How To Layer Myth Into Your Urban Landscapes
By Megan Amato
I love all things fantasy—the imaginative worlds, high stakes, magical beings and monsters, and the heroic characters who manage it all in their own way. One of my favourite genres to read and write in is urban fantasy. It was the first genre I jumped into after shifting from paranormal romance—*coughs* Twilight *coughs*—and it’s still the genre I lean towards when I want a comfort read. I love weaving myth into everyday life, figuring out how to navigate the urban landscape we know with a layered magical twist.
I can’t claim to be an expert at writing urban fantasy, but I can offer the top three tips I’ve gathered and learned over the past twelve years of writing within the genre.
Set it in a city you know.
This might be a controversial one for some writers as there are many out there who believe that a writer can write whatever they want—and sure you can, but ask yourself, will you do it well? There are some genres where the city is a background, just the setting for the sake of setting, but in urban fantasy, the city should almost be another character. And like the rest of your characters, you should know its strengths and weaknesses, its seedy secrets and shining moments. You should be able to have some image of it in its hay day and recollections—witnessed or learned—of it at its worst.
Think about how much time you spend on world-building when you create your own worlds from scratch—worlds that already exist shouldn’t feel less tangible than those in your imagination.
It doesn’t have to be a place like London, Paris or New York either—some of the best Urban Fantasy is set in small, nothing towns and city’s that the writer has made cooler by their layering of magic system and folklore on top of the landscape.
Figure out the city’s role—if any—in hindering/aiding your magic system.
The defining features of a city dictate how easy we navigate it, from its natural landscape, manmade structures, roadways, transit and traffic systems, political and economic systems, residential, corporate and public architecture. All these things and more come with rules and guidelines on how to exist in a city—so wouldn’t it make sense that these things would also affect how magic exists in a particular setting?
For example: where does the magic come from? Is it bound by natural resources? Are those resources readily available in that city? Are they regulated? Does magic power the city? Do regular residents of the city know about magic? Is magic used in the workforce? If so, which ones and how? What are the limits? What jobs are created because of this magic? What jobs are aided? What jobs are made redundant? Is anyone allowed to use magic or only specific people? Is it regulated? Who regulates it?
These are just some of the things to think about, but you can see how knowing each answer deepens your understanding of the world you’re are creating within an already existing world. You can also see how important knowing the city is when creating and understanding this world system.
Note: not everything that exists in the real world has to be in your new reimagined one and vice versa. Just make sure whatever you change works with the existing features of the city.
How has magic and myth shaped and changed in the urban setting?
This is one of my favourite things to work out. Whether you are pulling myths from existing cosmologies or making them up on your own, the world is continuously changing and so are the magical beings who once existed in much different circumstances.
Let’s take a very basic folk tale that most of us in the west know: Little Red Riding Hood. Red takes a forest path to her granny’s house where she is stopped by a wolf and later eaten. This myth already has many renditions depending on the audience and when it was adapted. In some stories, the wolf eats the granny, while in others she’s locked in a closet. The original had Red eaten by the wolf too while in others a lumberjack saves her—sometimes her and granny both and sometimes by cutting them out of the wolf’s belly.
One of my favourite aspects of myth is how rooted it is to landscape and place. If you take the myth out of its original setting, then it becomes something new. If Red were in a city today, would she even walk through the forest alone? She might have a phone she could call her sick granny on instead. However, let’s add the magic element. Maybe Little Red needs to get to granny’s house to perform some kind of death ritual. How would magic help her navigate that scene better? Let’s shift it even more—Red Cap is another name for Little Red, but it’s also a type of malevolent goblin that haunts castle ruins in the Scottish borders. What if these goblins are just the ghosts of little girls who have been eaten? How does this haunting pay into the new world where tourists wander these sites? These are the exciting things to think about when recreating—or creating new—myth in urban landscapes.
* One of my English classes in university was on psychogeography and it changed the way I thought about a city. I would recommend reading and playing around with the concept.
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