Do you include folktales, song verse or similar in your stories?

[Finchbearer]

Do you include folktales, song verse, fables, myths, legends or any other similar facet of these within your own stories? What are they (if you would like to share) and how do they add to the narrative? Do you any of you also include footnotes as part of the narrative?

I understand this isn’t always something people enjoy reading, but maybe these elements are a key part of your story, or perhaps they make the story feel more immersive.

I’ve considered the addition of these types of elements within my own writing and whether they just make the story drag or whether some readers enjoy this sort of thing.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

A little folklore, such as the explanation of The Five Earls. Whatever I slip in has a point and is (hopefully!) entertaining and quick. I have to fight the temptation to stick in too much.

 

[CupofJoe]

Many years ago I tried adding songs and poems to a vaguely Celtic story I was telling. I have a friend who is a poet who thought it sounded like a fun thing for us to collab on. Working with them was great. I would do that again in a heart beat.
This is absolutely no reflection of my friend and their poetry but when we read what we had, we both agree it felt like very sub par Tolkien.
So we decided to leave it to our betters...

 

[Ban]

In the strongman novella I wrote there are a number of folktales, historical legends and (in-world) fictive stories mentioned in conversation. These serve to liven up the world, but are sparse in their description. I prefer to write about them in the same manner we speak of such stories in real life. An interesting landmark might be encountered, which someone else will comment on with the summarised version of a folktale or legend. Then the conversation meanders onward as it usually does when factoids are discussed. The equivalent of the Grimm brothers is mentioned, but the narrative doesn't divert into an exploration of his corpus.

 

[Devor]

I don't include any folklore. It's a fantasy story, so if you tell a quick little tale about a creature in the woods, the assumption readers make is that the creature is real. I don't want to mess around with that kind of expectation.

ASOIAF includes a lot of folklore, and it's almost like a game for the superfans to figure out which ones are real or not. Spoiler: It looks like most of it's real. That's pretty cool. But ASOIAF starts low fantasy, then has the fantasy elements build and grow and return slowly as the story goes on. It's a great dynamic, but I'm writing much more high fantasy, so I don't see myself as having the space for stories that aren't real.

But, I'm doing my best to include poetry and song. The characters are sprites, and they spend a lot of time in a bar. So I'm hoping to include bar songs, poems that are actually magical, poems that are history, and poems that are a symbolic way of saying "I really understand you now." Poetry is really time consuming and hard for me, though, so I'm not sure how much I'll end up dropping or including before the end though.

 

[Aldarion]

I think that folk tales should be included to provide a sense of history to the world. And I don't mean "Brother's Grimm" style folk tales that Devor mentioned, because as he said, if you include them then assumption will be they are real. Rather, what I mean is fictional history of the world. Events from the past, that is - how the world came to be, important events, heroes and places...

This should help you understand better what I mean:

https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225&context=mythlore

 

[Ban]

I'm a little biased here as my fantasy is as low on magic as it can get, but I do think it's possible to add in-world fairy tales if you clearly delineate to the reader where fictive reality begins and ends. It's difficult to pull off, but doable, and of course the higher the fantasy, the less feasible it becomes.

 

[Mad Swede]

Yes, I do - but without any footnotes. Usually it's in the form of a reference to a bit of folklore or a folk tale. The fact that I write fantasy doesn't matter, because in the sort of setting I'm writing in there isn't the clear delinitiation we now have between fact on one side and legends and folklore on the other. In that sort of setting, people tell those tales and some of those listening will believe them and some won't. And just occasionally those tales turn out to be true...

 

[Finchbearer]

I did not consider that telling a folktale for example in a fantasy setting could come across to the reader as de facto reality - I mean, yes if you have characters who are faeries in your story and there is a folktale about faeries then it would be hard to discern between reality and fiction, but maybe there’s a clever way to make it feel ambiguous, where the reader ends up not knowing or guessing at best if the folktale alludes to a reality or not. In real life we know of faeries as mythology and folklore…but there are plenty of folks out there who really believe that they are real. I like playing around with that question of ‘is it real or not?’

 

[Finchbearer]

I included footnotes in the thread purely because of Susanna Clarke and her stupendously clever way of adding them into the narrative for Norrell and Strange, where the footnotes are at times a few pages long and are short stories in themselves. I considered doing something like that but it would just be me copying her style.

 

[Devor]

I did not consider that telling a folktale for example in a fantasy setting could come across to the reader as de facto reality - I mean, yes if you have characters who are faeries in your story and there is a folktale about faeries then it would be hard to discern between reality and fiction, but maybe there’s a clever way to make it feel ambiguous, where the reader ends up not knowing or guessing at best if the folktale alludes to a reality or not. In real life we know of faeries as mythology and folklore…but there are plenty of folks out there who really believe that they are real. I like playing around with that question of ‘is it real or not?’

I can't remember what book it was, but someone described their enemy as a "demon" in the opening chapter, and got pushback from readers who took too long realizing it wasn't literal.

 

[Finchbearer]

This should help you understand better what I mean:

https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225&context=mythlore

Looks really interesting. I too want to capture connectedness within a culture within my fantasy writing.

 

[Fyri]

I love the idea of including poetry or songs. Of course, only where it makes sense. The first song I included in my books was more of a farewell song that created the ending to one of the books. After that, I've dabbled in other songs that would show up in the form of a lullaby or call to action, etc. It's fun and the last one I created, I made my betas cry, so . That's only encouraged me.

 

[Malik]

I can't remember what book it was, but someone described their enemy as a "demon" in the opening chapter, and got pushback from readers who took too long realizing it wasn't literal.

Might have been mine. It's happened to me.

"Demon" = "DIMENsional traveler. It's a portal fantasy, and the area of the world where the MC (from Earth) ends up is called "Gateskeep" because it's a nexus in the space-time continuum--their sorcerers are literally the Keepers of the Gates.

 

[Gallio]

Folk stories and poems are a good way of 'information dumping', and if introduced at appropriate times, they can shed light on characters' thoughts or moods, or explain things in the plot that might otherwise be obscure.
That said, one must be careful with poetry. In my opinion, Tolkien often rivals William McGonagall or William Henry Davies as a contender for the title of 'world's worst bard'.

 

[Gallio]

Might have been mine. It's happened to me.

Or Phillip Pullman.

 

[Finchbearer]

Or Phillip Pullman.

Pullman came to mind with his daemons…but it was made pretty clear on maybe the fifth page or so that they were an extension of consciousness in animal form, not literal demons. The spelling is one clue anyway that they are not demons.

 

[Finchbearer]

That said, one must be careful with poetry. In my opinion, Tolkien often rivals William McGonagall or William Henry Davies as a contender for the title of 'world's worst bard'.

I agree that poetry needs to be done with caution…not sure Tolkien is quite as bad as McGonagall, poor fellow, but I’d maybe say that I enjoyed the little rhymes of Tolkien as a child - they are easy to understand for a child and speak of the worldbuilding in a fun way, but he was no poet laureate. I’d never considered that before you mentioned it to be honest. Much of it is in that 19C vernacular - lots of exclamation marks and Lo! For dramatic effect!

 

[Gallio]

"Galadriel! Galadriel!
Clear is the water of your well..."

At his worst he is very very bad.

And then there's Tom Bombadil .

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yeah, I've been careful with terms like demon and devil and angel... but I do have a group who are called archangels, but I make sure that one of them dispels the notion, explaining that it was a mistranslation. When in The Contessa I use the term "Saint" I also attempt to get across that saints are not the same as in the Catholic Church. They had similarities, and I wanted a word I didn't want to make up, heh heh.