Writer to writer: From think to ink - Gail Carson Levine 2014
Creature creation
Character nitty-gritty
Another kind of character needing development is the sort we’re unlikely to meet in real life: beings such as fairies, elves, dragons. Elizabeth asked on the blog, “I’m working on a novella right now about dragons, Gail, and I was curious about your take on dealing with magical creatures.”
(A novella, for anyone who isn’t sure, sits in length and complexity between a short story and a novel.)
Since magical creatures don’t exist—or I believe they don’t—we can invent our own versions of them. Before I let my imagination run wild, I think about the role a particular creature is going to play in my story. I ask myself what this character will have to do and be.
Let’s take dragons, since Elizabeth mentioned them.
In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, dragons are one of the species of monsters that plague the kingdom, so they can’t be good. After I decided that, I worked on the form their evil might take. And that’s the second question you can ask yourself. Evil, yes. But evil how? Use what we discussed in the last chapter: Simply evil, or evil in a complicated way? Sympathetic, yes or no? Likable, yes or no?
Suppose we want our dragons not to be villains, however. Suppose we want them to be allies of the tree-dwelling clan, the Opkos, against the cave-dwelling beetle people, the Ditnits. Lots of follow-up questions flow from this decision: How do the dragons help? Are these flying dragons? How smart are they? How do they communicate with the Opkos? Through speech or in some other way?
It’s writing time! List three more questions you can ask about the dragons in this scenario. Answer them. Then write a scene involving the first contact between a main character of the Opkos clan and a dragon who is going to be important in your story.
As we progress in the writing, we may discover that we’ve imagined traits for the creatures that don’t fit our plot as it develops, so we have to go back and revise, which is fine and necessary. This happened to me with tiffens, creatures I invented for Fairies and the Quest for Never Land. I got too elaborate, and some of the characteristics didn’t work, so I dropped them.
At some point in the questions you asked yourself, you probably moved from plot demands to pure invention, another fun part of the process. For this, we can think about the usual portrayal of a creature and ask how we can diverge while keeping enough of its essence that it’s still recognizable. There’s a lot of leeway. For example, we could even get away with a dragon mouse—a scaly mouse with a long snout, and fire no bigger than a match flame. In Ella Enchanted, the dragon is a baby, tiny with a tiny flame.
Unless we’re writing fan fiction, we should stay away from dragon representations we’ve encountered in contemporary books. Anne McCaffrey’s series springs to my mind, as does Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle. If there are dragons in novels you’ve read, think about how you can make yours different. Let’s take my Masteress Meenore from A Tale of Two Castles as an example. IT is a detective dragon. You can write a detective dragon too without stepping on my authorial toes, but don’t also make IT stink of sulfur and refuse to reveal ITs gender and have gorgeous translucent wings.
I like a sense of wonder in fantasy. I achieve this in Meenore with ITs wings, ITs smoke that changes color according to ITs emotional state, and ITs facility at the game of knucklebones. So there’s a new question: What is likely to astonish the reader in a good way?
Another consideration is the amount of power we’re going to give our creatures. This often comes up with fairies, who can do anything in traditional fairy tales. Omnipotence (limitless power) can be a problem for us modern writers, because we don’t want the fairies swooping in and saving our MC. We want her to save herself. So how much power do our fairies or dragons have? How does their power work? For example, for fairies does the power reside in the magic wand? Or in spells? Or somehow in the fairy herself? In my Disney Fairies books, the fairies’ power is limited to their talents. The water talent fairies, for example, control only water. Also, the magic is enhanced by fairy dust; without the dust they’re hardly magical at all.
Power for evil has to be limited, too. If our dragon is evil and can destroy everything and is unstoppable, there’s no story. Our evil creature needs an Achilles’s heel, a way she can be stopped.
We needn’t limit ourselves to the standard roster of imaginary creatures, either. We can go to mythology for other kinds of critters, like the hydra, a serpent with nine heads. And we can create our own. Again, we think of our story and the kind of creature we may need. Do we want to make it up entirely or combine creatures? A coyote and an eagle? A boa constrictor and a hippo? If made up entirely, how big is it? What are its powers? Think of ten more questions you can ask about your new creation. Answer them.
Going against my usual method, let’s not consider our story first. Instead, let’s start with our creature and think of a tale to go with him. If we’re taking this route, we’ll begin with what his problems may be. Our next step is to figure out how he might approach the problems. Then, as in any story, our job is to make trouble for him and keep him from achieving his goals easily. So that’s another prompt: Decide what your creature’s problem is or what he wants. List several possibilities. Pick one and start your story. Keep going.
Have fun, and save what you write!