So we’re a week further on and we’re settled into this writing thing now. One of the biggest challenges we’ve found in creating your own world is making sure you have all the little things in place. Sure, there are the major things like the world, the landscapes and all of those things. But then come other things, making up your own creatures to fit into the world, making up the history of the world. And with all of those things come a host of Folklore, Myths and Legends.
It’s not easy, in the slightest. There are those elements that come easily and you can happily jot down on paper. And then there are others that just … aren’t as easy. These are the ones that require a little more thought, to figure out how they suddenly appear in our story. Where they came from, why they are there. Who passed them down through the centuries to arrive at this point when they’re so ingrained in our characters psyche that they’ve become a part of every day life for them.
With both of us living in Europe, we’ve got a lot of folklore and mythology and legends that we can read through. It’s a great source to get the creative juices flowing when sometimes you come to a halt and think … where are we going with this one? So, alright we ask that question a lot! But, it’s also a good way of making us pausing, taking a breath and saying okay this is what we’re doing.
And this is what we’re doing. Okay, so we’ve taken some of the basic folklore’s and mythologies from are regions and given a twist to them, but it’s a great way to keep these lores and myths alive. Besides, if it gets these myths and legends and folklore out there a little more and encourages others to dig up information on their local areas? It’s more than worth it – we sometimes forget that our own pasts are steeped in all of this, so it’s been a good reminder to us as well that we shouldn’t take all of these things for granted.
In the meantime we’re going to carry on dredging through our newly created folklore and mythology for our story. Sometimes it’s slow going and at other times we’ll whiz through it. But that’s also the nature of writing, and the reward is seeing it all coming together in the end. No doubt we’ll carry on asking each other ‘where are we going with this one’ or even ‘what are we doing?!’ but ultimately we’ll find our way and will carry on weaving our magic with our world and it’s history. And in the end probably have enough material to create our own encyclopedia mythological!
But that’s a long way off. For now we’re both more than happy writing the story that our characters are giving us!
~ Clara
Charlotte and Clara 