Reading Magic
My Inner Storyteller, Discovered Again
Entering the Perilous Realm
Ever since I was a wee lass, some of my favorite stories to read were fairy and folk tales. My dad had two shelves full of books from different parts of the world filled to the brim with these tales. I read every fairy book of various colors there is - read folk tales and myths from Russia, China, Italy some obscure place in South America, you name it. Huge credit to my Dad, particularly, for showing me the gateway to this Perilous Realm and how to traverse it.
I’m sure a majority of my audience has read, or at least is familiar with Tolkien’s essay on Faerie Tales - how every folk myth echoes the Truth because every fairy tale is told by authors made in the Image of God.
I’m not entirely sure why I loved those fairy tales so much. Maybe it was the thrill of a knight in shining armor rescuing his True Love, or the peasant boy using his wits (or the occasional magic gift) to seek his fortune, or the sharp-witted young lady who uses her intellect to her advantage.
The world of fairy stories is so vast, all the books in the world could hardly contain the tales that could be told. Though recently, the retelling or “trope twisting” of fairy tales has become popular, for me, there’s nothing can quite capture the charm of a (so to speak) vanilla fairy tale.
Well, almost nothing.
Return to the Fairylands
About two days ago (as of the writing of this blog post), I finished re-reading Howl’s Moving Castle. Which, if you have not read it - I would strongly recommend.
How do I manage to forget how much I love a story until I read it again?
Let me rephrase that, how do I manage to forget how much I love a genre until I read it again? I’ll admit, in my last two years of school and my plunge into ‘semi-adult life,’ I started exploring other genres of books and catching up on some “popular” series I hadn’t read yet1, besides discovering the wonderful world of indie books2 and all my friends’ stories.3
Then one day, I got an overwhelming urge to reread Diana Wynne Jones - an author who I’d long said was one of my favorites, for reasons I’d forgotten. After turning the last page in Howl’s Moving Castle, it all came flooding back. Her story, her writing, her world was, to paraphrase, charming.
It was magical. Just like a fairy tale, but laced with the unique voice and narration of Diana Wynne Jones. This book, combined with my sudden discovery of a musician named Galen Crow and his song Better Than a Fairy Tale, gave my inner writer a very strong nudge.
The song itself is simple, very pretty to listen to, and (like Diana Wynne Jones’ books) charming.
“Tell me a story
Of heroes and battles
'Cause I wanna know what it's like
To fight for something I
Believe in with all that I've got
'Cause right now I'm not.“So tell me a story
Of lovers and heartache
'Cause I wanna know what it's like
To give it all away
For someone that I die for
Someone who makes it all worthwhile
”I only wake up in my dreams
Been sleeping all day long
Stuck inside these walls
I Know that there's something more
A story worth living for
Even better than a fairy tale.“I wanna run as far as I can go
I wanna feel like I'm more than shadow
Wanna get to the part where I know
Who I am.”
Why do we read stories? Why do we read fairy tales?
To paraphrase something Tolkien said somewhere,4 we read to escape reality in order that we may face it again, perhaps a little bit braver than before.
Continuing the Fairy Tale
Something I love to do in my writing is imitate other styles or try new narrative tones. This takes some effort, as I have to carefully think through each sentence and phrase when I write it. During the SE Writing Challenge, I didn’t have time to overthink every word.
I simply wrote. And, somehow, I rediscovered my style.
The writing style that was “so very Elisabeth.” The writing style that had been influenced, not only by Lewis and Tolkien and Diana Wynne Jones, but also all those years of fairy tales and folk lore. It showed itself in Pendragon’s Potion, Trick & Charm, and all the stories I really loved telling. All the stories I wrote for younger me, who read fairy tales in her free time like her life depended on it.
All those hours spent in the Perilous Realm didn’t make me disillusioned. The world I’m growing up in is far too full of sorrow and suffering for that. But they did bring me joy and hope.5 They grew my imagination and crafted me into the writer I am today.
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
~ G. K. Chesterton
Oh HELLO Hunger Games trilogy and Harry Potter
Shoutout to Daughter of Arden by Loren Warnemuende and all the books by Helena Sorensen
Special shoutout to C.E. Larke and Romana Stewart, because of course.
Because he’s so much smarter and more eloquent than me, obviously. We overquote him for a reason.
Except Hans Christian Anderson. His stories were also so DEPRESSING - but I still liked them alright, just not until I was older.
Wonderful, my daughter! I really was encouraged by this post. Your paraphrase of Tolkien is from his concept of "escape" and "recovery" found in His 'On Faerie Stores'. You defined it very well. Thank God for common grace in image bearers, where we can through fairy tales, literature, and good cinema escape to be able to recover a deeper sense of truth, beauty, goodness and reality that is revealed in special revelation. And thank God for every great story that has "eucatastrophe"! Love you, Daddy
These are such good thoughts! While personally I struggle with the simplicity of traditional fairy tales, I do understand the charm of being taken out of your own world and put somewhere else for a little while, so you can come back with new eyes to see your own world differently (along the “it was for this reason you were brought to Narnia” lines)