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WriteOn! Angels, Demons, Ghosties and Ghoulies [1]

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Date: 2022-10-27

Before we get started, who’s going to set a goal for NaNoWriMo next month? If you put the goal in the comments, I will start a box list we can use each week.

Here at WriteOn, we are not picky about goals. Set one that works for you.

Goals for NaNo

Any sentient species must eventually confront its own mortality, and find a way to face it with equanimity. In much of the human race, this has meant religion, but that is not the only way to go. We also face the utterly mysterious workings of the universe, and wonder about them. Are there gods and are they benevolent, tyrannical, uncaring, capricious…. Are there other spirit beings, good, bad, or indifferent to us? What becomes of the human spirit after death?

Also, much that is inexplicable will be “explained” by mythology, before scientific explanations become available. If you don’t understand electricity, lightning sure looks like a weapon!

But then, science itself can bring us up against the inexplicable, and possibly open the door to things we thought we had decided were fantasy. If there are eleven spatial dimensions, not three, is it possible that other beings could inhabit other subsets of those dimensions and only maybe impinge on ours at random points? And what might be their attitude toward us? [if an entire ecosystem of such exists, there could be many different attitudes.] Benign curiosity, predatory intent, helpful, indifferent, even unaware?

Could an alien species have interacted with us in the distant past and left folk memories of gods, demons, faeries, dragons, etc.? Have we ever interacted with our own distant descendants via time travel? Quantum theory seems to say that information, at least, could travel both ways on the timeline. Or that all times simultaneously exist. Or something.

Is a soul a denizen of other dimensions? Can the essence of a person survive the death of the body? Do we reincarnate, and as what?

Maybe the inanimate really isn’t? Is Gaia a real consciousness? An emergent property of the interconnected ecosystems of the world? Or just a convenient way of talking about homeostatic mechanisms?

When you are writing in your own fictional world, all these questions and more are wide open. Both what is “real” in your world, and what each culture you write believes is real, can be determined by you. And you don’t have to believe in any of it, to write as if it is real.

Writers of urban fantasy need to dig into the myths of the cultures they touch on, which could be several different ones in a large city!

What if they are real?

From Mercedes Lackey, Arcanum 101:

Diana Tregarde, student Guardian, on a case that involves a kidnapping and a psychic vampire, is visiting where a would-be mage who is Jewish tries to help find the kidnapped child by magic. She ends up fighting what he summons:

“I need sulfur, a shofar, a Bible, and candles. NOW!” “When I say, read the Commandments and tell the thing we are not going to accept it and help it find a home.” … Di blew the shofar, the sulfur smoke blowing out into the living room behind her. “Light two candles and start reading!” she shouted at Zaak. … “Start invoking holy names!” Didn’t matter that she wasn’t Jewish. Zaak was and so was the dybbuk. She was just the Champion. … When he got to Micha-el, the sword went up in a blaze of fire. The horde of black shapes, confined by the circle, whirled around her...but every time one tried, she sliced, and there was a sizzle and a line of fire, and the shape was gone. … “What did you try to call? Specifically?” “I thought I’d get a wandering spirit, ‘cause, y’know, something like that could go hunting for Melanie...” “When you do an unspecified summoning, you moron, you get what your heritage calls. And in your case, the only wandering spirits that the Jews have, are the dybbuks. The unrestful, unconsecrated spirit of one of your people...”

{and it turns out the baddie they have to fight is a devotee of Cybele, yet a different mythos}

In Children of the Night, she has to fight a gaki , a Japanese soul eater, with light as well as physical weapons.

But in Drums , Jennifer Talldeer has to deal with a mi-ah-lushka, an Osage ghost of a person without honor. And she consults, in the spirit world in the form of her spirit animal, with Grandmother Spider, and ends up dancing as the way of tricking the evil spirit back into the West where he belongs, with the help of Coyote and Mockingbird.

Different cultures, different beliefs, different techniques. Each time, the author is treating the mythologies as real.

Pratchett’s Discworld gods are vaguely Graeco-Roman to start, but quickly head off in his own inimitable fashion, incorporating every part of the Discworld and acting just as juvenile as, frankly, pantheons DO act in most myths. But funnier.

Offler the Crocodile looked up from the playing board which was, in fact, the world. “All right, who doth he belong to?” he lisped. “We’ve got a clever one here.” There was a general craning of necks among the assembled deities, and then one put up his hand. “And you are…?” said Offler. “The Almighty Nuggan. I’m worshipped in parts of Borogravia. The young man was raised in my faith.” “What do Nugganiteth believe in?” “Er...me. Mostly me. And followers are forbidden to eat chocolate, ginger, mushrooms and garlic.” Several of the gods winced. “When you prohibit you don’t meth about, do you?” said Offler ________________________________________________________ (the worshipper actually meets the god) “You utter, utter… fifteen years! Fifteen damn years before I ever tasted garlic! … The minstrel shouldered the Horde aside and advanced on the retreating god, his lyre raised like a club. “Broccoli,” murmured Offler to Sweevo, God of Cut Timber. “You can’t go wrong with broccoli.” “I prohibit the practice of panupunitoplasty,” said Sweevo. “What’th that?” “Search me, but it’s got them worried.”

And even if you decide none of these things are real, that doesn’t stop your characters from believing in them.

Beliefs show up in all sorts of ways, in gestures and habits, in common phrases, in clothing and jewelry, in assumptions a stranger may fail to take into account, as well as in blatant and annoying proselytizing.

One of Lythande’s favorite phrases is “while we await the final battle between Law and Chaos”, showing her culture’s eschatology. But she goes about her life normally. What about those who are absolutely convinced the world is coming to an end? How do they behave?

Gestures, amulets, painted signs, bundles of herbs, and many more possibilities, may be attempts to ward off the evil eye, demons, or ghosts — or to invoke guardian angels, totem spirits, or ancestors.

What if someone’s upbringing has saddled them with beliefs that conflict with their adult career? What if a belief system gains power and tries to shut down previously normal lives?

What happens when two or more different belief systems collide [hello, abortion conflict]?

Challenge: Write a vignette that shows an aspect of culture in your world influenced by the supernatural, or by the belief in the supernatural.

Write On! will be a regular Thursday night diary (8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific) until it isn’t. Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.

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