Life Must Happen to Write Authentically
Use your life as a rope to climb your mountain.
I have been writing ideas for worlds and stories since I was in elementary school; using words and imagery for escapism but I felt like something was missing from my stories and worlds that was present in my favorite series at the time. My worlds weren’t a Harry Potter or Narnia and my stories and plots weren’t anything but kiddie adventures. My life sped up once I got out of middle school and I noticed a change in my writing style and plot lines. Whether it was from the essays I was forced to write or the number of ego deaths my teachers made me face, I was made aware of one thing: deliberate improvement requires life to happen.
“Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower
The Reality of Fantasy
Being an avid lover of the fantasy genre, you are exposed to a plethora of worlds and characters of different kinds; from the extremely dark and gritty world of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, to the more light and bright world of Narnia by C. S. Lewis; fantasy is filled with many themes and messages, some more obvious and some more subtle.
For example, The Poppy War series by R.F. Kuang features a character named Fang Runin who grows up in the south of a Chinese inspired military empire. On the surface, it’s a revenge story about taking back power but looking more deeply at the characters, you see it as a story of leadership; becoming your own leader even if you’re scared or the odds are against you.
Same for Martin’s series, you see so many characters that have odds stacked against them: a dwarf, women in a patriarchal society, men with disabilities and identities that aren’t accepted. These characters are tested and thrown in situations and adapt and use their skills to overcome their weaknesses.
The writers of the aforementioned books probably never went through the gruesome lives or even half of the challenges faced by their characters but they used their skills and some of their lived experiences to give life to characters in their story; this is no different to what other writers should do, you don’t have to be a bestseller to convey an amazing story, you just have to be true to what you believe and be authentic. Accept your past, live in the present and live for the future.
