From The Backlist: "Stealing From the Ancients: Weaving Mythology into Your Fiction"

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Here on Supernatural Underground blog we have an awesome backlist, so one of our 2024 resolutions is to share more of it with you.

 In this very week, way back in 2011 (oh my!) the fabulous Tera Lynn Childs posted on Stealing from the Ancients: Weaving Mythology into Your Fiction.

We think it's just as relevant today as it was then, so for those who missed it the first time, here's an excerpt of the goodness again (with a link to click through and read it all.)

The Pleiades (by Elihu Vedder)

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From The Backlist: "Stealing From the Ancients: Weaving Mythology into Your Fiction" by Tera Lynn Childs

"I was at a loss for what to write about today, so I put out a call on Facebook for what people wanted to know more about. Heather Long responded with the fabulous topic of how to weave mythology into fiction. And since I have done this very thing in all five of my completed, accepted, and published/about-to-be-published books, then I feel like I can speak about this with some authority. At least in the method I use to weave myth into my books.

Of course mine aren't the only books out there dealing with mythology, and there are at least three different ways to approach it.

• use actual, literal gods, goddesses, and other bits of myth in your story (ex/ Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan)
• write a historical novel from the point of view of a mythological character (ex/ Nobody's Princess and Nobody's Prize by Esther Friesner)
• create a contemporary fantasy world in which characters are related to/descended from mythological characters (ex/ my books)

Though there are advantages and disadvantages to each, I think the reason I prefer the third method is that it gives me the most creative freedom. The closer you are to the actual myth, the more you have to stay true to it. In my worlds, the myths of ancient Greece date back more than two thousand years. The written myths end... but the mythological word continues. Between then and now I can create whatever history I want.

In the Oh. My. Gods. books, I didn't stray too far. I gave descendants to the virgin goddesses, gave illegitimate children to the goddess of marriage, and made Plato's real life Academy a school for descendants of the gods. The mermaids in the Forgive My Fins books are descended from an ancient ancestor who was granted mer powers by Capheira, one of Poseidon's sea nymphs. But in Medusa girls trilogy, I take my mythology tweaking to the next level. I basically rewrote the truth about Medusa.

The trick to playing around with mythology, with the canon of myths that we as a culture have known and learned for millennia, is to go one step beyond, to blur the line between what was written and what wasn't. I can't say that Hera had half-human children in ancient times, but who knows what's happened in the centuries since then? There is no mythological proof that mermaids owe their powers to Capheira, but there is no proof that they don't either. And with Medusa, while I couldn't just erase her legacy as a hideous, murderous monster, I could create a believable backstory that explains why we only think that is true.

That's the wonderful thing about mythology: it never tells the complete story..."

 

To read the full post and the comments, click here. 

 

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To find out more about Tera Lynn Childs and her writing, visit her on Myths, Mermaids, and Magic

 

Enjoy!