Babel Clash

So the Olympics are just finished, and we’re writing about what our heroic fantasy characters are actually capable of, physically speaking. Because your average fantasy hero has to do a lot of very demanding and athletic stuff, and some of it’s not very realistically portrayed.

Does it matter? I guess it depends on what kind of fantasy novel you think you’re writing. You could just take the comic book superhero approach, and say, ‘well, my character can do all this far out stuff because I say so’, meaning that these abilities are all pretty much magical, and whether they’re actually realistic or not is irrelevant.

Myself, I like my characters to struggle. I mean, if all your abilities come from some magic sword, or magic spell, or magic whatever, it means the character hasn’t had to work for it. In ‘A Trial of Blood and Steel’, my lead character Sasha is an athlete, because she has to be. She has insane natural talent, sure, but insane natural talent doesn’t matter if you don’t practise, and stay in shape. When Sasha goes on a long journey, she takes time to get off her horse and run for a bit, because sitting in a saddle all day might make you ache, but it doesn’t keep you fit. She practises every day, has a regular routine of exercises, and is more fanatical about it than an Olympic athlete because Olympians are only training to win, while she’s fighting to live. All that hard work shapes her character and makes her what she is. If it were all just given to her on a silver plate, she wouldn’t be so interesting.

It also raises the question of women versus men, and no question, in fantasy-style fighting, most women would struggle. I get around it by creating a specific style of martial art called ‘svaalverd’, which is the sword work equivalent of Wing Chun kung fu, and allows a woman to neutralise power and strength with superior technique. But I don’t like just skipping over the fact that most women aren’t as strong, which some fantasies certainly do… in fact, I like that edge it gives to Sasha’s abilities. If some big guy annoys her she can’t just whack him, she’s not strong enough. With her, it’s swords or nothing, so don’t make her mad because while she’s not capable of hurting a big guy, she’s very capable of killing him.

And speaking of realistic athleticism in fantasy, don’t get me started on horses! You can’t run a horse all day and expect him to live. Unless his name’s Shadowfax, anyhow. Horses can be very fragile, and if you push them too hard they’ll fall over and die.

But then, how realistic do you like your fantasy? I like mine very realistic, obviously, but then again, I can’t complain about Shadowfax because he fits perfectly into the world of Middle Earth. So I guess what really matters is consistency — don’t make some characters superhuman while others are unable to escape their mundanity, and don’t complain that it’s physically unrealistic for women to fight with swords if they live in a world where horses can run for 24 hours without a drink.

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