Getting Inspiration from Myths & Legends

Can myths inspire? Sure they can!

You Can Grab Some Inspiration from Myths and Legends!

Myths and legends are perhaps the oldest stories we humans tell each other. They go back to before human beings were literate. They may go back to before agriculture, which would make them some six to ten thousand years old. Yeah, legends are that old.

And then, once someone decided to commit them to writing, they became some of humanity’s oldest literature.

Myths

We might, at least here in the west, think of Greek and Roman mythologies before we consider others. Or maybe we do not know any others. But there are plenty!

However, rather than getting into specific culture’s mythologies, I would instead suggest considering certain ancient tropes.

Flood Myths

Floods make for great storytelling. This is because they are a kind of ancient people’s disaster movie. The effects are legitimately frightening and off the scale.

Furthermore, most of us have experienced some species of flooding in our lives, even if it was just water rising in a creek and pooling around our ankles.

For a religious group, a flood is also a great way to separate out the righteous (using whatever criteria the group so desires) from the wicked. The best people can be quite literally be saved and the evil people can be swept away. Or maybe just the failures get washed away.

It is also far less messy than a fire or earthquake would be (although being swallowed up by the earth is another option when it comes to the fate of the wicked). There is nothing to clean up.

Oh, and of course, this can lead to shipwrecks.

Legendary Battles

The fall of Troy makes for a great story. Can it inspire? Of course. Between the death scenes, Helen’s love affair and then her fall from grace, and the Trojan Horse itself, the story is fascinating reading.

Another (probably) mythological battle is Joshua’s invasion of Jericho.

The story includes the image of a wanton woman (Rahab, who was most likely meant to be a prostitute) offering aid and comfort to the enemy’s spies, to the walls falling from trumpet blasts and not traditional attacks.

The Orphan/Misplaced Child

From Oedipus to Moses, there have been religious and mythological accounts of children ending up adopted and going on to doing big things. Sometimes good things. Sometimes, not so good.

But imagine turning that on its head. If a human woman can act as a surrogate and give birth to an alien or part-alien, then she may take one look at the baby, and think, this is my child.

The Chosen One

This is the kind of story that you see a lot of, where someone is the only person who can do ___ in order to save the world, or make everyone happy, or end the war, or whatever.

Just do what you can to not let that character devolve into a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu, and you should be fine.

Takeaways for Using the Ancient for Writing Inspiration

Without getting into faith or religion (which I will handle in a different post), it is perfectly legitimate to use myths for writing. They are, after all, within the public domain.

And why should we have all the fun? Maybe your aliens have some mythologies of their own.