The Influence of Folklore on Genre Fiction

I did a panel with several wonderful, super-intelligent folks at Multiverse Con. It was so inspiring that I wanted to bring the topic over to the blog and open it up to our writing community at large. 

The panel was on folk magic/folk horror, (as evidenced by films such as Midsommar, The Village, The VVitch, etc.) but I think it applies to general genre fiction throughout as well. So, that's where we're going. 

Ready?

Folk magic and folklore began with the common people (folks), or as author Jessica Nettles put it on the panel, "As long as there are people, there is folklore." With so much emphasis in fiction having been spent on the rich or leisurely class, how has this notion of the commonplace protagonist influenced your writing?

Danielle Procter Piper: I shall admit a wealthy protagonist is not often necessary, but written as such for convenience sake. So many stories involve characters doing things while not at a regular job, that it's easiest to explain it away by making them wealthy/important enough to be free for whatever adventure the story calls for. That said, I love the new wave of stories I'm seeing where characters do have fairly regular Joe lives and there are consequences for vanishing to save the world or what have you when school or work is imperative. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: The first thing that comes to mind is Alan Moore and John Constantine. He said he wanted to make a magic user that was from the streets and not some lofty white tower. I’ve always loved that.

As for my work, the best examples of folk magic are in my Jake Istenhegyi stories. Jake, the protag, doesn’t use it as much as he gets used by it. The stories are set in 1930’s New Orleans so, of course, vodun, is the first thing to play with but I was able to dip my pen into Golems and Alchemy. While doing research into some of the folk tales of the swamp, I came across the Boodaddy and I used it albeit I did take some creative license with the creature.

A story I am working on currently, Crown of Feathers, is about a boy on the brink of losing his mother but, against the advice of the granny witches that live on the hill, he finds a way to snatch her from the claws of death. Although it doesn’t work out the way he plans. I’ve been doing a lot of research into Appalachian death culture and hedgewitchery.

So, yeah. Long story short, folk magic always somehow influences me.

Jessica Nettles: I feel like my characters are commonplace almost always, probably because I see myself as pretty commonplace. In that space of the commonplace there is the folklore. As a Southern woman, folklore is part of my infrastructure. We are taught it from the time we can hear stories and learn what's important. This feeling of being commonplace and being "not the lady or the Southern Belle" has made me aware of the people who farm the land and are the plain folk. I was raised not only around women like my granny, who taught me how to pick peas and read, but also around my daddy, who took me fishing, taught me to fix old furniture, and to also watch where I put my hands and feet in the woods. My characters often are those sorts of people instead of the well-off. I know those people best.

Kay Iscah: Far more of us are common people than wealthy. We may enjoy the fantasy of wealth, but we’re more likely to relate to people who remind us of ourselves or at least the challenges we face. However, I think there’s a distinctly rural aspect to the term folklore that implies a degree of isolation and being on the edge of nature. Particularly if you’re urban or suburban, visiting rural relatives takes on a magical aspect because you’re so much closer to the edge where you can step out of one world and into another.

In the two Before the Fairytale coming-of-age stories that I’ve written, early on the characters from humble backgrounds pass through the same forest as a significant passage in their journey, though they’re headed in different directions. The back and forth between the safety of civilization and the mystery and danger of the wilds is something believed at the heart of much folklore.

Sean Taylor: I've always preferred the common folk when I write. Even when I write Pulp stories, whose stable of heroes come from the richest and most leisurely people, I tend to want to surround them with the common folk. When I create my own, such as with Rick Ruby, it was important not to make him independent and wealthy, which is typical of a Hammett and Chandler hero, but also to put him in a culture not his own, a white guy in a black world, where every one of his preconceptions is challenged. 

I don't tend to use a lot of magic or spiritual power unless I'm specifically writing fantasy, but I love the notion of the "dark" being looming and mysterious and dangerous, and I picked that up from reading both Gothic lit and fairy tales. 

Lots of folklore comes from people who have been "othered" by those in power, for example, by race, poverty, or gender. Folklore-inspired tales give power back to those people (often for vengeance in horror, for instance). How do you use othering and the empowerment of the "other" in your work?

Danielle Procter Piper: In my sci-fi series, the hero becomes everything he despises and fears...and while many believe he has become a villain... he actually still works for good, but on a much grander scale. In a way, it suggests God doesn't do enough little things because perhaps He's busy with even bigger things...and that's not an excuse to ignore the plight of those who struggle. In my Medieval fantasy series, the hero is about to achieve something uncommon that should be beneficial...but which drives him to push his limits to overcome mockery and protect others similarly mistreated. Eventually, he must give in and become something dreadfully fearful just to save innocent others. In both cases, my heroes must learn to accept and embrace dark things that not only terrify them but completely change them in the eyes of others—even those close to or who love them, sacrificing who they are as they learn how to use these new identities for good no matter the consequences to themselves. 

Kay Iscah: Continuing with the two characters already mentioned. One is an orphan who thinks she’s been abandoned, and the other is an abandoned child who thinks he is orphaned. I’m definitely a fan of clever protagonists, so both work their way up to better positions or at least respectable work with a mix of luck, skill, and determination. But both also make decisions to walk away from situations that might have given them material gain for moral reasons. I had not intentionally set up that parallel, but I see it now. I certainly think there’s a theme of how far you’re willing to go to find acceptance. Are you willing to walk away from power, community, or comfort if it compromises who you are? They both take completely different paths. One walks away from society completely to essentially become the witch in the wilderness, and other works his way up to management and then a royal court position. I don’t think either is wrong or better, but it’s different paths to empowerment. One creates her own space, and the other moves to a position where he might be able to influence larger-scale social change.

Sean Taylor: I love to either set stories in "othered" places, like with Rick Ruby mentioned above or to look for the "other" even in characters who don't immediately seem like an "other." For example, when I wrote Agara, a sort of female Conan for Black Pulp II, I wanted her to be disconnected from everyone else. I wanted to explore someone who exists outside of community but still must live within one. A lot of super hero fiction deals with this as well, I've found. They only pretend to be part of it, but in reality, they have a unique set of problems and issues "normies" can't possibly understand. 

One of my favorite aspects is how the power balance is restored and even tipped to the "other," whether my story has genuine folkloric elements or not. Agara wins, but at the expense of community, which she remains distant from. Rick Ruby's world influences him far more than he influences it. Even in my horror tales, the true power tends to reside in those who are outside the norm. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: In the collection of short stories I am working on, Politics of Children and Other Stories of Revenge, I play with this idea in quite a few of them. In, "A Beautiful Thing," a Golem is able to get revenge against the murderer of his protector with the help of some furry friends. In Sweet Revenge, a witch gets revenge against the bank president who finagled the foreclosure of her candy shop.

Magic is a way for the powerless to feel as if they have some kind of say in a game that is rigged against them from day one. I am guilty of that. I have two altars in my office. One is for blessings; I keep it to the right of me, close and under the care of Bridgid. The other is way back in the left side of my office, under the care of Maeve, is where I collect my hex jars. Do I believe that these quaint little jars hold any real power? Is it all just a psychological tool to deal with life with a dose of magical thinking? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it gives me comfort.

But in fiction, all things are possible. And I can take revenge with absolute impunity.

As for themes, folklore typically includes what DL Wainwright called (on the panel) "strangeness and wonder." In its origins, it often involved the encroachment of the dark and mysterious (often the forest or night) on the so-called normal world of the village or daylight. Does that encroachment of dark upon light weave into your work? Howso?

Danielle Procter Piper: All of my writing deals with heroes encountering and learning to function within the darkness of life. It's just a metaphor for dealing with all that life throws at you and discerning if there's anything good that may be wrought from it.

Jessica Nettles: I don't think the folklore comes from being "othered." The folklore comes from people who have their own primary cultures that are not ours so we don't understand (and in some cases don't want to understand) the importance and power of those stories to "those people over there." In Menlo Park, my witch, Deborah, has been othered because she comes from Romani roots and people fear her witchy powers (she is a VERY powerful witch). Her back story lands her in one of the asylums in New York City because no one knows what else to do with her. Her true power comes in her ability to love and believe in what she knows is true when no one else can. She's not powerful because she's Romani. She's powerful because she loves and is loved by her created family and that grounds her magic. She still believes in her folklore and the magic of her folklore, but in a way, she has created her own branch in her folklore.

Sean Taylor: Now this is a theme I can really get behind. My entire horror short story collection A Crowd in Babylon is based on the fuzzy line that happens where normality and strangeness & wonder meet. One of the stories went back to Indigenous Peoples legends. Another combines folk magic with the quantum mechanics ideas of M-Theory. And one of my favorites goes back to the metaphor of the crossroads and the Blues but removes the crossroads and puts the story in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere. One I'm currently working on involves a couple getting an unbelievable deal on a house... as long as they don't remove the dead squirrel in a jar in the cellar -- a sort of folkloric protection or ward. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: The hedgewitches in my Crown of Feathers story are representatives of the Furies: Alecto (mother), Tisiphone (maiden) and Megaera (Crone). Alecto and Meg, the Mother and the Crone) often fight about their responsibilities to help the Protag since he started the whole mess. Meg isn’t one to mess around with. She has no patience and enjoys the taste of a young boy’s flesh.

I like to entangle what might be consider Dark into the Light of my fiction. Mainly because Anger, which is always seen as somehow negative, gets shit done.

But I’ve always been drawn to the antihero.

Jamais Jochim: This is sort of what I'm playing with my Vella book. Folk stories are how we explain the weirdness in our lives while looking at the existence of the awesome and the profane, and how they are sides of the same coin.

Kay Iscah: I think I skipped ahead with my first answer, but yes. The first scene that pops to mind is young Phillip making a nest in a tree, and unable to sleep, he listens to the night noises around him. He’s very aware of his vulnerability and has a similar moment of hyper-awareness when he takes shelter with a tanner in an isolated cabin. There’s another scene where he encounters fireflies for the first time and I think it shows how nature can inspire certain myths about fairies and other creatures of folklore. If I remember correctly both of the bandit attacks that dramatically changed his life happened in daylight in an isolated place. He also encounters actual magic for the first time in daylight, so it’s a bit of flipping the script on his expectations. The girl’s story by contrast is constantly setting up tropes to sidestep them. She is a shapeshifter, the fairy, and a strange old lady who lives alone, so night does not tend to intimidate her to the same degree. She often finds comfort in it; “The stars hummed a lullaby… dreams lack all restrictions. So that night she could be small as a bug or big as a mountain.”

One of my favorite quotes from the panel comes from Dee Norman. "That's how folk magic survives -- through efficacy, not explanation," she explains. How do your magical or belief systems in your work, more commonly fantasy, horror, or some more esoteric sci-fi, line up against this notion of folk magic being more a practice than a doctrine?

Kay Iscah: In the world of Seventh Night where my examples come from, I describe magic in terms of rhythm and song. It’s based on the more scientific idea that everything vibrates, but with the more mystic idea that these vibrations can be harnessed and shifted to produce almost any desired effect. I do think this ties into common magic tropes of saying the right word or humming the right tune. There’s also an element of potion-making, which ties to understanding the potential effects of the ingredients. It’s a blend of science and art.

I do distinguish magic/sorcery and witchcraft as separate practices. The first has more to do with rhythms and is not seen as a spiritual practice by those who practice it. Witchcraft by contrast utilizes spirits, and there’s a stronger taboo against it. Laymen may confuse the two.

Jessica Nettles: Dark and light must always push and pull against one another. In my stories, there is always that element. There is the small town that seems very familiar and the people seem so nice, but there something swimming in the undercurrent you can't see, but can sense. If we're honest, this is more true than not, but most of the time, no one wants to say that out loud. My Eulaila stories explore those small spaces--those towns and areas where things seem off by about two steps, but maybe to the drive-thru tourist, on their way to Panama City, might just guess at. In my Three Sisters stories (y'all ain seen them yet) there is also this same push of darkness and light with the sisters witching their way against various dark elements that seem drawn to their small town for reasons they haven't figured out yet.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: This reminds me of the dichotomy of Wizards and Witches in Discworld. The Wizards go to a college and spend all their time debating and studying the idea of magic. Witches just WITCH and get shit done.

I tend to waver between ritual and natural magic practices in my fiction.

In my story, "What the Cat Dragged In," the witch in that story is highly ritualistic. Her hex jars are meticulously prepared. Plus she has jars with Kabbalistic sigils on her shelf. Not something a hodge podge hedgewitch would have sitting around.

In the story, "A Beautiful Thing," the Golem has to follow strict rituals as does the John Dee Wanna-Be wizard that it has to fight against.

I prefer the more hodge podge sort of magic that my girls in Crown of Feathers deal out but that’s probably more due to my ADHD than anything else. I don’t have the attention span for ritual.

Danielle Procter Piper: My Medieval fantasy is watching "magic" struggle to thrive in a world where religion and reason fight to suppress both the average person from obtaining what they need on their own and to drive away magical beings and creatures that prove there's another way of getting what you desire that does not rely on obeisance to others. In order to control the masses, you must strip them of their ability to get what they need on their own and convince them that what you say and do is the only way to accomplish things. You introduce government, capitalism, and religion to provide for yourself and those you deem worthy on the backs of innocent others you break with rules that only work so long as you keep throwing them crumbs. The self-empowered person is considered radical and potentially dangerous for what if he or she showed people there's another way? You lose everything you worked so hard to build by letting the commoners know they had the ability to provide for themselves all along—they just needed the knowledge you've worked so hard to convince them was unsafe poppycock.

Sean Taylor: I avoid doctrine in my work as much as possible. I love the idea of loosey-goosey belief systems because, honestly, that's what even most of our entrenched religions were before they were voted on and codified and made safe at the state level (Constantine). And it's so much fun to play in that area where "good Christian people" will argue about a dead squirrel ward in a house for protection or a suburban family will continue to wait up on the night of a new birth in the family for the spirit of an ancestor to show up for a blessing (that's another currently in progress). It's also fun to see ardent atheists encounter something supernatural that sends their world into a spin even if it doesn't trigger any kind of faith. Just the tailspin of supernatural stuff is enough for a good story, especially if it comes from a place intrinsic to their family's past that they thought they were so far beyond having to deal with as modern people in a real, scientific world. 

Jessica Nettles: Deborah would agree with Dee. Magic is practice. It's everyday living for her. It's in her music when she plays her cimbalom between shows, or when she sings as she makes tea. She sees it in the way Thomas, her husband, smiles and his eyes light up when she teases him about the way he likes too much sugar in his tea. It's the way she and her son Seth connect over his dreams. Sometimes it just the way a meal comes together at the end of a very long day. Magic has to be practical in nature and connect to something that applies to life. Doctrine doesn't do that. Those are just rules. Practical magic is a daily, living thing.

What are stories, novels, short stories, or graphic novels, that best highlight the ideas of folkloric influence that you would recommend to others who want to learn how to include such themes in their work?

Danielle Procter Piper: Fairy tales, the ones most of us heard as children, are the best springboard for jumping into folklore as many of these stories are centuries old...but please don't write another variation on any of them. I've read dozens and dozens of variations of Snow White and Cinderella and the lot and most are drivel with very few introducing anything new. It's much cooler if you forge your own fantasy world.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: Check out the Witches and Wizards in the Discworld series. My favorites are: Lords and Ladies, Witches Abroad, and Carpe Jugulum. For Wizards: Interesting Times and The Colour of Magic.

Graphic Novels: Hellblazer and Promethea or anything done by Alan Moore. He’s a maniac and an actual wizard. Very interesting ideas on magic.

Jessica Nettles: Start with the basics: Read your mythos. Which ones? All of them? As many as you can learn about. I started reading Greek mythology when I was very young (I look back and realize that it was probably too young). Then I learned about other mythos and read them too. Why do that? Because this gives a better understanding about what people believe and why some magic works certain ways. Read good books with strong magic systems, like Wheel of Time (okay, I'm not a huge fan, but the magic system is pretty consistent), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell, the Sandman (yes, Gaiman has issues, but his magic systems are spectacular and his writing is worth studying), read Dr. Strange and some of the other Marvel titles that deal with cosmic magic (once again, somethings are problematic, but also there are a lot of really cool things that happen in this magic system that are worth studying, plus they play around a lot with mythos and their takes on folklore). Also read things from people who don't look like you. It's really easy to fall into reading information filtered through those who are part of your culture. When you do that, you miss all the nuances of the culture you are learning about. It's one thing to learn about Anasi from a very Western point of view than it is to learn about Anasi from the African or even West Indies point of view. Same with magic. If you are going to learn about magic of certain cultures--talk to the folk who practice it or find books by the folk who practice it. I recommend reading folks like Nicole Givens Kurtz, Milton Davis, Geneve Flynn, L. Marie Wood. You will get schooled.

Sean Taylor: I think there have been some amazing comic books and graphic novels exploring folkloric themes. The Writer from Dark Horse looks into Jewish folklore and mysteries. Harrow County is hands-down my favorite take on mountain haints and spellcraft. Obviously lots are drawn from folklore in The Sandman, even if Gaiman himself is a bit tarnished. Image Comic's I Hate This Place begins as a sort of homage to folk horror before sliding off into Lovecraftian themes. 

As for books, no one does this better than Angela Carter in The Bloody Chamber or Shirley Jackson in "The Lottery." 

Kay Iscah: Definitely Brothers Grimm Folklore and Fairytale collection for my work as I borrow elements of the folklore style, particularly in The Girl With No Name. But I think it’s good to read broadly. I lost my African folklore collection in a housefire, so can’t give you the title, but it’s a big influence on one of my works in progress. I make a reference to Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, which is a retelling of Nandi folklore. In Seventh Night there’s also a nod to Legend of Zelda.

A lot of folklore is retelling of older myths with a local flavor thrown in, which may be hard to recognize if you don't know the older myths. Reading The Mabinogion before rereading Brothers Grimm helped me start connecting several of the Grimm stories to older myths, Celtic, Greek, and Bible stories. I think the more you dig into mythology, the more you see the patterns as stories are told and retold.