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[marycatelli]

Observations on following your passion and why it is not such good advice.

Prophecies -- and if your characters are trying to fulfill one, you've got a problem, since they and the prophecy are pulling together.  No conflict there!

Comments

[izuko.livejournal.com]

So, as I see it, either the prophecy is unnecessary to the story - so no need to include it, or it turns the entire story into one big arse-pull... so no need to write it.

Seems like a good argument to go prophecyless.

Half of me wants to write a story where all the prophecies are completely wrong. Along the way, someone wonders "why did we assume these old guys knew what they were talking about in the first place?"

[marycatelli]

Great immortal pieces of literature have been written about prophecies. The gentle art is to, whether the character is trying to thwart or fulfill it, have the results be nothing what he expects.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Those works also existed in a world where prophecies made sense. The Greeks had an entire pantheon (literally) of gods to work with. Modern writers are "enlightened" by atheism. It's kind of hard to buy into prophecies fulfilled by "fate" or the "will of the universe" or "karma."

I think this goes into your running theme of "if you're going to put something in your stories, think about the implications."

[marycatelli]

Many a writer has observed that regardless of your beliefs, prophecies come true, fictionally. You get the aesthetic effect of a firecracker not going off if it doesn't.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Truuuuuue, but haven't you ever wanted to see the old cliche come crashing down?

[marycatelli]

Respect cliches. They are old and wise and powerful. Nothing gets to be a cliche without a lot going for it, because only that could let it be used over and over and over and over again, which is the condition of ascending to clichehood.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's more that cliches bear conventional wisdom... which is another way of saying lazy thinking. Either that, or the represent something that was once fresh, but then was run into the ground.

The best cliche is "thinking outside the box." How many managers resort to that over-used phrase to demand innovate thinking... from others?

[marycatelli]

Things can be true even if they are easily thought of.

The lack of freshness is not just a trait of the cliche, which is why YA can use hackneyed old cliches -- that are new to its audience.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

I think you could have the prophecies fail if there is a reason for their failure that is integral to the book. Their failure has to be necessary, significant, and inevitable, bound up with the plot and theme. But if they fail solely to go counter to readers' expectations, and there's no other reason, then I think that would be difficult to pull off.

[marycatelli]

I think you would also have to give some metaphysical clue why it failed. A revelation that someone tampered with the Oracle, perhaps.

It's not easy to make a prophecy, not treated like a joke from the word go, fail and have the story work.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that if the prophecy was issued for certain reasons initially, and then those reasons changed due to the actions of the characters. Or if the people believed in prophecies because of a flaw in themselves, and the story is about their overcoming that flaw and realizing they don't need prophecies, that they can control their own destinies instead. Something like that.

[marycatelli]

That sounds more like a prediction than a prophecy to me. If that were made clear, there would be no problem.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

In THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, the prophecy and the good guys were pulling together. The conflict was the bad guys pulling agaiinst the good guys, because the bad guys had heard the prophecy. ;-)

In THE HORSE AND HIS BOY, the prophecy and the good guys pulled together, though neither the protagonist nor the reader knew about the prophecy till the end.

In THE AENEiD, wasn't Aeneas trying to follow the prophecy? I loved the surprise of the crew eating pizza, though!

[marycatelli]

Aeneas was trying to fulfill a divine order, I think. Then, for fictional purposes, that is perhaps much of muchness between it and a prophecy.

But he didn't want to. He was repeatedly face with having to go on. He tells Dido he's not doing this because he wants to.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

For my money, the best treatment of prophecy in a work of fiction, bar none, is in Macbeth. (This despite the awfulness of the witches, and the ‘shabby use’, as Tolkien said, made of the bit about Birnam wood coming to high Dunsinane hill.) Macbeth thinks he and the prophecy are pulling together, but somehow things keep going wrong — and in the end, chiefly through his own evil deeds, there turn out to be enough loopholes in the prophecies for him to meet a very nasty end.

This, of course, is also the standard-bearer for the trope that Clute & Grant have labelled ‘Read the Fine Print’.

[marycatelli]

Yes, that's a wonderful effect.

My own favorite is The Horse and His Boy in which we are told about the prophecy after the fact, though it motivates some people in the back story.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Could always go very classic, and have the prophecy be blunt as heck about what's going to happen-- and everyone thinks it's meaning something else entirely. (He will be called God Among Us, vs he will be named "Emmanuel.") Or have one guy who's told his house will get this great reward, and then another in the same house do something so bad that all in the house are cursed to never get crud...and get around it by either having the kid be adopted in (so they can inherit, but aren't bound by debt) or be part of the house by their mother. (so they, again, don't get debt because THAT goes through the male line)

I think part of the appeal of prophecy is seeing how it's going to get there, not see if it will get there.

So, just make sure that the folks fulfilling the prophecy have at least one area where they're totally wrong; might even be fun to have them arguing about what the real meaning is....

[marycatelli]

It's like a labyrinth: half the delight is that it looks like there's no conceivable way it could get to the center.

To be sure, Dorothy Sayers managed, in Emperor Constantine with a blunt and correctly interpreted prophecy. Constantine talks about how nice it is to be told, "In this sign conquer" as oppose to being given something ambiguous. Then, the prophecy and its fulfillment are dealt with in two scenes.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

Prophecy is often effective when the characters' efforts to evade it lead them right into fulfilling it. The classic example is that of Oedipus.

[marycatelli]

That's always real fun. A perennial among fairy tales, though Disney didn't happen on that one yet.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

LOL, no, I don't see Disney taking on Oedipus anytime soon!

[marycatelli]

Oedipus is actually a odd-ball. Most "oracle is fulfilled" stories run rather more like Perseus's -- with a happy ending. The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate. The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs. The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars. Even, if they must have a girl -- I think they're overdue for a boy fairy tale -- The Fish and the Ring