For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted to #FairyTaleFlash is “travel or a grand adventure.” As I am currently writing a novel in which King Arthur and many of his warriors go off on a grand adventure, I thought it would be interesting to have Arthur fantasize about it here.
“King Arthur tried to focus on what his advisors were telling him – something related to taxes or the price of grain. All the high king could think of was how much he wished he could just throw his crown away, pull on his armor, and ride off on adventures with his brother.” #FairyTaleFlash
Title page illustration by N. C. Wyeth for “The Boy’s King Arthur” (1922).
For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted to #FairyTaleFlash is “weird, funny, or scary campfire tales.” I decided to make the story not just be a story that’s told at a campfire, but a story that’s actually about a campfire.
The shadows crowded around the campfire as the young campers told their ghost stories and urban legends. The shadows were anxious to hear the words that would shape their forms. They wouldn’t know what sort of monsters they could be until the campers told them. #FairyTaleFlash
For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted to #FairyTaleFlash is “mothers (human or animal) or fairy godmothers or stepmothers.” I decided to explore the birth of Owain, one of King Arthur’s warriors in the Welsh stories. The late French authors renamed him “Ywain,” and made him the son of Morgan le Fey. However, in the Welsh stories, Owain is the son of Modron, a mysterious entity who seems to have been a Celtic mother goddess.
My father lay with my mother by a river. Less than a year later, she gave to him me and my twin brother. Then she left. They say she was Modron, a mother goddess our people worshipped long ago. If she was a mother goddess, why was she not a mother to me? #FairyTaleFlash
Image is a statue of Matrona, the Gaulish equivalent of Modron.
“Where do you get your ideas?” is said to be the question above all others that writers hate getting asked, both because writers are so often asked it and because they often don’t have a good answer. You often aren’t thinking about where an idea is coming from, you just know to make use of the idea when it arrives. Also, each writer discovers ideas in their own separate ways, often in ways unique to them, so what may be a font of inspiration for one person may be a dry well for another. That said, to any aspiring writer on a quest for ideas, here are a few generally reliable sources:
Your Own Life Many cartoonists in the underground comics movement preferred to write deeply personal memoirs instead of the outrageous superhero comics that were popular at the time because they strongly believed that “the stories that make up our lives are more interesting than the stories one usually encounters in comic books” (Chester Brown, The Little Man, p. 169). Even if your stories are full of superheroes or weird magic, you can give them depth by incorporating real feelings or events that you experienced. Stan Lee’s comics were ground-breaking in the 1960s because he made his superheroes, such as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt just like he did, which made the characters far more engrossing than the two-dimensional superheroes published by other companies. Always be aware of what is happening in your life and think about how it can be brought into the stories you create. Every person has experiences that can serve as powerful inspiration.
Your Passions What do you love to do? What dominates your mind? Alan Moore developed an intense fascination for Jack the Ripper that he couldn’t quite explain, and from that produced From Hell, a graphic novel that explores Jack the Ripper and the culture of Victorian London with extensive detail and vision. Neil Gaiman was always compelled by the blurring distinction between dreams and reality, and from that created Sandman – the story of the king of dreams, and perhaps the most influential comic book series of the 1990s. What is important to you? Is it medieval Spain, baseball, the city of Medicine Hat, or Korean mythology? How can you present it in a way that is uniquely yours? What do you have to say on the subject that could be explored through a story?
The World Around You Things are constantly happening every day, and you can receive inspiration for a thousand pictures and a thousand stories just by going for a walk and being attentive to what is going on around you. A strange inscription in chalk on the pavement, a tired old woman who looks like she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, a snatch of conversation overheard on the bus, a man screaming at his pet gerbil – all of these could be woven into some grand narrative. And then, of course, there is the news. Open a newspaper, and you encounter shocking events on the front page, detailed biographies in the obituaries, curious beliefs in the editorials – a wealth of ideas there for the taking.
Other People’s Works The one piece of advice that all creative writing teachers give is that the best way to improve your writing, much more important than taking lessons, is to experience a lot of whatever kind of story you seek to create – an aspiring screenwriter watches a lot of movies, an aspiring novelist reads a lot of novels, and an aspiring cartoonist studies a lot of comics. By seeing how a lot of other people have done the sort of story you like, you learn what works and what doesn’t. You can also use their ideas as a springboard for your own, taking them in a new, creative direction. However, don’t be afraid to incorporate elements outside your chosen medium. Many movies have taken inspiration from novels, novels have taken inspiration from plays, etc. A large part of the success of the graphic novel series Sandman was that it took many of the ideas and sensibilities of the fantasy novel (detailed internal narrative, complicated story structures, etc.) and adapted them for the fantasy comic book.
For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted to #FairyTaleFlash is my favourite subject in all of folklore and literature: “Arthurian Legends: King Arthur, Excalibur, Guinevere, Merlin, Morgan LeFay, Knights of the Round Table, and more.” I decided to give a short character study on one of my favourite of King Arthur’s champions: Menw the Wise, one of King Arthur’s three warrior-wizards in Welsh folklore.
I am Menw, one of King Arthur’s three wizard-warriors. Merlin taught me my Art, and commanded me to obey and protect the king. But which of those commands takes priority? Should I disobey the king when his order would endanger him? When do I follow my own will? #FairyTaleFlash
Ever since I was born, there has been a door in my basement. A black door covered in runes I cannot read. As there’s no door on the other side of the wall, logically this door must instead open to other worlds. I haven’t had the courage to open it yet, but hopefully I will eventually. #FairyTaleFlash
I have struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life. When things got stressful, the Beast would rear and bury its claws into my back. It would rake, and I would howl, and I’d try to fight against it, and often fail. So much of my life has been defined by my mental health issues, and I’ve known that I need to overcome them, but for a very long time they weren’t things I talked about. They seemed like personal failures I needed to hide. I couldn’t look vulnerable. I couldn’t look weak. I needed to be strong. As I was trying to hide these issues, I didn’t search for such topics in the stories I consumed, and I certainly didn’t put them in the stories that I wrote. I just wanted to pretend they didn’t exist.
That all changed in the spring of 2019, when I watched the DC animated movie Justice League vs the Fatal Five. In this movie, a team of time-traveling supervillains called the Fatal Five arrive from the future to change history so that their enemies, the Legion of Superheroes, will never be born. They are pursued to our time by the superhero Star Boy, but his schizophrenia makes him unable to clearly explain his mission to Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League. The only member of the League who can understand him is the Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, because her crippling anxiety helps her relate to Star Boy’s own mental struggle. The empathy and support that the two heroes provide each other give them the strength to confront their own issues, fight the supervillains together, and ultimately save the day.
Watching this movie was a shock to my brain. Here were heroes struggling with mental issues in ways I’d never seen on screen before. Here were heroes who knew what it was like to feel trapped inside their head, to have their brain refuse to obey them, to be torn apart by inner demons. They know what it’s like to freak out in front of people and have them not understand what’s going on. They know what it’s like to feel weak and pathetic and alone, despite having nothing wrong with their body. They know what it is like to be me.
I’m a shy, white, middle-class North American male, the stereotypical target audience of comic book superheroes. But in that moment, watching Fatal Five, I realized a part of myself hadn’t previously been targeted by the genre. I felt seen, and in feeling seen I realized to my shock that I hadn’t felt seen before. Perhaps if the movie was another kind of genre, it wouldn’t have affected me so intensely, but this was superheroes, a genre I’d been obsessed with since childhood. In fact, this was a superhero movie done in the same animation style as Bruce Timm’s Batman the Animated Series,one of the most influential shows of my childhood. These were the sorts of heroes I had grown up with, had seen as archetypes of strength and courage. But now I saw that they suffer like me. Their minds betray them like mine. They are like me. But that doesn’t stop them from being heroes and saving the world. As I watched Fatal Five, I broke down and cried.
Thanks to this movie, 2019 was the year that I learned to think more deeply about my mental health issues, the year I learned to speak publicly about them. It was the year that I realized that art could speak to my condition, and when it does, it can be powerful. That when art speaks to me about my mental condition, I feel heard. I no longer feel alone. And when that happens, I can make positive changes in my own life.
It was Justice League vs the Fatal Five that inspired me to consciously write about mental health, to make that my artistic goal. My next big project was to create Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, a graphic novel anthology in which numerous cartoonists created stories inspired by their own experiences with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and PTSD. I myself wrote an adaptation of the Welsh legend “Geraint, Son of Erbin,” the story of an Arthurian knight who succumbs to crippling depression. In writing about the vulnerability of a hero from my own cultural heritage, I sought to echo the vulnerability of the superheroes that Fatal Five had shown me onscreen. I wanted to show that even the strongest, bravest people suffer inside their minds, and so it’s okay when we do.
Now most of what I write is related to mental health issues in some way. My protagonists wrestle with similar demons to what I wrestle with, and I think hard about how to present those struggles in a potent and insightful way. Before Justice League vs the Fatal Five, I just wrote what I wanted without thinking about how my unique experiences and thoughts could help people. Now I know that when I write about mental health, I can connect to people who wrestle with their own issues. By having my heroes struggle inside their heads, I can inspire my readers in the same way that Fatal Five inspired me. I can make them feel seen, and encourage them to accept themselves. No other movie or book has transformed me as much as this one did.
For this week, the prompt for #FairyTaleFlash is “stories that feature St. Nicholas, elves, or Krampus.” Well, as a long-term fantasy fan, I’m intrigued by how much more nebulous the term “elf” is in folklore than it is in, say, Lord of the Rings. For example, the first recorded references to “dark elves” and “black elves,” was in Snorri Sturluson’s medieval Icelandic text The Prose Edda, in which Snorri seems to be equating such beings with dwarves. This would make sense if you use “elf” in the more general sense to mean “fairy”; dwarves are subterranean fairies who like darkness. An interesting thing about that is that it could mean that Santa’s industrious workshop elves may actually be dwarves. Which inspired from me this very short piece of flash fiction:
My parents were shocked when I started working in Santa Claus’ shop. My family’s been blacksmiths since the moment we were changed from maggots to dwarves, and they couldn’t see a dwarf in any other life. But I like fresh air — claustrophobia is crummy for a dwarf. #FairyTaleFlash
For this week, the prompt for #FairyTaleFlash is “a Christmas ghost or a gothic Christmas tale or a strange/weird Christmas story.” There’s an intriguing theory that elements of Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Santa Claus, were inspired by the Norse god Odin. The theory doesn’t have anything substantial to support it, but part of the fun of writing fiction is running with ideas too vague or unproven for a reputable scholar. So here’s my Christmas flash fiction:
Though Santa Claus is based on St. Nicholas, some people have noted similarities to the Norse god Odin (a flying steed, all-seeing wisdom, etc.). They don’t realize that this is because Odin has disguised himself as Santa as a scam to steal modern worshippers. #FairyTaleFlash
Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten heavily involved in the community of mythology, folklore, and literature hashtags on Twitter and other social media, such as #MythologyMonday, #FairyTaleTuesday, #WyrdWednesday, #FolkloreThursday, etc. Every week, each one posts a new theme, such as “ocean” for one #MythologyMonday week, and then “fruit” the next week, and they repost any posts that people make that are about elements of mythology, folklore, etc. that are related to the theme and use the hashtag. So, for example, on the Monday that #MythologyMonday posts about “ocean,” the site would then repost any myths people referenced about the ocean, fish, etc. The most unusual hashtag is #FairyTaleFlash, a companion to #FairyTaleTuesday. While every Tuesday, #FairyTaleTuesday reposts any fairy tale or fantasy factoids about its current theme, #FairyTaleFlash will instead repost any fantasy flash fiction (fiction small enough to fit on a single tweet) that follows the same theme.
Back in 2022, I created a few of my own flash fiction for #FairyTaleFlash.
Theme: Fables with morals Every day a sparrow sat chirping on a man’s balcony. Eventually it annoyed the man enough that he drove her away. Once no bird was claiming the balcony, a huge goose moved in. His honking was far more annoying than the chirping, and he far harder to drive away than the sparrow was. #FairyTaleFlash
(the moral of this story, by the way, is “if you try to get rid of your problems without thinking carefully about it, often they will get replaced by something worse.”)
Theme: Stories from an animal’s point of view Every bear clan tells tales of human-shifters. Each day I dream of being able to put on human form and walk among them in their strange metal forests. Of accessing strange human powers such as opposable thumbs and ability to read. Imagine what that would be like. #FairyTaleFlash
Theme: Unusual romances “Didn’t I tell you I could arrange a feast grand enough for all our wedding guests?” the raven groom said. “I should never have doubted you.” The raven bride gazed at the bloody battlefield. “How romantic! Everything’s perfect.” The flock of ravens descended on the broken corpses. #FairyTaleFlash
It’s a fun challenge, creating a story within a couple of days that’s only a few sentences long. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into the right frame of mind to start doing #FairyTaleFlash stories again.
