I looked into average paces for wilderness walking and riding to estimate how long it would take to travel, say, a hundred miles.

Similarly, when discussing things like ships, or sailing, I wanted to keep to a realistic sense of being on a sailing vessel, so I researched terminology, techniques and concepts when on the water.

However, the story and plot itself – in any fiction – is pure invention, of course; except that it really isn’t, because it’s impossible to deny the influence that other writing has on your own. In writing The Redemption of Erâth, I knew I would be drawing heavily on influences from classic fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings – more stylistically than anything – but within the realm of my own imagination. When I invented giant, dark wolves called fierundé, I knew of course they were a parallel to Tolkien’s wargs. The starting point of the series, Consolation, is a parallel for the Shire. Even the great city of Erârün, Vira Weitor, is a parallel for Minas Tirith.

But those were conscious decisions I made, drawing on what I held dear in my love of fantasy, and paying homage to the great ideas of the past. What I’ve discovered over time, though, is that there are often unintentional parallels, too – similarities between my writing and something else that I was entirely unaware of. The parallels, of course, can be between my fiction and another fiction, but sometimes something in the very real world crops up and makes me remember that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

For example: this morning while browsing Reddit, I came across an article about a disease called African trypanosomiasis – also referred to as ‘sleeping sickness’. It’s passed on by tsetse flies, and amongst the symptoms are disrupted sleep cycles, fever, aches and pains. For those of you who’ve read the first part of book three, Ancients & Death, you’ll be aware that in the world of Erâth there is a disease called the ‘Sleeping Death’, which – you guessed it – comes with fever, aches and pains, before the victim ultimately passes into sleep and never wakes up.

Now there are significant differences between the two diseases – one real and one fictional – but the parallels are nonetheless uncanny. And would you believe, I had never heard of sleeping sickness before this morning.

In the time since I’ve been writing, I’ve come across other parallels, too. In writing my YA novel 22 Scars, I thought a story focusing on depression and self-harm would be pretty unique. After finishing and publishing it, I discovered many others: Scars, by Cheryl Rainfield, Cut by Patricia McCormick, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, and quite a few others as well. I hadn’t heard of any of these books before writing my own.

It’s a funny thing, and can be a bit discouraging sometimes, because of course we all want to think our ideas are the most original, unique ones out there that nobody else could have thought of. Of course, real life isn’t about that; when you really break it down, every story has already been told in its base essence – tragedy, comedy, etc. – but the details are what make it your own. Because with nearly eight billion people in the world, the likelihood of two individuals’ stories being similar is pretty high. On the flip side, it also means your story – the one you have to tell – is one in eight billion. And that’s pretty unique.

So in the end, I try not to worry about the parallels, or the things that seems like influence, copying or even plagiarism, because I know my influences and I know my inventions. I’m quite open about the deliberate parallels, and have nothing to hide; I just find the unintentional ones fascinating, because how can my mind invent something that, as it turns out, already exists?

The world is a strange and wonderful place, indeed.

To Trope or Not to Trope? A Balancing Act

One of the things I’m highly aware of in my fantasy work, The Redemption of Erâth, is that there are quite a few parallels and similarities to many other fantasy novels out there. From character names to events and creatures, I’ve borrowed heavily from the great fantasy masters that came before me to craft a world that, whilst unique, might feel suspiciously familiar to those who already know well Middle-Earth, Narnia, or Westeros.

That isn’t to say that those same early fantasy writers didn’t borrow themselves; even Tolkien relied heavily on Anglo-Saxon mythology for his invented creatures and languages (though their invention is still masterfully his).

Everything in storytelling is rehashed, recycled and reused eventually, and this is of course where tropes are born. Elves, goblins, fantasy languages and healing herbs find their way into so many fantastical tales that it becomes difficult at times to know which story inspired which. Where did the concept of speaking dragons first come about? Was it Christopher Paolini who popularized them? Was it Tolkien? Was it in Beowulf?

Tropes have become so frequent in the canon of popular fantasy that even using them has, in some circles, become a trope of its own. Articles such as this one from The Toast point out so many of those frequent fantasy themes that one bows one’s head in shame to find them in one’s own work. (There may or may not be quite a few in my own.)

So when is it acceptable to use a trope?

But here’s the thing: tropes have their uses. They help to define genres, for a start; after all, what defines a fantasy novel? Typically the concepts of an alternate world or history, yet one bound strictly to a single place or planet (as opposed to sci-fi), languages that don’t really exist, and mythical tales, quests and demons, all play a part in helping the reader to establish the type of novel to expect. If one were to open to a page that contained sentences such as, “She caressed his chest, as smooth and hard as the Glock 9mm she kept in her purse,” we’d probably have a very different concept of what sort of book we were reading.

So when is it acceptable to use a trope, and when does it cross the line? Is there a difference between a loving homage and outright plagiarism? And what is the tolerance of a reader to coming across the same concepts over and over again?

In my own fantasy novels, I’ve tried hard to navigate the line between these two realms. I do not have elves, or orcs – though I do have races other than ‘men’. I do not have any ‘magic’, or at least anything along the lines of the Harry Potter universe (or even words of ‘power’, such as in The Lord of the Rings) – but I do have unexplainable phenomena. I do have a mythical weapon of legend to be found. I do have numerous languages and civilizations. Perhaps most importantly, I do have a young orphan who is taken in by his grandfather when his parents die in a fire.

I can’t argue that the world of Erâth is utterly unique or inventive, but I do find that these tropes help forward the story itself. You see, what I’m trying to achieve is really a sense of grandeur, of nostalgia, and of lost hope. By the projected end of the series (seven novels in total), the hero will have gained and lost everything – and may not make it out alive (I have yet to decide). In fact, the hero may not even end up being the true ‘hero’. I think that if I focused too hard on making the world and its inhabitants completely ‘original’, it would detract from the actual story I’m trying to tell.

And that’s where I think the balance lies: using tropes to our advantage, whilst not over-relying on them to support the plot. Is it important that a character be able to heal from a wound or illness? Then why not use some healing herbs – a staple of fantasy since time immemorial – so that you can get on with what really matters: the emotional journey of the characters.

At the end of the day, I think there are some authors who spend so much time making their world original that they forget what the story was meant to be about in the first place. I don’t need worlds I’ve never conceived of before, so long as I’m reading about characters I’ve never conceived of before. I don’t need to dream of new and fascinating creatures, so long as the emotional and spiritual journey of the people in the story rings true.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that fantasy can’t be original; it just means that to focus too narrowly on the details risks overlooking the bigger picture: the fact that every story is unique in its telling by the nature of the person telling it. So don’t worry about making your story stand out with details no one cares about; make it stand out with a compelling character arc and an exciting, fresh journey.

In other words, don’t fear the trope.

Foreshadowing versus Retconning

As I enter the sixth year of writing my fantasy series, The Redemption of Erâth, I’m starting to see the difficulties presented in having an outline for seven novels from the beginning, without having a clear idea of exactly what’s going to happen in each one. Events that seemed of the utmost importance from the first book have failed to have any impact on the following two, and I’m left wondering if I ignore those events, find a way to work them back into the story, or come up with a reason why they seemed important at the time, but no longer do.

I’ll give you an example. In the first book, much is made of a mystical sword, once owned by a demon lord from ages past. It’s never made clear what the importance of the sword is, but I had some vague idea at the time that it would become the salvation of the main character to find this sword. By the third book, the sword has become a mutable and frankly indistinct weapon, and it isn’t clear whether it’s even important to find anymore.

This leads to a conflict where, in trying to foreshadow one thing, I’m probably going to have to retcon something instead. These two processes are similar in their results, but have their own difficulties and approaches. Foreshadowing requires knowing in advance the outcome of something yet to be seen or read—which requires meticulous planning—while retconning (retroactive continuity) can be even trickier, as it requires connecting dots into a recognizable shape, despite the dots not being related to each other in the first place.

One of my favorite examples of foreshadowing is in the animated TV series Futurama. In it, a character named Nibbler is discovered to have been responsible for the main character’s fate of being cryogenically frozen for a thousand years. This revelation comes late in the series, with a re-worked version of the pivotal scene. But if one goes back to the very first episode, there is an unaccountable shadow visible—almost exactly the silhouette of the character Nibbler. Thus what appears at first to be a retcon is in fact foreshadowing from the very first episode!

One of the most famous examples of retconning, however, is found in Star Wars. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi states that Darth Vader murdered Anakin Skywalker. Later, in The Empire Strikes Back, he decides to make Darth Vader be Anakin Skywalker. This requires some explanation, so finally in The Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan’s ghost explains that he had told Luke the truth “from a certain point of view”.

Some might argue that foreshadowing is the hallmark of a very serious writer—they clearly have a detailed plan for their work. The truth of the matter may be more benign; a lot of foreshadowing might realistically happen entirely by mistake, or by a clever retcon later in the story. Retcons are often seen as lazy—a quick and easy way to make things sensible without having to worry about it in advance.

I can attest that, despite the most detailed outline and storyboard, the act of writing by definition is fluid and changeable, and things will come out in the moment that weren’t expected, and change the whole story. A character that was supposed to live might die; they might go a different way, or say a different thing. This comes from the very nature of outlining: by definition it isn’t the final story, and coming up with inventive stuff to fill in the blanks naturally leads to changes in the storyline.

Personally I find retconning more fun; it gives me a chance to be extremely inventive, and come up with a reason why a certain event occurred, even if it doesn’t seem to tie in with the logic of the story itself. Foreshadowing, however, is a lot harder, and is therefore something I rarely do deliberately—usually my best foreshadows are complete accidents.

What do you think? Can you tell the difference between a foreshadowing and a retcon? And which do you think is a better example of clever writing?