Borrowing From Mythology

Posted on | January 28, 2012 | No Comments

One of the defining aspects of humanity is that we like telling stories. We tell stories to entertain each other, to teach each other and to scare each other. We’ve been doing it since Thag The Caveman told Zog The Caveman a story about the mystical god of giving Thag all the meat.

Fortunately the stories we told each other to try and explain the world got a little bit more complex than that and gave rise to a truly astonishing variety of stories, myths and legends that weave in and out of human history.

These old tales can add a spin to your story that something that’s been made up out of whole cloth* just won’t have. Not that the things you invent in your own head are necessarily less, but they won’t have the same sense to them that an element of real mythology will have.

For example; have a look at the first of the Repairman Jack novels by F Paul Wilson. Titled The Tomb the protagonist Jack** fetches up against a family of monsters called Rakosh. These are based (loosely) on the Rakshasa of Hindu folklore. Wilson could easily have called the monstrous flesh eaters something else, however by rooting them in existing mythology it provided a reference point for the magic in the books.

You by no means have to borrow from mythology, and it’s probably not appropriate for your legally accurate courtroom drama (although I personally would love to see a courtroom drama with slavering monstrosities), but if you do need a god or a monster then you can do far worse than looking to humanity’s collective myths for inspiration.

I say inspiration because as much as you’re looking to add the myths to your story, most of them will be improved (at least in regards to your particular story) by you altering them slightly to fit in with the way your narrative works.

Regardless of what you take from mythology and how you alter it for your own purposes, it will benefit you to do the research and have a good understanding of what it is you’re borrowing from. That way if you make a major change, you can at the very least hang a lampshade on it.

Tell me, do you take from mythology in your writing? If so what do you look for?

* One! One cliché! Muhahaha!

** Jack. Just Jack.