Hello again. I love that particular greeting. It is as refreshing and pleasant a welcome as they come. There’s an altogether warming essence about it that settles the spirit. Now, I’m not going to talk about the band, “Of Monsters And Men”, and I realize that the name of this post was somewhat misleading, but it was used to prove a point.
A allusion to someone or something is a useful tool to cause an idea or memory to spring into the mind of your readers.
Though in this case, monsters and men are the topic of this post.
Men- Obviously not men specifically; the race of men: These are your story. Not only are your men more important than your monsters, they are the track that your stories ride on. Characters drive stories. Readers read for the characters’ sake.
A reader will often read a particular author’s work specifically for the way he/she writes their characters.
Monsters- To avoid setting your mind on the stereotype in which we have placed these creatures, I’ll define the word briefly.
Monsters: An imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening.
That is how Oxford defines it; however, a more correct definition of the word would be:
An imaginary creature of fantastical size and shape that is typically powerful, ugly, or frightening.
Monsters. These are fun. Monsters are the playground of any fantasy writer, Christian or secular. Monsters are a large part of what makes your story fantastical, adding flare and personalization with the limitless possibilities available (being that by definition monsters don’t and can’t exist). Both men and monsters alike are essential to any fantasy works, and at the same time, they are the most unique and exciting toys of the novelist.
It goes without saying that you will be partial to any character you create and truly pour yourself into. But that principle applies even more so to monsters, on a broad scale. If you create an entire creature type and “species”, you become not only attached to that one specific monster as a character, but to the entire “species”, as a character type and pool from which to spawn new ones. I’ll talk more about both monsters and men in later posts. But, remember this, if you are going to have mythic beings in Christian writing, they must serve a purpose, or have an allegorical meaning.
As always, thanks for reading and be watching for exciting posts in the future.
–the anonymous novelist
the anonymous novelist 