Mythology, Folklore, and Common Knowledge

Mythology and folklore form an important part of the culture of every human society. We are speaking beings; we tell stories. These stories pass on the values and expectations of a society, which is why we often associate them with children (at least in English). I use the terms mythology and folklore because those are the ones I am most comfortable with, but really the concept applies to any kind of discourse about who we are as a culture. It doesn't have to be old; it doesn't have to be made-up. Think about the way we either tell or have been told what it was like when Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy were assassinated. Think about the way you've heard of the horrors in the concentration camps of World War II. These things aren't good or happy, but they tell us something about who we consider important or what can happen when we need someone else to blame.

As much as I love this type of worldbuilding, the creation of a giant cultural backstory, it's something you probably won't need in a short story or novella unless your plot deals specifically with it. However, in a longer work, you'll want to have at least some kind of idea about what stories the common people tell and how they tell them. You need to know urban legends, folk tales, common knowledge...the kinds of things your characters know on a level so deep they won't think to explain it except to a child.

There's not much more I can tell you except to give you a few examples.

	In Ursula Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness, the stories told by the people (as recorded by an outsider) serve to give you an idea of what one character, Estraven, has dealt with throughout his life. Some of the tales are religious in nature, and some are legends of Estraven's ancestors. Some seem on the first reading to have very little to do with what's going on. However, the tales are instrumental in teaching the reader about the expectations of the society, so very different from our own.

	Cynthia Voigt's novel Jackaroo deals with a young woman and her relation to her country's legend of Jackaroo. He's a Robin Hood-like figure, not only protecting the poor but dealing with the nobility on their behalf. Jackaroo in legend is...um...either a spirit or immortal (it's been a long time since I read this, sorry!), and so the main character is understandably surprised to find his traditional outfit in a hut in which she takes shelter during a blizzard. She chooses to start riding out as Jackaroo and discovers as she does that he is more than just a legend of the people: he's also a way to even the differences between subject and Lord. Whether or not the poor realize this, they keep Jackaroo close to their hearts as a person who has more power than they could possibly get, but who uses that power for them and not for the Lords as most others do.

	Charles de Lint's Newport books deal with the magic that can be found in the ordinary Canadian city of, well, Newport. All of the books twine myth, legend, and art into stories that move easily between the "real" world and Faerie, but I think the best example for our purposes is the third book, Someplace to be Flying. One of its main characters is Jack, a man who lives down in an abandoned area of town and tells stories. As the book progresses, Jack goes from an interesting if slightly nutty character to someone with a deep knowledge of the world; in this instance as in the last, the myths and legends he knows are, for the most part, quite real. It's only by paying attention to Jack's stories--and the pieces he leaves out--that you can even begin to predict what will happen next. In the Newport novels, myths are more than stories: they're guides for how to deal with the world, abstractly for the real and literally for Faerie.

	In Sabriel, author Garth Nix juxtaposes the modern Ancelstierre with the magical Old Kingdom. Sabriel is the daughter of the Abhorsen, a magic worker of importance in the Old Kingdom, but she's been going to school in Ancelstierre for years. When emergency draws her back into the Old Kingdom, it's the common knowledge of the people that she's missing...so she has to brush up quickly on her magic and protections. Luckily, she did live for a time in the Old Kingdom and had ties there all throughout her schooling, so she knows some of the things she ought to. Some of the Ancelstierrans are not nearly so lucky: sure that magical creatures can't exist, they die almost the minute they cross the border. In this world, it's not how much advanced magic you know that can save your life; it's simple precautions learned as children that mark the difference between living and dying.