There may be one of you, out there somewhere, wondering why I chose "folkfable" for the address of this blog. It's not exactly euphonic, really; perhaps it's the doubling of the f-sound. The name is really just a slightly different take on "folktale" or "folklore" - and to be completely honest I'd far rather have taken one of those names, but words so common and well-established had probably long ago been taken and weren't an option for me to take myself.
It's not surprising, is that. There's something about words like "folklore" - they bring to mind the sense of magic, and great encyclopaedic compendia detailing different creatures and characters that live in the corners of houses or in caves or high on mountain peaks. Folklore, from my perspective, is a way of explaining the world, and building a sense of history and meaning to aspects of the experienced environment and lived culture. A folktale in relation is a means of expression of that - something which communicates that worldview, that history, that environment and that culture.
And it's funny what you learn when you're exploring folklore and reading folktales. I had initially thought the name for so-called bog lights and fairy lights, will-o'-wisps, referred to the will, the sentient driving force, of the light. It turns out the "will" portion is, by folktale, a reference to a character called Will, doomed to remain in our world after death by his lack of prudence and sense during life. Whether the aetiology is reactive - that it is an attempt to explain an existent name for an existent phenomenon - I'm not sure, as I profess to be no expert folklorist...but I'm tempted to wonder. My idea of the name referring to the mind of the fire itself seems so much more appealing.
But that's my point, I think - that folklore is a way of giving meaning to something noticed and seen. There's folklore surrounding the name of the will-o'-wisp, expressed in folktale and my own inane attempts at explaining it before I read (not more than a week ago, in fact) that the name seems explicable as a literal name, a proper noun. The actual phenomenon has its own folklore, though of course the two are intimately bound together to give sense to each.
Also my point is to suggest that I like folklore. In essence, that's what I'm currently focusing my writing efforts upon: the establishment of my own voice in telling folklore tales. Fables, I suppose, makes sense - one can't really have a tale without some kind of remedy or resolution. People haven't historically really been fans of cliffhangers, unless they lead directly into the next portion of the story and tell some wider part of a greater story.
I have admiration for those who are willing to sit down and try to knock out some kind of massive, sweeping opus, particularly when they've built up their own histories and invented their own worlds in the process. I'm not at all unlike the many people out there who love the escapism of entirely new settings, far away from the expectations of our hum-drum daily existences. We live in relatively predictable times wherein work is the major motivating force behind a lot of what we do, and (pretty sadly) enjoying life and loved ones is something we squeeze into our spare time if we have enough time to really have any spare. And the whole point in reading fiction is for a sense of escapism, as well as the associated feelings of investment and being privy to the events and aftermath of storyland crises (though I don't mean to say these are the only points. Everyone has their own motivation for reading). I dare say it's also why people love movies so much - entertainment in the form of being shown a story, rather than just being told it, is a chance to invest in something else, to follow from start to finish the events that occur to someone or someones, as if we have experienced them ourselves.
I know, I've studied graphic design: "there are no original thoughts; everything has been thought of before". I don't necessarily subscribe to that viewpoint - it's a horrifically general and pseudo-omniscient perspective and, unlike some people I've met before, I don't really have time, energy or desire to still believe (like we all do when we're younger and think we know everything anyway) that I have greater knowledge or am just more correct than anyone else and can possibly say "hey, let's all be cynical and talk about how limited we are and how much everything is just a repeat of an earlier idea. True originality is an illusion, man...". But. Well, folklore - already established and well-attested to - is by nature unoriginal.
I like that. Folklore is very informative and can be very influential when trying to tell stories that are in their own specific form quite original. Many stories aren't original by way of being a completely out-of-left-field tale that bears no similarity to any story ever and every motif within it is utterly new and ne'er-seen-before, but they're original in the way they describe what happens, how they string events together, the perspectives they take. A story that possesses its own lore must, on more than just the "I didn't plagiarise this" level, be relatively original. Even if set in a world already known about, if the story itself is something which enhances the lore in general, if it expands the world in question and has its own reason for being, then that story is original. I don't know I'd call my seemingly plot-less version of a sequel to Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter original by merit of involving characters and the world of Ms. Jansson's invention, but in terms of the story within the context of the setting, the story itself was original. Embarrassingly ill-thought-through I'm certain, though my own memory fails me, but "original".
I struggled for a while to summarise to anyone who asked what I tend to write. I mean, should I give a summary of the plot? Should I describe it as fantasy, but not sweeping, epic, completely other-worldly, or focused on saving the world from imminent destruction? Well, I have before. It wasn't long ago, though, that the word "folklore" sort-of just coalesced in my mind. I hadn't really been thinking about it, and I can't remember having read it around the time - but that's exactly what I'm writing.
Well, folktales, I should say. The point of them isn't to be in a specific place in a specific year, or anything of the sort; there're no sweeping moments of epic battle, either. What I want to write about are local things: events that happen to people that may, if the story were to be told any other way and the moment of peripety were any other, continue on to be larger or have farther-reaching consequences, but that remain close to the ground and never seek to be too epic. I like real characters. I like flaws. I like faults. I like ill-considered actions and things being swept under the rug. I suppose that could be the same reason I like mythology, particularly Greek - the Trojan War has its place and is suitably adventurous and, again, epic, but in epic battle people become figures and lose their personhood...and I don't like that. I prefer reading about the conflicts, the successes, the humanity in the mythology. That the mythology is a tremendous genealogy certainly doesn't do it any disservice, but even ignoring that, understanding the human emotions of Perseus, of Atalanta, of Echo and of Tieresias is far more fulfilling for me than is hearing about the wine-dark sea and how glorious Achilleus was. It's funny, that's the first time I've really been able to articulate it in those terms: too great the story's scale and the personalities in it get lost and swamped. For me, at least. Others love the drama and movement from one high-stakes event to the next.
That's exciting, but it's not really a folktale, to me. I've quite liked The Hobbit each time I've read it (and no doubt will again in the future) because it's about a flawed, selfish/selfless character who goes on an adventure despite himself, whereas The Lord of the Rings, as much as I loved that the one time I read it (I admittedly lost focus in The Return of the King), really ended up being a series of events and convoluted detail that happened to some characters with whom I never forged the same bond. The story there was about the events and preventing or rectifying them, rather than about the characters experiencing events. Even as fleeting as many of the characters' appearances are in my novella, I still make sure that the story (and their parts therein) detail them experiencing events, rather than events occurring to otherwise austere people.
I don't know whether that makes any sense at all. To me it seems as if folklore and folktales are basically what my writing focus is, at least for now. Perhaps that's why the Moomintroll book of Tove Jansson struck that chord with me - on the one hand, here was/is this magical, fantastic and fabulous reality constructed around this central character and secondary characters, a bit incredible and leaving me a bit disturbed, in a good way; on the other, anything and everything that happened was local, small of focus, decidedly non-epic, and perfectly complete because none of it ever needed to be a way to save the world from immediate, imminent hellfire. I love that. Not everything needs to be a literary Hollywood blockbuster with dragons, larger-than-life actions and even larger reactions, or impossibly meandering plots about saving the world. If a story has all the special effects and drama already, then cool...but I'm really quite enamoured with the idea of folktales. That's the kind of story I want to tell.
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