From The Backlist: "What If? Folklore As A Source" by Melissa Marr

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We love this post by the great Melissa Marr on where her stories come from, specifically their folklore origins. We're sure you'll love it, too, so read on and enjoy!

"What If?" Folklore As A Source

 by Melissa Marr

One of the questions every writer hears regularly is “where do you get your ideas?” Answers to this one range from quips to “everything” to very specific “this story came from ___.” All of these are true answers (or, they can be. . . writers being writers, there are inevitably truth-bendings going on sometime. ...) Every story I have started begins with a “what if” or a “what next.” Moreover, every one of those is connected to folklore or/and fairy tales in some way.

Life and Lore in My Texts

My first novel, Wicked Lovely, utilizes a few fairy tale tropes--in part for the purpose of defying them. There's a curse that can only be broken by finding the "fated love"...of course, the fated love doesn't quite want to be found, and the cursed faery is already in love with someone he hoped was his fated love, but wasn't...sorta, maybe. I had good fun playing with questions of volition and power here, the idea of what happily-ever-after means, and other fairy tale tidbits like a "woken with a kiss" scene wherein being "woken" is an awakening (i.e. epiphany rather than literally awakening). That novel is also very rooted in a folklore, specifically tales of Cailleach Bheur and of the King of Summer.

I used some of the same lore and fairy tale tropes in a short story in Cricket in 2007. It derives, in part, from my on-going love of Cailleach Bheur, but in it the protag is a girl who carries "Winter's Kiss" and feels it a burden rather than a joy. I added this to a world in which global warming is a problem, and threw in my childhood dream of traveling with an ice-bear (polar bear) that is a result of a fairy tale, & well, it became a story about a girl who carries winter and boy who is also a bear. ...

Why Write From Folklore

I didn’t intend to write these things. In many ways, writing is a bit of an accident for me. I grew up with these sorts of stories, the supernatural wasn’t just the stuff in my books, it was/is real in my family. I’ve been told not to go places because of the various creatures lurking out there; I’ve also been sent out to “catch” a faery that was lurking around the woodpile. I’m passing that tradition on to my children as best I can.

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How Do I Learn This Stuff?

It’s really a case of write what I know. After a folklore saturated childhood, I grew up and became a lit major and after that a lit teacher at university. My focus areas were Romantic, Victorians, & the American South. Mmmm. Ghosts, Byronic heroes, Frankenstein, Dracula, the “Mortal Immortal,” Southern Gothic! Oh yes, literature is riddled with some weird stuff. Delicious, macabre, and addictive. Stir the lit into the lore, and I was on my way to being where I am now. Somewhere in there, I also discovered scholarly journals . . . FOLKLORE and THE LION AND THE UNICORN and MARVELS AND TALES (among others). ...

*pauses*

Yeah, I get to read what interests me, drown in it, and I know that somewhere along the line, I’ll get that moment where I say, “oooooh, what if . . .”

What a fabulous post! It's a lovely indepth one, too, so we've only given you the abridged version here. To absorb the complete goodness, just click on through to the original, here.

To read more about Melissa and her writing, go here.