Archetypes and Luxuriating in Character

It has been too long since I spoke online about Land Over Sea. I was finishing a year-long course to qualify as an Infantry Platoon Commander and I also bought a house.

I will write another post on my forays into book marketing, one that is more forward-looking. For now, however, I’d like to identify two of the principles that guided me during the writing of Land Over Sea, especially to speak to the novel’s structure.

Land Over Sea, of course, was born from the play of my childhood. Its development followed my own and I wrote on my interests and thoughts of the time. At each stage of growth (this sounds more linear than is perhaps true) I would revisit the work of the previous stage and be displeased. Rewrites would ensue until I had achieved the standard of the stage. This process, generally, repeated itself many times.

But there came a crisis, and a choice I had to make.

One of the best ways to learn to write is to imitate. One tries one’s hand at Wordsworth’s descriptions of nature, at Homer’s poetic divinity, at Hemingway’s prose. However, imitation goes beyond style. The storytelling elements that constitute an even earlier literary experience (by which we make sense of the world, I might add) are buried deeper, in the sediment upon which all further material takes shape. As I grew into a more sophisticated reader, I discovered archetypes within my ‘own’ work. I was appalled: here was the archetype of the arena, no doubt derived from my fascination with classical antiquity. Here was the archetype of the magical school, likely derived from my sister reading Harry Potter to me when I could not yet read myself. And here was the archetype of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, its western medieval setting coupled with elements such as elves, the blueprint for most fantasy. These are major archetypes, cultural lodestones, but myriad others – many more elusive – populate what seem our personal creations.

So, then, the crisis. My work was derivative. It could all be deleted. But what ideas would then be left? What originality? I was not sure at the time, and I doubt now, that one can create in a vacuum. Thoughts spring from the interactions between thoughts.

I did not delete the archetypal, foundational story that had been so fiercely felt during my life. It was true for me. I chose another quest: to answer, why? Given the permanence of archetypes, their enduring attraction that often appeals without being specifically identified, I hoped to find value in discovery of the origin, the heart, the reason. Here I hoped would lie truth. Thus, investigating the contours of these ancients which lurk in the mind became a principle of my writing.

I now believe that the aspiring writer, particularly as regards style, can imitate as a being who is thrilled and vibrates with the soul and idea of a text, and would express this resonance. This act of imitation is an act of love. It is a form of admittance into the artistic tradition. Originality may come later, or it may not. If it comes, it is born of the interplay of a thousand minds coalesced into one – yours.  

I now turn to a second principle of my writing: luxuriating in character.

I did not want to write a story where the actions of characters were dictated by plot or theme. I wanted to know them, for otherwise I cannot really care about what characters do. If a character is true then the fiction of their story is true in the ways that are important.

Some, no doubt, may find the pacing of Land Over Sea odd. The reason is that I love to sink into awareness, intimacy, an experience of beauty or honesty which, if done correctly, will ensure far greater yields from action and theme. 

That is all I really want to say about this.