introducing monsters

[marycatelli]

They don't get along, of course, being monsters.  The heroine might even escape, once, by darting between them and having them notice each other.

Still, they have to get along on a far more fundamental level:  They have to convince the reader that they all fit the setting.  The omnium gatherium of D&D with both dragons and dinosaurs produces real difficulties.  (I once read a D&D tie-in that convinced me that the author had used the tables in the first edition to roll up his monsters, they were that ill-suited.)

Ripping them off Selecting them from a common mythos does help, but isn't always suited.  Particularly if you don't want to suggest the culture that you steal take them from as the real-world counterpart of your setting.

Avoiding the full fledged monsters -- the dragons, the manticores, the gryphons, etc. -- may make it easier.  Using real animals, or even humans, as the basis and adding monstrous traits can do quite well.  A wild boar the size of a peasant's cottage could make a quite good monster on its own.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It would make much more sense for the giant boar and the direwolf, which presumably do not compete much for food, to politely avoid one another than to go charging in for no reason and risk getting hurt? I suppose two direwolves might convincingly dislike each other, although presumably that would only be if they were not related or likely to make each other suitable mates...

I always get chucked out of stories where monsters go RARRRR! and behave in a way that no real-life predator ever would. A lot of TV monsters really should become extinct in one generation, as they have no sense of conserving energy, or seeking out easy food sources, and alarm their prey by roaring at it before even beginning to chase.

[marycatelli]

Why, yes, but it makes more sense for them to hang out in the same vicinty, as opposed to a kitsune and a selkie, who turn on entire different myths of shapeshifting.

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

I always get chucked out of stories where monsters go RARRRR! and behave in a way that no real-life predator ever would.

I bet you "loved" the late 70's movie Day of the Animals, in which excess solar radiation makes everything from raptors to cougars to wolves to rattlesnakes act like that thanks to a mutated virus*. Even when I first saw it at the age of 10 or so, I thought there was something wrong with it.

* Said virus apparently also enhanced their intelligence, given that the maddened predators didn't eat each other but rather joined forces to wipe out the human cast.

[marycatelli]

I can imagine stories where such behavior is a Clue. . . . 0:)

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

'A clue' as in 'rather obvious way of pointing out that Something Is Going Wrong Here' in the film?

[marycatelli]

The evil fiend has returned from being banished to Hell, and has possessed all the carnivores to attack humanity!

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

Well, it was supposed to be one of those classically hopeless 'nature's revenge' film done back when the hole in the ozone was going to Kill Us All. The film might have made more money had it not opened up the same weekend as some childish bit of fluff named STAR WARS -- and suddenly no one was interested in movies about how much humanity sucked.

[marycatelli]

How peculiar!

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

Well, I gave to admit, I don't mind a good monster myself (that was a big part of what drew me to fantasy back in the day). At least, I mind D&D style monsters less than the sort of cultures for their settings they have. Like having everyone think and behave like modern-day upper middle class Americans in a setting where nobody should be acting like that!

[marycatelli]

How true! The societies in D&D were built just as carefully as the ecology and the logic of the monsters!

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

Sadly true, though to be honest I didn't much notice or care until I was actually able to find some books that went into actual details on "Medieval" societies of all sorts, such as why and how they developed the way they did. Books like that seem to be rather difficult to find in most public libraries in the US. I'm just happy I stumbled across historians like Ronald Hutton (though he's more for the history of paganism and religion) and Regine Pernoud.

But it's also ruined some of the fun for me. If nothing else I can no longer take very seriously a democratic society at a medieval tech level (a free city such as in the Low Countries or Northern Italy, maybe, but a whole nation?) that regularly sinks the merchant vessels of the larger slave-holding societies surrounding them without getting into a war over it.

[marycatelli]

Oh, yes. The more you learn, the less you can suspend disbelief. There's a trilogy I remember enjoying without any flinching that was supposed to be a Dark Ages setting -- and they had a masquerade ball. Now, it draws the reaction of a bit out of time.