Archive for June, 2009
William Morris’ Sigurd: Emotion and Motive
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
— Wrapping up a discussion of different versions of the tale of Siegfried/Sigurd.
The easiest way to find out what’s in the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga is to follow the links. Note well that there are other Norse stories that bear on the Volsung tale; the Volsunga Saga isn’t the only Norse source.
Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is the best way to get a feel for what the Old Norse poems were like if you don’t read Old Norse. They also have some of the most striking visual imagery, in the short, high-impact descriptions.
I think William Morris’ The Story of Sigurd the Volsung is probably the best way to appreciate the story as such. Morris prunes away the least promising tangents in the Norse material — some matter I omitted from the synopsis, but which you’ll see if you read the Volsunga Saga itself. I like his poetry. But the feature of Morris’ presentation that’s most important, as far as making the story accessible to modern readers, are his additions to it. At critical points, where the old story often says briefly that someone does something (and doesn’t explain why), Morris dramatizes the moment. He shows us the character’s emotions, and sometimes more of their motives. Modern readers are used to the expansive writing of the novel; and this approach makes it easier to sympathize with the characters in the way we’re accustomed to.
For example, here’s a quote from the Volsunga Saga:
There was a king called Siggeir, who ruled over Gothland, a mighty king and of many folk; he went to meet Volsung, the king, and prayed him for Signy his daughter to wife; and the king took his talk well, and his sons withal, but she was loth thereto, yet she bade her father rule in this as in all other things that concerned her, so the king took such rede (1) that he gave her to him, and she was betrothed to King Siggeir; and for the fulfilling of the feast and the wedding, was King Siggeir to come to the house of King Volsung. The king got ready the feast according to his best might, and when all things were ready, came the king’s guests and King Siggeir withal at the day appointed, and many a man of great account had Siggeir with him.
A quote of Morris’ handling of Signy’s betrothal would be way too long: it’s Book I, Part 1. But I’ll take a highlight from it, when Signy reacts to the proposal Siggeir’s herald has brought:
Such words in the hall of the Volsungs spake the Earl of Siggeir the Goth,
Bearing the gifts and the gold, the ring, and the tokens of troth.
But the King’s heart laughed within him and the King’s sons deemed it good;
For they dreamed how they fared with the Goths o’er ocean and acre and wood,
Till all the north was theirs, and the utmost southern lands.
But nought said the snow-white Signy as she sat with folded hands
And gazed at the Goth-king’s Earl till his heart grew heavy and cold,
As one that half remembers a tale that the elders have told,
A story of weird and of woe: then spake King Volsung and said:
“A great King woos thee, daughter; will thou lie in a great king’s bed,
And bear earth’s kings on thy bosom, that our name may never die?”
A fire lit up her face, and her voice was e’en as a cry:
“I will sleep in a great king’s bed, I will bear the lords of the earth,
And the wrack and the grief of my youth-days shall be held for nothing worth.”
Then would he question her kindly, as one who loved her sore,
But she put forth her hand and smiled, and her face was flushed no more:
“Would God it might otherwise be! but wert thou to will it not,
Yet should I will it and wed him, and rue my life and my lot.”
Lowly and soft she said it; but spake out louder now:
“Be of good cheer, King Volsung! for such a man art thou,
That what thou dost well-counselled, goodly and fair it is,
And what thou dost unwitting, the Gods have bidden thee this:
So work all things together, for the fame of thee and thine.
And now meseems at my wedding shall be a hallowed sign,
That shall give thine heart a joyance, whate’er shall follow after.”
She spake, and the feast sped on, and the speech and the song and the laughter
Went over the words of boding as the tide of the norland main
Sweeps over the hidden skerry, the home of the shipman’s bane.
Morris has shown us, in Signy, not a helpless victim of her male relatives’ folly, but a Second-Sighted woman who sees the working of the Norns. Her strength and her passion is apparent here; when she takes her terrible revenge, it will be but the outworking of her character.
Unknowingly Forsworn: the Volsunga Saga
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
In the previous post, we paused the Volsunga Saga synopsis to speak of the moral and artistic difficulties in the Nibelungenlied’s depiction of Siegfried’s dealings with Brunhild. Today we return to the Norse synopsis.
As you may recall, we left Sigurd/Siegfried on the heath in possession of a slain dragon’s hoard. He has also just killed his foster-father Regin, who (according to the birds) would have betrayed him to seize the treasure.
Sigurd rides on until he comes to the mountain Hindfell, on which is a castle lit by fire blazing to the heavens. He passes through the fire and comes upon Brynhild, an armor-clad warrior maiden who lies in an enchanted sleep Odin has cast upon her, for disobeying him. Odin swore that she should be given in marriage; but she swore that she would wed none who knew fear. Only Sigurd has succeeded in awakening her. After some conversation, they plight their troth to each other, and Sigurd gives her Andvari’s ring from the dragon-hoard. Sigurd rides away, and Brynhild dwells behind a great veil of flame, waiting for the man who can cross it to return to wed her. (Trying to make sense of the confusion about precisely who Brynhild is, or where she waits, is bootless. I’m going with the simplest version.)
Sigurd travels to the court of the Giukings, where Gunnar, son of the late Giuki, is king. There Gunnar’s mother sees Sigurd and decides that he ought to marry her daughter Gudrun (Kriemhild in the German); and she gives Sigurd an enchanted drink that causes him to forget Brynhild utterly. Sigurd and Gudrun marry.
Then Gunnar decides to marry also. He has heard of Brynhild, and he rides with Sigurd to her flame-warded dwelling to woo her. But Gunnar’s horse will not cross the flame. Then he asks to borrow Sigurd’s horse, Grani, a descendant of Sleipnir, and tries again; but Grani will bear no one but Sigurd. So finally Sigurd rides through the flame and comes to Brynhild, in the form of Gunnar, whom he claims to be. Brynhild is surprised and disappointed that it isn’t Sigurd, but she does as she has sworn (she thinks), and weds the man who crossed her fire. Sigurd in Gunnar’s form takes Andvari’s ring from Brynhild in exchange for a ring of Gunnar’s.
So at length they all end up at the Giuking court. Brynhild beholds Sigurd as himself, and knows him for her forsworn beloved; but she says nothing. He does not know her. For a time, all seems peaceful; but then Brynhild and Gudrun quarrel. In the quarrel Gudrun reveals that Sigurd is the one that crossed the flaming fire, not Gunnar; and for proof she holds up Andvari’s ring, which Sigurd had got from Brynhild and then given to Gudrun.
I find it much easier to feel for the characters in this version.
Gunnar and Sigurd end up deceiving Brynhild in fact, but not because they planned in advance to do so: rather, literally on the spur of the moment, Sigurd rides through the fire in Gunnar’s place. Gunnar’s courage did not fail him: his horse did.
Sigurd betrays Brynhild, but not intentionally: he has forgotten her altogether, because of the machinations of Gunnar’s mother.
Brynhild is also forsworn unintentionally: she did not marry the man who crossed the fire.
Brynhild quarrels with Gudrun, but not purely out of pride: she has long been holding her tongue in the presence of the woman who has unwittingly stolen her beloved; she has long been sharing the court in silence, hearing nothing resembling an explanation for Sigurd’s breach of their troth.
Gudrun too is angry and unwise in her speech, but she has no idea where the strength of Brynhild’s emotion is coming from.
Gunnar finds that his wife has gone from respecting him to caring nothing for him, or for her own life.
So much wrath, so much grief, so much scalded pride, so much shame in such close quarters! It ends in bloodshed, in no manner drastically different from the core German tale: how else? The principals pull ruin down on their own heads, in that none of them back away from their disastrous anger. But all of them were maneuvered into the intolerable situation by the machinations of an evil woman; none of them went into it seeing. They were all blinded.
Brynhild persuades the Giukings to kill Sigurd to avenge her honor, then commits suicide. Gudrun goes near-mad with grief at Sigurd’s death. She dwells apart, until finally they give her in marriage, against her will, to Atli (Attila). Later, Atli will call the Giukings to come visit him, allegedly to offer them power in his kingdom and actually to attempt to extort the dragon-hoard from them; but they have hidden the dragon-hoard in the Rhine, and Hogni and Gunnar die without ever revealing its location. The Rheingold is forever lost, and Andvari’s curse with it.
I think it no accident that all the more recent retellings of the Sigurd/Siegfried story borrow heavily from the Volsunga Saga, rather than sticking to the Nibelungenlied. Wagner’s Ring cycle has more German material than either Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun or William Morris’ The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs; but he also decided to borrow the enchanted draught of forgetfulness to explain Siegfried’s perfidy.
Next post: why I favor Morris’ version of the tale, especially as an introduction to it. After that I’ll go on to the promised posts about poetic forms.
How the Heroes Forfeit Sympathy in the Nibelungenlied
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
(Discussion continued from “Changes in the Norse Sigurd Story“).
In all versions of the Sigurd story, Brynhild is wronged. But the circumstances of the wrong change from the German story of the Nibelungenlied to the Norse version in the Volsunga Saga. I believe the Norse version has more tragic depth because of it; and I also believe it more likely to succeed artistically with a modern audience.
All forms of the story are wrapped around revenge. All of them demand the ability to sympathize with at least one character who sees revenge as virtuous, or even as obligatory. Such is the heroic ideal of the culture. A high-born man who refuses to avenge the wrongs done to him and his is no warrior, but a craven with the heart of a thrall. The high-born woman is not so obliged, but she proves herself heroic if she, too, destroys the one who has wronged her and her kindred.
Brynhild is at the least a queen; in some versions of the story, she is a Valkyrie. She has been deceived, and that deception has wed her to the wrong man. There is never any possibility that, when she discovers this, she will meekly accept it. Ruin is inevitable.
But in the Nibelungenlied, both she and the other major characters do much to forfeit our sympathy. Brunhild shows such great concern with pride of place that the modern reader is likely to want to see her taken down; but Kriemhild/Gudrun is as prideful, and there is cruelty in her boasting to Brunhild that it was Siegfried, not Gunther, who mastered her and first lay with her. (According to the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried merely bound her and left her to Gunther; but the circumstances are such that practically no one would believe that that’s as far as it went. Brunhild is outraged and humiliated, understandably.)
How the men come across in the Nibelungenlied is even less likely to commend itself to us. Gunther and Siegfried consciously intended, from the very beginning, to deceive Brunhild — to have Siegfried win her, and then pass her to Gunther, who is clearly the lesser man and who could never have compassed the victory himself. When Siegfried meets his end because of it directly, and Gunther indirectly, I find it hard to mourn either of them much.
I speculate that, as the story moved from Germany into Scandinavia, the Norse poets may well have found this portrayal unsatisfactory. The core story would not have failed to satisfy their sensibilities in all the ways it offends modern ones. But by any standard I’m aware of, the intentional deception of Brunhild in this fashion is a shabby trick; and I can well imagine a Norse poet saying, “Yes, he wrongs Brynhild — but not like this . . . ” and proceeding to give us the complications I shall soon describe, in our interrupted synopsis of the Norse tale.
Shadow Unit
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Poetry Friday is at Carol’s Corner today.
I’ve been having fun reading Shadow Unit. Imagine professionally written fan fiction for an imaginary TV show about the FBI’s Department of Really Weird Crimes We Can’t Talk About. I’ll donate soon.
Real Soon Now I’ll finish the next post about the Sigurd story, and then move to poetic forms. I was thinking of discussing Christabel and Gerald Manley Hopkins, continuing the discussion of accentual poetry, before introducing a Welsh form that interests me considerably.
Changes in the Norse Sigurd Story
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Even the simplest version of the Siegfried/Sigurd story, the German core of the Nibelungenlied, summarized briefly in yesterday’s post, has two distinct legs to it: the deception of Brunhild and the death of Siegfried; and Kriemhild’s vengeance for Siegfried’s death.
The Scandinavian versions alter the story in three major ways:
- They change the relationships of some of the characters;
- They add legs;
- They alter the character of the story by altering the moral character of Siegfried/Sigurd.
Important changes in the names and relationships of the characters:
- Gunnar/Gunther’s sister is named Gudrun, not Kriemhild.
- Grimhild becomes the name of Gunnar’s mother; and she’s not the minor character she is in the Nibelungenlied. In the Volsunga Saga she’s the major architect of villainy.
- The character Hogni/Hagen, who kills Siegfried and is otherwise much involved in the violence in the Nibelungenlied, goes from being Gunther’s retainer/a more distant relative to being one of Gunther’s brothers.
- In some versions of the story, Gudrun/Kriemhild has at least partially forgiven her brothers for killing Sigurd/Siegfried, and attempts to warn them of Atli/Etzel’s treachery, but they fail to act on the warning.
- Brunhild/Brynhild is not the queen of Isenland. In some versions she’s connected to Atli; but in others she’s a Valkyrie who was made mortal for disobeying Odin. I’m going to follow the Valkyrie version.
The most conspicuous alterations to the story are the addition of new sections, mostly to the beginning. We have a whole story about Sigurd’s forebears, and the story of his dragon-slaying is related in detail.
Sigurd’s Ancestors
There was a great king named Volsung, a descendant of Odin, who had ten sons and a daughter, Signy. Siggeir the king of the Goths sent to Volsung, proposing an alliance and asking to wed Signy; and in spite of her misgivings, they agreed.
At the marriage feast, Odin came and fixed a sword in the great tree that grew in Volsung’s hall; only Sigmund the son of Volsung could draw it. Siggeir the Goth-king offered to buy it from him, but Sigmund refused in disdain, and Siggeir conceived a hatred for the Volsungs. But he hid his hatred, and invited Volsung to come to his land when he sailed away with Signy.
Volsung and his sons sailed in a few months to Siggeir’s land. Signy warned them of her husband’s treachery, but they landed anyway. Volsung was killed in battle; his sons were taken prisoner, and, at Signy’s request, spared for a time. They were chained to a log in the forest. By the time Signy could get away to help them, only Sigmund was alive. He lived in the forest, while Signy sought a way to avenge her father and brothers.
Years passed; Signy sent two of her sons to Sigmund to foster, but they proved too fearful, and Sigmund killed them at Signy’s instruction. Finally she changed shapes with a witchwoman and went to the forest; disguised, she lay with Sigmund. The child was called Sinfjotli. She sent him also to the forest, and he proved stalwart enough to serve as an instrument of vengeance. He lived and trained with Sigmund in the forest, raiding.
At length the time of their vengeance was come. Sigmund and Sinfjotli sneak into Siggeir’s hall, are discovered and taken prisoner, escape, and fire the hall. In the destruction, Signy tells Sigmund that he, not Siggeir, is Sinfjotli’s father; and she intentionally returns to the burning hall to die. Sigmund recovers Odin’s sword Gram.
Sigmund and Sinfjotli return to Volsung’s land. Sigmund marries; Sinfjotli quarrels with the brother of the queen, and kills him; in revenge, Sigmund’s queen poisons him, and he dies. Sigmund sends his queen away. Later, he marries again, and is killed in battle defending his bride from another suitor. Odin himself appears and causes the sword Gram to break, which brings about Sigmund’s death. Sigmund’s bride, who is pregnant with Sigurd, saves the shards of the sword. After the battle she encounters and marries another king, who raises Sigurd with his children.
Sigurd, the Dragon, and the Treasure
In the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried is known for having killed a dragon and taken his treasure already. The Norse version includes the story of how it happened.
Sigurd was fostered with a learned and cunning dwarf named Regin. One day when Sigurd was young, he urged him to attack the dragon Fafnir, who had a great hoard, telling him this story:
Once the gods were out hunting, and they killed a son of Hreidmar when he was in the form of an otter. Hreidmar demanded that they cover the otterskin with gold for a weregild. Then Loki went out and captured the dwarf Andvari, who had a hoard. He took the gold for a ransom. But a whisker of the otter remained uncovered, so Loki forced Andvari to give him the ring which was the foundation of his hoard. Andvari cursed the ring so that it would bring ruin to its possessor. Loki added it to the gold given to Hreidmar.
Then Fafnir, a surviving son of Hreidmar, killed his father, took the gold, and brooded on it in the form of a dragon. He shared none of it with Regin, who’s his brother, and who wants the gold.
Sigurd, on hearing the story, refuses to attack the dragon immediately. He insists on avenging his father Sigmund first. Only after he has gone to war and defeated his father’s foe, gotten himself a high-blooded horse, and when Regin has reforged the sword Gram, does Sigurd finally agree to go after Fafnir.
He successfully kills the dragon. Then Regin asks him to roast the dragon’s heart for him; and when Sigurd tastes the dragon’s blood in the process, he learns the speech of all birds. And he hears the birds saying that Regin means to betray him. So Sigurd kills Regin first, and takes the treasure, which is cursed.
So far, the Norse version has added material to the German story, or expanded on it. In the next section, we come to Sigurd’s dealings with Brynhild. The Scandinavian version shows Sigurd in a more flattering moral light, and this, in my view, deepens the story. On which, more anon.
More About the Volsung Story
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
I have some requests for further discussion, one about poetic forms and one about the story of Sigurd/Siegfried. I’ll start with the latter.
I’m aware of these versions of the story of the Germanic hero known as Sigurð or Siegfried:
- The Nibelungenlied — the medieval German version of the tale. How old the story itself is I don’t know, but the version we have was written in Middle High German in the 1200s.
- The Volsunga Saga and related matter — the medieval Scandinavian version of the story.
- Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs is an adaptation of the story that uses some parts of the German tale and some parts of the Scandinavian, but makes some marked alterations in both.
- William Morris’ epic poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs also makes use of elements from both the Germanic and the Scandinavian branches of the story, making some alterations. It is, to my mind, the version of the story most likely to convey its drama and emotional impact to the modern reader.
- The newly-published pair of epic poems by J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, primarily draw from the Scandinavian branch, and represent Tolkien’s attempt to make sense of the incomplete Scandinavian manuscripts, and to present the story in English in a way that would have the feel of the Norse originals. I wrote an essay explaining the Northern verse form, for readers unfamiliar with it.
Some elements of the tale provided obvious inspiration for Middle Earth.
The core of the story story likely originates in Germany, rather than in Scandinavia, and it makes reference to historical personages of the 5th-6th centuries, including:
- Gunther/Gunnar, king of the Burgundians, whose court was at Worms, and
- Etzel/Atli (Attila), the king of the Huns.
- Dietrich von Bern/Þiðrek/Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.
Historical incidents that brought about the fall of the Burgundian kingdom appear to have provided inspiration for the story; but the epic hardly adheres closely to the historical framework. Tolkien believed the German versions of the story to be older than the Scandinavian (reasonably enough, since the tale is set in the south). Moreover, it appears to have grown in the telling, acquiring more pieces as it moved north.
The core German story is as follows:
Gunther and his brothers rule the Burgundians; they have a sister, Kriemhild. A great hero, Siegfried, who has won a great treasure and killed a dragon, woos her; they marry.
Gunther wants to marry Brunhild, the queen of Isenland (Iceland?), but she will only marry a man who can defeat her in martial endeavors. He enlists the aid of Siegfried, who defeats Brunhild while pretending to be Gunther. Later, when Gunther is unable to defeat her in a contest of strength on their wedding night, Siegfried subdues her instead, again pretending to be Gunther.
All is well for a time, but Kriemhild learns that it was her husband, not her brother, who defeated Brunhild. One day she quarrels with Brunhild over precedence and, during the quarrel, tells Brunhild that it was Siegfried, not Gunther, who mastered her (and who first lay with her). Brunhild is ashamed and outraged, and her husband’s kinfolk avenge her on Siegfried: they kill him.
Kriemhild then, mourning Siegfried and overcome, remains apart for some time. But finally Etzel the king of the Huns sends to her kinsmen, asking for her hand; and she marries him. Later, when her brothers visit Etzel’s court, she persuades Etzel to kill them — apparently partly to avenge Siegfried and partly to recover Siegfried’s treasure, which her kinfolk have hidden from her in the Rhine. After a great fight, eventually the Burgundians are defeated and either killed outright or later executed — in one case by Kriemhild’s own hand; and then the hero Hildebrand kills Kriemhild for her betrayal of hospitality.
The action of the core German story mostly revolves around the Burgundian court at Worms and the court of Etzel; and most of its action is the result of intentional treachery. It is heroic in the sense that there is much strength and bravery involved; but honor is wanting.
Next time, I’ll describe the Norse version of the story. It is still a very bloody affair in the Scandinavian rendering, but elaborations and alterations change the moral character of some of the participants, and make it more a tragedy we can speak of as such.
Images and Downtime
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
I’ve archived a copy of the Accentual-Alliterative Poetry: How the Verse Works article in the Prose section of the web site. I’ve got a number of comments on it, and requests for more. In the future, then, I’ll write more articles on particular verse forms and poetic techniques.
I took a long weekend off. I’ve reached a point, in working on my fantasy poem Dragon Winter, where I need a break from the intense effort of trying to cast my ideas into metered verse.
Some writers insist that you should write every day, and it works for them. Not for me. I start doing bad work if I don’t, every so often. back off from the writing itself. I need to give myself a rest from the effort of verbalization; and, at certain points, I need to step away from the work and let my subconscious turn it over for a while. Give my subconscious enough time, and it will come up with fresh approaches to the story in areas where it hasn’t been working.
Sometimes I want a vacation from writing altogether. Other times, I may need a short break from writing itself, but I need a longer break from my work in progress. That’s what’s happened this time: my fantasy poem would benefit from a longer simmer. But I could be writing a story in prose — if I knew what else I want to write yet.
I’ve discovered that I’m more than capable of coming up with ideas for stories that have every virtue except that of interesting me; and if I start casting an idea into words too early, that’s what I’ll get. So while I’m letting Dragon Winter stew, I’ve been flipping through the artwork at Epilogue.net.
I’ve got three reasons for that:
- I don’t know that Dragon Winter will ever go to print, but even if it doesn’t, I’m going to need a cover image. To make a work look professional on a place like Scribd, you need a cover. I’m either going to need to commission a cover, or come up with a good idea for one myself. I’d love to commission artwork from some of the Epilogue artists, but odds are I can’t afford it. But I might pick up ideas for successful approaches.
- The artwork is likely to suggest ideas for a new story, and it will suggest different ideas than I’ll get if I try to make anything take shape in words yet. Different, and probably more interesting.
- For fun. Some of the pictures on that sight are gorgeous.
I’ve come up with part of an idea, over the last few days, but I sense that it needs more, and I’m not ready to start writing yet.
Upgraded. Will Fix Soon.
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
I upgraded to Wordpress 2.8 and it wiped out all my modifications to make the template easier to read. I’ll try to restore them over the weekend.
Kessman’s Tales of Tanglewood
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Last night I read Scott Kessman’s The Tales of Tanglewood: The Lon Dubh Whistle. It’s a fantasy that would be suitable for children, although I see no reason to leave them alone with all the fun stuff.
I like the web page, too. I think it does a good job of conveying the flavor of the book without taking too long to load.
The website material includes the all-important long excerpt, which is better than my attempting to tell you about the writing without giving away too much of the story.
If you’ve ever watched twilight come to the edge of the forest and found it enchanted, this book might strike your fancy. I’m eagerly expecting a sequel.
Brainstorming and Art
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
I want to write a mystery with a weird element to it. I say ‘with a weird element’ instead of ‘fantasy,’ the way I originally thought of the idea, because I don’t necessarily want the tropes of genre fantasy limiting my thinking.
I haven’t gotten very far in developing this idea yet because I’m putting most of my active writing effort into my fantasy poem Dragon Winter, and that tends to draw down the creative juices and leave me with comparatively little to spare for a first novel. There are times, though, when I need a break from Winter, but I’d still like to be writing fiction. This is one of those times.
I’d really like to be one of those writers who can write successfully with no planning at all. So far that hasn’t worked. So I spent part of yesterday looking for ways to brainstorm. I want an idea for a story that won’t end up looking like a clone of half the other books on the shelf. That’s one of the things that’s boring me about modern fiction — the cookie-cutter similarity of so many books in recent publication.
Last time I was worried that I might end up writing a knockoff of everybody else’s genre fantasy, my Muse helpfully solved that problem for me by insisting that the tale should be in metered verse. That worked, after a fashion: whatever you can say about Dragon Winter, it isn’t Extruded Fantasy Product. But I’d like to write something in prose, in the interludes when I can’t face trying to cram a complicated description into suitably brief pentameter.
Recently I read an interesting article in Vision, the writers’ ezine, called “Worldbuilding and the Chaos Mind,” by June Drexler Robertson, about a procedure she uses for finding novel approaches for stories. It involves finding unusual associations for the basic ideas of the story. I tried it; it’s potentially productive, but it occurred to me that there might be faster methods of producing unusual associations.
I downloaded a demo of a brainstorming program called Thoughtoffice (apparently, it used to be named Ideafisher). It works well enough technically, has an expert module for writing, and it might suit some people very well. I don’t think it’s for me, because I want to make stranger associations than it seems designed to produce.
Random drawing from a deck of cards that has idea-generating scenes and symbols on it is another approach I’ve used. I’ve noticed, though, that if I get used to the cards and the associations I’ve made with them, they quit being so useful for sparking new ideas. Then, I don’t really like the artwork on my largest and most varied deck — the cards that came with an innovative, now out-of-production roleplaying game called Everway. It occurred to me that if I found a large and varied source of suitable random images online, though, that I could get visual sources of inspiration that wouldn’t have the problem of going stale.
Google image search, of course, is a possibility. But I was looking over fantasy art galleries for another reason a while back, and I came across Epilogue.net. Epilogue has a very large database of stunningly good fantasy, science fiction, and horror art, and a ‘random image’ button. So I spent some time last night flipping through images, and I’m likely to keep at it tonight. I think it will suggest interesting story ideas to me that I probably wouldn’t have come up with on my own.
Even if you’re not brainstorming speculative fiction, Epilogue has glorious artwork to look at. It makes me wish I had wallspace to hang some of it.
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