Mythology Writers

[mersted]

As a fantasy author, I'd normally prefer to build my own world and the mythology in it myself. However, reading many fantasy novels that mix in greek, norse, etc. mythology in it, it made me rather curious. Mythology authors out there, just how long does your research about that certain mythology usually take? And to what extent do you research it?

 

[Hawthorn]

My current wip is loosely based on Finnish mythology. I read the Kalevala (the Finnish national epic), and researched other characters in their mythology - just through internet searches, then making that information into mind maps. Then as I've been writing my book and putting the characters from the mythology into it, I've been doing little bits of extra reading about those characters and adapting the story as I find interesting things about them. I am trying to stay loyal to the essence of the original mythology, while still bending it a bit, giving it my own interpretation for my story. As the research is an ongoing thing as I write the book, I'm not sure how long I've spent doing it overall. Before I started writing the book, I had done some reading, but only enough to construct the plot, so not extensive - that came while I was writing.

 

[Miles Lacey]

I grew up with Maori legends, especially in regards to a certain Polynesian demigod called Maui. It's very hard to do research on this legendary character because Maui is portrayed in so many different ways within Polynesian cultures. The Moana version of Maui is based primarily on that of Hawaiian myths about Maui, which were very different from the ones I grew up with. To a large extent, it's because Polynesian cultures never had a written language to keep a record of these legends. This is also true of other Polynesian gods, myths and legends.

This presents one big advantage: I can take a certain number of liberties with the legends by combining various Polynesian legends together. And those who complain that this is cultural appropriation I point out that I have every right to borrow from the legends of my (non-white) ancestors.

 

[Darkfantasy]

I tend to try and create my own stuff, but if I'm struggling I will research Mythology but I tend to avoid Greek, Norse and Japanese as we see that stuff so much. I tend to look for mythology that is unknown.

 

[StrawhatOverlord]

For my newest WIP I mostly just verified details rather than extensively researched from scratch since mythologies are an interest/hobby of mine independently of writing. In my other projects I made my own mythos, though still inspired by real ones.

 

[WooHooMan]

I think it probably is one of those thing where you don’t get into it unless you already know about it.
I did a Greek mythology story not too long ago and I spent maybe a couple of hours on research - mostly on Greek monsters and their genealogy as that was a specific aspect of the mythology that I didn’t know much about.

 

[Chasejxyz]

I picked up a copy of Coming Forth by Day aka the Egyptian book of the dead and read it and took a lot of notes. But due to how hieroglyphs are (aka no vowels) there's a lot of different ways to spell/translate words into English, so I made decisions based on what fit the style/tone and not what is the most-most "authentic" verisions.