When New Ideas Demand Big Changes
For the past three months, I’ve been head-down on my worldbuilding project. I haven’t done nearly as much writing as I hoped 一 only about 15,000 words of an unfinished novel. But, odd as it may sound, I’m okay with that.
Why? Well, I decided to make a big change. And I really can’t stress that enough: Out of all the worldbuilding and brainstorming I’ve ever done, nothing feels quite as big as this.
Varheim has gone through a lot of iterations. But this single pivot is unlike anything I’ve attempted before. I’m talking about a comprehensive shift so enormous that I literally can’t undo it, so I’ve taken a lot of extra care (and time) to make sure I get it right.
And after all that foundation-building, I'm ready to share my big idea. I can sum it up in one word.
Anthropomorphism.
A long look in the mirror
No wait, don’t leave yet! Just hear me out before you pass judgment on the idea.
For a lot of you 一 even people who know me very well 一 a big change like this might be a bit of a shock. After all, I spent the last few years building brand new races to inhabit this world. I wrote an entire novel just to make sure these cultures could coexist alongside classic fantasy races (elves, dwarves, etc.) while still creating a new setting you’d want to explore.
But even after all that work, I think this is the right move for me and my creative energies.
The latest iteration of Varheim has been 3 years in the making. And as I shared a few months ago, I’d already been thinking of ways to merge this setting with other fantasy worlds I’d developed: Teragon, the setting of four novels I wrote from 2008-2013; and Myden, where I’d written a half-dozen short stories (and two unfinished novels) over the past decade.
As it stands, Varheim is the culmination of 15 years of work. Half of my life has gone into these ideas…but for what? For four novels that only a handful of people have read? To create a playground for me to daydream about as a high school/college student?
It started to feel like a waste, if I’m honest. It was hard to find motivation, because any new project would just go on a hard drive with the others 一 a cave where stories went to die.
I needed a window at the top of this cave. A point of light to work towards. Something that’s always up there, breathing new life into old ideas and giving me a clear mission.
And I think anthropomorphism can do that.
Lightning in a bottle
I’ve always been fascinated by anthropomorphism. Sure, it’s something I saw a lot in children’s books. But it’s also a concept that has sort of always been in storytelling, whether it’s modern video games like Backbone or some of humanity’s oldest oral traditions like Aesop’s Fables. (It’s also something I see a lot on worldbuilding forums, so I know I’m not alone.)
This isn’t something I did without a lot of thought. And of the hundreds or even thousands of words I read on the topic, one particular article gave me a lot to consider. This comment really hit home:
“Fantasy mirrors, warps, and intensifies the real world, and animals are the perfect reflections of humans, in all our ambiguous glory.”
As a writer, I am always amazed when I (usually by accident) manage to articulate a complex emotion. There is something about the fantasy genre that has always resonated with me on this level, and it’s part of what compels me to write stories even if nobody will read them.
One day I’ll write about Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” and how he and C.S. Lewis saw fantasy as a unique opportunity to explore deep, often-unknown seeds buried in the human psyche. But today is not that day. Today I want to end with a long quote from that same article about why anthropomorphic heroes are so engaging, regardless of how “grown-up” we become:
“[A story similar to] Redwall and Mouse Guard … pulls off the holy grail of worldbuilding: creating a place that’s wholly unlike our own world, yet full of characters that draw us in right away. After all, no author will ever have to pause the story to explain what a squirrel or a dog is.
“We don’t just know squirrels and dogs and cats — we long to know them better, to see through their eyes … Experiencing stories through the eyes of animals lets us piggyback on their access to primal feelings and experiences that cut to the quick: real danger, raw emotion, intense wonder, and clear vision.
“I confess, I love animal stories (enough that I’ve even written one myself). I sit enthralled as each new entry in the genre proves there’s still plenty of life to be found in the old basic ingredients … And what’s really got me excited lately, especially since finishing Watership Down on Netflix, is the persistent thought that there’s an opening right now for a new, generation-defining anthropomorphic epic.
“It’s been almost a decade since the final Redwall novel, and while we do still have Warriors and Mouse Guard installments to look forward to, I’ve got a feeling there’s something big coming around the bend — a tale massive in scope and diverse in zoology, a Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn of mice, squirrels, and toads.”
Now, I don’t aspire to write some grand, sweeping epic for a new generation of fantasy. I don’t dream of being in a pantheon alongside Tolkien and R.A. Salvatore and Terry Brooks, authors whose stories continue to inspire me. Obviously those things would be amazing, but I hold no illusions that my little worldbuilding project will polish up to reveal a genre-defining masterpiece.
At the end of the day, all I want is a world that excites me and sparks new ideas. I want to be able to share those ideas with my son. And perhaps most importantly, I hope those stories fuel his imagination in the same way that my dad’s collection of books changed my life.