Fiction Guide - How to Achieve Success in Writing: Down with George RR Martin & Rowling Up With Aiming after Tolkien & Howard & the Heavens! How to Craft Myths and Craft Great Romances Again
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Something’s been lost along the way artistically. Something of some great importance that when one thinks about it, has left the genre in a bad way. It has left it bereft of vision and the vigour it once had.
What is that one thing I speak of? Ambition.
Most people when told that ambition is a good thing either nod their heads unthinkingly or they are aghast, as society has taught them that ambition is bad. This is wrong, ambition should be discussed, should be analysed and should be encouraged.
It is important that we remember what the lofty goals Tolkien and Howard set for themselves. They weren’t simply trying to imitate what came before, nor were they aspiring to just write ‘weird fiction’ or ‘fantasy stories’ they aspired to birth mythologies, to give rise to myths.
I’ve written on this extensively in the past, but not quite from this angle. The thing about this view is that I’ve long held the view that Howard and Tolkien’s literature represents the peak of Mythic literature. They are as others have described them the twin ‘mountains’ that loom large in the imagination of the genre and that tower above all other works.
This is something that has served to discourage many a great writers, and encourage others. If I may say so, I have considerably more respect for those who are encouraged rather than discouraged and the reason for this is because just because something is tough or might seem impossible doesn’t mean we should quit.
What is most admirable about men like
and is how they never let themselves get discouraged, never stop aspiring after the peak of the mountain top in their respective fields. Ulysses aspires after the greatest of Superhero writers and to take the genre by storm with the finest art and craftsmanship imaginable, as he aspires after Tintin, John Byrne’s best runs and will be releasing down the road some of the best quality stuff since the 80s (I’ve seen some of the art, it’s amazing stuff subscribe to him).As to Black Knight he seeks to surpass Star Wars, and this is no small thing to aspire to do. He intends to overcome the great hurdles that stand between him and the mountain top, to conquer Sci-Fi and he’s doing it. I’ve been encountering a bunch of his fans online, he’s told me tales of the thousands that fell in love with Starshatter and it’s impressive stuff.
This is where we really do need to start thinking about; what is the point of writing what we’re writing?
Is it just to entertain? That’s fine, but maybe we do need to also bear in mind; what does it mean to entertain? Does it mean mindless stuff like Marvel movies? Or is it something more? I lean towards thinking it should be more than just that.
The objective must always be to aspire higher, higher and higher! You see in Yoshikawa Eiji’s masterpiece Musashi, the epynomous hero at one point steps on a nail and enraged at his own weakness and short-sightedness resolves to scale a mountain.
Why does he do this? To beat himself into shape, to force himself to move forward and overcome pain. Why overcome pain? Because it is a mere nuissance, it is there to slow him down and to keep him from doing what he must do, what he was always meant to do; become the greatest man he could be and the greatest warrior in Japanese history.
Once at the mountain-top does he just rest there? Yes and no, he rests if briefly so yet he designates Yagyu among others as the other mountains, recognizing their greatness and comparing them to the rest of the Highlands he is faced with. He has found his place and has seated himself among the lofty heavens that he might better gaze upon his ‘rivals’.
This is what it means to be ambitious. It doesn’t mean destroying another, it doesn’t mean besmirching the others, rather it means admiring them, revering them and placing them on a pedestal that he must strive after. He must strive after them, so that he might become greater himself.
Tolkien & Howard are great mountains. They are mighty, and we’ve all become discouraged and overwhelmed by their grandeur when we ought to have done as Musashi did. Ambition of this sort is holy, is magnificent. It is also important to bear in mind that though we might place the two atop the mountains, high above us mere mortals that this is how one builds great literary masterpieces; by aiming upwards.
Just as we build society looking up, so too must we rebuild culture and literature in this fashion.
So I say listen and pay heed to the genius, the goodness and the brilliant and passionate words of Fulton J. Sheen (seriously it’s a crime he wasn’t made Pope).
We need to build and model our vision of literature in the same fashion. When I’m writing, do I write downwards? A times, but only with certain characters but not with my novels, I write upwards, up from the filth, up from modernity, up towards the heavens and glories of our ancestors! This is what one must bear in mind. What one must always aspire after!
Tolkien created a mythology, a body of legends for the English people. Can it be done again? Some would say certainly not.
I say not only can it be done again, it can be done quite easily. Easily I hear you say, yes easily. We will do it, and we will do it no less gloriously. Why? Because we must. It is not in the European spirit to my mind or that of the Asian to be contented with less than the most glorious, than the most beautiful than anything less than the divine itself.
What got me first thinking about this question was hanging out with one of my favourite Substackers,
. A brilliant man with a knowledge of the Hero’s Journey, literature, mythology and psychology that is unmatched. He set me to thinking once more about the goal of the genre. Do give our chat a listen as it’d help to
And then I had this chat with
wherein the moment of realization struck me about the possibility of writing this essay and how I might suggest writers improve themselves, what ought to be the goal and guide. Do give it a listen, and subscribe to him and Delinquent as both ended up guiding my thinking, and meeting it head on even as they polished and refined it.
The trouble as I realized it, was that we’ve become consumed by consoomerism as some might call it, but also by the notion that we must aim to imitate in some fashion those splendid works of the 80s and also such recent works as the pop-culture trash of George R Martin and J.K. Rowling when their works are on the cusp of being forgotten and will only continue to be swept away like trash in the wind.
The 80s produced many great works but the reason they’ve lacked staying power is because lovely, and beautiful as they are, they are not myths. They set to work only imitating the ‘shadow’ so to speak of Tolkien and Howard, imitating the stereotypes about them without carefully perusing their works.
Look at how neither Weis nor Hickman really read Fantasy, they prefer Bleak House and such works (which is fine). The trouble with this is that they’ve not adapted splendid works like Bleak House into Dragonlance, not sought to install such splendid writing into the canon of their works, and not sought to write masterful literature that will still be read in 100 years. They’ve sought to make a product, and much as it wounds me to say this, given my profound love for Dragonlance (I plan to pass their works onto my own children someday), I must acknowledge they did something wrong.
Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and other such works are not Myths, they are books. What is the difference? The difference is that Myths have staying power. Myths are the most beautiful, most wondrous thing anyone can create, for they carry with them shards of the divine Truth.
The 80s Fantasy novels even the most ‘bargain bin’ one was fun, but it takes more than fun to build something. They glanced sideways at one another, glanced over at the shadow of the Twin-Mountains and sought to build mere hills, next to the Mountains or between them, and never to build for themselves another Mountain.
They’ve largely disappeared from the modern literary lexicon precisely because they didn’t aspire to define, to pass down and to embody the civilization to which they belong. They didn’t seek to write in a grander prose, in a grander manner as others had done before them, didn’t attempt to challenge by climbing the mountain.
If we’re to restore the Mythic genre to glory, to the Golden Age and yes that must be the goal, not the 80s, we must look past the 80s (boy did that hurt to admit!). We can appreciate them, love them and even admire them but we can’t be setting them up as our goal. They are a way-station so to speak, the goal is always and forever the likes of Tolkien and Howard, and the greats that came before them.
You must also brush past them because many of them didn’t exactly have a philosophical or theological background to them and their works. This is important, to start with I’d recommend not only Fulton Sheen’s works, and speeches but also the works of St-Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, the Hagakure, the 10 Commandments of Chivalry, Bushido and so on.
But also read
, , , , and you will learn philosophy, theology and also wonder. They will help polish your spirit in my view.Philosophy and Literature, especially Literature which is bent towards Myths are interwoven together.
I will now tell you what else must be done and how we will restore the genre I think.