How Not to Write: Modernity in Traditional Fantasy

(Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Swears)

There’s a fallacy in traditional fantasy, which is that, in the Tolkien-esque fantasy settings we are all familiar with, everyone needs to speak in that oddly stilted manner, verging on thou and verily in every other sentence. I understand it. It seems more like the way folks from the medieval world would talk, doesn’t it?

The problem is, it isn’t how folks from the medieval world spoke. In fact, the way they did talk is probably so far removed from the English we speak nowadays as to make it near-impossible to read for those of us living in the modern world. I mean, have you ever read Shakespeare? That’s more modern than the world of Lord of the Rings and even it’s borderline unreadable in places.

Tolkien wrote his dialogue that way because it was natural for him to do so. He was a rich, white man who grew up in Victorian England. Of course everyone sounds polite and poetic. But Tolkien also wrote his seminal works some eighty years ago. It’s probably time we moved on. A modern writer would seem pretty out of touch writing a novel like Lord of the Rings in this day and age.

I resisted the notion of bringing modern speech into fantasy settings for a long time. Two minutes of watching an episode of Spartacus: Blood & Sand and its absolutely cringe-worthy dialogue put me off the idea of adding cuss-laden modern language to traditional fantasy for nearly ten years. Then I read Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames and I felt myself being talked around to the idea.

The reason why Bloody Rose is such an inspirational book for me is because it marks the moment when I started to consider traditional fantasy to be a valid genre again. (Yeah, it verges more on grimdark, but I don’t strike those same distinctions, because a fantasy world without dark elements is just straight-up deluded about human nature).

Eames brings the fantasy genre up-to-date by threading a rock-and-roll sensibility through it. Bands of heroes are more like bands of musicians, touring, full of vice, conflicted and ultimately bound to self-destruction, but lauded all the same. He used fantasy tropes to examine issues of identity, addiction, grudging maternity, sexuality, unwise hero worship and self-harm and this, to me, was a more rewarding and emotive experience than The Lord of the Rings ever was.

Part of that was due to the language Eames used. By leaning more on a modernised vocabulary, I think he made the thoughts and feelings of the characters more accessible to modern readers. Reading Tolkien’s work, the one thing that never happened was a connection. I did, however, connect with Tam and Cura and Brune and, yes, even Rose. I think it was Eames that opened the door for me to start interpreting fantasy worlds through a modern lens.

I never wanted to write fantasy. I’d read too many books where everything was too stilted, too posh-sounding. It just didn’t do anything for me and I started to drift from the fantasy genre as a whole. Since reading Bloody Rose, I’ve landed a fantasy piece, ‘The Dragon’s Heart’, in Fairytale Dragons by Dragon Soul Press. This story was probably the first time I dipped into a fantasy world with my 21st Century head on. (Spoiler Alert! Not the last).

Writing is meant to be read. Writing craft is all about picking the best tools to make your work accessible and interesting to the reader. Yeah, you can write for the love of it, but you wouldn’t try to publish if you didn’t want to connect with someone out there, right?

Writing fantasy with a modern sensibility, a modern vocabulary, isn’t inappropriate. It’s simply understanding that you can’t actually write authentic dialogue for your ancient setting without verging on absurdity. It’s also a stylistic choice. Maybe my characters don’t live in the modern world, but they’re going to be connecting with people who do. I don’t want a language barrier occluding my message.

Ultimately, I’m choosing to write this way because I like it. Traditional fantasy never really caught my imagination, but a nuanced, modern approach has. And don’t they always say, “write the book you want to read”?

If you want to read that book too, you can pre-order a copy of Fairytale Dragons now. I think it came out pretty well actually.