#111. A Short History of Dragons! Plus Eerie & Weird Fantasy Fiction

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Hello imaginative people. I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 111 of Brainstoryum. Or, for those Tolkien fans among you, the eleventy-first episode.
 
And I do have an appropriate topic to discuss in the intro, but first I have an exciting announcement (although subscribers to my private email list will already know this, as you are always the first to know these things): Story-Travelling with a Tea Witch, the magical and dark novel-in-stories inspired by 12 Exquisite Corpses is now available as a pre-order on Amazon and in various other places too like Apple Books and Kobo. The official release date is 3rd September, and that’s when it will also be available as a paperback from…pretty much anywhere that sells, or lends, books.
 
In the meantime, the ARCs or advance reader copies have all gone out. It’s not too late if you’d like one—but you’d have to be quick. Just drop me a line by hitting the “contact” button on any page footer at annatizard.com. It’s so good to get all the formatting done, which always takes so much longer than you think it’s going to! And, again, as my subscribers will know, the cover design was a bit trickier to get right this time, so thank you to everyone who gave feedback and support. I’m very happy with the final result which features an old lady with a hint of danger in her eyes, surrounded by the usual black and white spiral design and lots of twirling, red-brown steam that floats from her shadowy teapot—because that’s where her magic comes from.
 
Anyway, after all that formatting and publishing admin it is so good to get back into creative things, because I haven’t had much time for it lately, I tell you. And today, in this eleventy-first episode, I want to talk a little bit about dragons. Because they featured more than I expected in my short holiday a few weeks ago. There are quite a lot of dragons in Winchester, I noticed; that is, carved into stones in the cathedral, even in intricate wood carvings in the area for the choir, I found wyverns, which are dragons with only two legs; there was a wyvern with a human face, which was very creepy and weird. These were alongside carvings of both real and mythological beings. There were intricate and tiny carvings of cats, dogs, “green men”-type beings emerging from vines and foliage, called “foliates”, and a monkey with a harp (though monkeys had never been seen by these medieval carvers, so these would have been based on descriptions passed on from those who had had the luxury of travel, or drawings maybe).
 
But there were enough dragons for me to ask one of the Deans of the cathedral: Did people in those days actually believe in dragons?
 
The guy I spoke to said it was a very good question, in other words, I don’t think he knew. He really wasn’t sure. But thinking about this “quire” area with all these wood carvings including animals and about two hundred human faces sort of peeking out from the wood, he speculated that these figures might have been references to local fairy tales and parables that the monks might have used for contemplation, all very metaphorical, and not to be taken literally; some creatures like the wyverns would have represented evil, and our tour guide pointed out that the wyvern faces were all tucked tightly into the corners of these roughly triangular sections that had been carved, as if to control them more, sort of almost muzzle them and pin them in place.
 
So, from a religious context, it seemed uncertain as to whether the monks believed in dragons literally. And the “monkey with the harp” thing also pointed to this uncertainty.
 
But! I did some more digging after that. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there’s an entry for the year 793 which describes omens in the sky, and it reads:
 
“This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament."
 
Omens indeed. This was right before a devastating Viking raid on Lindisfarne killing people and laying property to waste.
 
Historians have since decided that this is a description of the aurora borealis or a meteor shower; at least a storm; it’s also occurred to me that monks, who spent a lot of time poring over biblical texts, copying out biblical texts in exquisite calligraphy for hours and days and years in poor light, will be pretty short-sighted, and all you need is a couple of birds of prey circling in the sky, and the power of suggestion to trigger some really frightening ideas.
 
But what I like is that they did believe in dragons. Forget what the flashes and shapes in the sky actually were: in this written account describing sheets of light and other storm-like disturbances, why would they throw in metaphorical ideas unless they were making comparisons or trying to turn it into some sort of allegory? They’re not; it’s clearly written as a literal account.
 
Why does this matter to me? ‘Cos apparently, it does matter. I even bought a book while we were on holiday called A Little History of Dragons, determined to try and understand this—to pin down this idea as the most likely reality. That dragons were a reality, in the minds of those who lived before.
 
Go back far enough, and in the Greek and Roman empires the words Drakon and Draco were used to describe a large snake: in the early days, drakons were interchangeable with serpents, but there were serpents who could fly, mysteriously, without wings. Gradually, as myths and legends developed, so did their wings.
 
Throughout the history of story, these serpentine monsters have symbolised evil, greed, fertility, earth-energy, and pagan defiance against the “new” religion of Christianity (as it would have been in the early centuries AD).
 
In ancient Chinese folklore they were water-based creatures; in many other cultures they represented earth, especially the heat of the earth. In the myth of Typhon, the son of the mother Earth, the fire-breathing represents the volcano.
 
In Anglo-Saxon and early medieval Britain, dragons were primarily called "wyrms" (or worms) and "firedrakes". The Old English word wyrm referred to a giant, snake-like, and often highly poisonous creature, while firedrake described the fire-breathing variant.
 
But I still haven’t answered my own question: why does it matter to me that people once believed in dragons?
 
I think it’s because it brings the magic that bit closer. To realise that people were faced with such unknowns, such visceral terrors—we’re so lucky to be born in a time where science explains so many things that would have once been inexplicable. It’s the nature of the human mind to try to make sense of the world, find explanations and solutions to problems, and without enough facts or true understanding, things can get weird. And terrifying!
 
Story-wise, this makes me think about blind-spots characters may have. Misbeliefs that feed into their expectations and desires—and possibly, fears. While you might write a story where dragons are in fact real, within that world, what other misbeliefs might your protagonist have, that affect their worldview, or their prejudices about themselves—or others?
 
Superstitions and fears are part of humanity’s memory, and some survive today. We still have unknowns, and I think we always will have unknowns. History leaves its traces in all of us—and that includes both things that have happened, and things that were once believed in. True, most of us like to only explore these ideas through fiction…but the fears and the whole psychology that comes with believing impossible things were real, starts to emerge when you realise: people really did once believe in dragons.
**
 
Now it’s time to share some of the wonderful creations of my listeners based on prompts from the show.
 
Catherine (welcome to the show, Catherine), wrote about the “monotonous exorcist”;
 
“The exorcist’s cloak opens its wings
She rises, buoyant on spiritual things
Flashes, rushed winds, shimmering flares
The demons, forced out by her murmured prayers
Hands clasped by a bedside, a candle that sputters
Her mutters monotonous, as the curtain flutters
There’s many a villager believes it’s all staged
But her power is subtle, a quietness raged.”
 
Ooh. This is eerie and vivid. I feel like the cloak lingers in my mind, that first image of her levitating. And ‘a quietness raged’—that is an intriguing word combination. But I’ve just realised on reading it out, the rhythm and the rhyme of a poem invokes the atmosphere of chanting, as this “monotonous exorcist” must do. Thank you, Catherine!
 
Sabina Mehta wrote in with an idea based on the same prompt—because of course, you can just describe an idea, you don’t have to write a complete story or poem. She said:
 
“What if the monotonous exorcist literally uses sound to suppress and draw out people’s demons? He sings in a deep, monotonous tone and his voice appears in the air like twisting smoke. It reaches down through the person’s throat and entangles itself with the demon, grabbing hold of it to pull it out.”
 
Wow, that’s both practical and ethereal: I love this idea, that’s something you could really build on. Thank you for writing in, Sabina, and welcome to the show.
 
Finally, Harold Loomis, who writes scifi and horror, gave a dark twist to the highly unlikely Exquisite Corpse, “The quiet-as-a-mouse dung heap despised conformity and yearned for the sunburned princess.” He wrote:
 
“There she was. Dancing in the meadow again. The crown on the princess’s head was slightly askew. The gold of the crown shone on her sunburned cheeks.

She gleefully asked the flowers, “Why am I prettier than you?” As she danced away in the field. She looked scornfully at the peasants. She didn’t want to be near them.

I was like her. Full of disdain for the “ugly” people. How I was wrong. When I was prince of the very same castle many decades ago, I didn’t care what people thought of me, I knew I was better than them. Until the kingdom’s sorcerer taught me a lesson I have never forgotten.

Now I sit, unable to move. Flies are my only companions. I get refreshed for all eternity, as long as the people throw more dung on my pile.

If I could reach out. Warn her. That her life will be in ruins for her behavior. Why. Why did it take me becoming this to change? The sorcerer is no more, all that I knew does not exist, but I will go on. Wallowing in my filth, forever.”


Oh, this is dark: a proper fairytale-like cruelty about it. See, I was chuckling about the noun “dung heap” when it first came out of the Socks of Destiny, but this just shows what you can do when you turn that into a situation full of tension and regret.

Thank you Harold.
 
Right, now it is time to reach into the timeless portals of our imagination, and see what lies in wait for us in the Socks of Destiny.
 
**
SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE
 
This part of the show is un-transpose-able! There's much giggling and rustling of paper as I pull words at random from the Socks of Destiny to create three unique sentences according to the rules of Exquisite Corpse, going: “Describing word—noun—action—describing word—noun.” Today’s resulting sentences are:
 
1.The florid cheesecake befriended the manic earbud.
2. The intelligent owl dived off a cliff with the tasty seagull.
3. The horrific cat travelled to Oz with the melancholic centaur.
 
**
 
Hm, so I think it has to be the “manic earbud” that I explore with the dice today, because despite being utterly ridiculous and unwritable at first glance, I like this idea that’s begun to open up, about a wizard who has to use extremely uncomfortable magic to eavesdrop on a council of witches or wizards—or maybe they’re other beings, or creatures—who are plotting something evil. And the only choice left to our protagonist is to turn an insect into a kind of earbud that makes their hearing so acute, and so directable to this council meeting that they’ll get to hear it all, and not be distracted by other sounds.
 
But what is this story really all about? There are so many different directions and details that are possible at this stage. So why not use the 12-sided dice for a few pointers? Let randomness step in and do some of the work for us.
 
As usual, you can find the full list of 12 categories of suggestion in the show notes.
 
(Rolls dice.)
 
6. A monster or creature. Well, that’s very much up my alley! So my first instinct is that it’s this council: it’s not made up of other witches or wizards, it is made up of other creatures. Mountain trolls are awakening, gathering forces, wanting to break through the delicate fabric, the veil that separates our ordinary world with theirs, the world of the fae, or whatever you want to call it. They want to rule over humans. And our protagonist, let’s say she’s a witch, living a seemingly ordinary life in the world of humans, and managing to blend in pretty well: she has an office job…
 
Or what if… What if she’s a troll as well? Or part-troll? She’s left behind the trollish ways of her family and friends, and in the guise of a human, is trying to fit in with human society, because she has this burning curiosity: what is it all about? What does it mean to be human? But since leaving troll society, her relationships with her sister and her brother, and her best friend, have become strained. They don’t like what she’s doing. They don’t trust human ways. And more and more, the troll leader is becoming interested in taking over human society, so our protagonist—let’s call her Dwyn—is being left out of the loop. She’s aware there are things her sister’s not telling her, but there’ll be a snitch. Maybe in the form of a little bug. It’s a bug that does the bugging. A beetle who flies across long distances, and visits Dwyn in a small cave by the seafront, which is where she goes once or twice a week to speak to her friends and family on… a mobile phone? I’m not sure they’d be comfortable having such a human device. So maybe there is some troll-ish magic she uses in this private little cove where humans don’t normally usually go, because it’s under a very rugged cliff and there are no sensible footpaths along that way. And all the sea stretches ahead of her as she waits, a wide scape of nothing but grey ripples nudging the sky; and, right on cue, her beetle friend buzzes in. Maybe this is how she communicates with her family and friends? They exchange letters, carried across long distances by their beetle friend?
 
But this time, the scribbled letter from her sister is pretty dull and uneventful. Suspiciously dull and uneventful—her sister is all about the drama and the gossip. But the beetle sits and watches Dwyn with his big, shiny eyes, then tells her in a quiet, reluctant voice that things are changing fast. “You must never tell a soul that I told you this. King Tyrus is calling a big council, and is setting out plans to go to war with humanity.”
 
But what can she do? Dwyn’s just one troll on her own—and a petite one at that. That’s how she blends in so easily with humans, using minimal magic, it hardly gives her any discomfort. Well, she’s about to get a lot more uncomfortable…
 
What’s next? (Apart from deciding that the only way she can eavesdrop on this meeting and intercept the trolls’ plans for war is by turning her dear beetle friend, who has just risked his life in trusting her with this information, into a magical, if manic, earbud.) (Rolls dice.)
 
10. A scar (physical or psychological). Oh. Now that’s different. It’s like the dice is prompting me to look at Dwyn’s character more deeply. There’s something about her that I need to work out, to make this situation more personal. And in general, when I’m working on a story idea, I would say that this is probably the right stage for me to start building the main characters, because (I’m often saying it), the heart of a story beats with the reason why. These stakes, however big, however they affect other people (and trolls), they must be fully intertwined with what she needs, or what she desperately fears.
 
And the word “scar” takes me closer to desperate fears.
 
The beetle stopped talking. Dwyn had hardly noticed. The sea rolled on and on, foam hammering the edges of the rocky shore. Like the persistence of a memory she just couldn’t push aside, it jabbed and jabbed at her.
 
It was the real reason why she’d left their under-mountain city. The endless networks of tunnels, a smooth-walled labyrinth lit by glowworms, had once meant home and safety. Chasing her friends down chiselled alleyways, playing hide-and-seek, which, being small for a troll, she was always good at. But growing up, she’d begun to hanker for the outside world.
 
And, in a single afternoon, everything changed. Her mountain home became a trap, a prison, and she couldn’t breathe easy until she was out, running free under an endless sky.
 
My feeling is that something happened between her and Tyrus, the king of the trolls: and it’s a secret no-one else knows about. She admired him—and it was difficult to say no to a troll with that much power. Maybe he did wield a personal power over her… How far did it go? I always think, when writing about something like this, we don’t need grisly details, which are triggering for some people. But also, you have to think about pacing: flashbacks must be handled carefully. If you zip back to the past, don’t spend too long there. The reader always wants to be in the “present” of the story as it unfolds, and everything is put on pause while you’re in a flashback. It’s better to drop in a few sentences to bring in little flashes of memory, so we don’t actually leave present-tense Dwyn behind.
 
We just need enough hints, a few details dropped in, subtly, sensitively, so we understand what has happened. But whether Tyrus hurt her physically or broke her heart—or maybe a bit of both—that’s up to you; the important thing is that you’ve then made these… plans for war deeply personal to a protagonist we want to root for. And, yeah, we want her to get some kind of revenge!—which she can do at the same time as defending human society. I’d say that’s a good blend of big stakes and very personal stakes. But could you fit it into a short story? Depends on how you write it.
***
Now for some publishing opportunities:
 
Northern Shadows Magazine is an online dark, speculative fiction mag featuring stories set in the real world or fantastical realms: spooky, dark, unsettling, that kind of thing. Their current theme is “What creeps in the shadows” and they’re looking for stories from 500 words up to 5,000, although they say there will be a higher acceptance rate for stories in the lower end of that range, as they can fit more in. Submissions for this theme close on 15th August or when they reach 200 submissions.
 
Find out more at northernshadowsmag.com
 
Paranoid Robot Press is a small, independent press devoted to the strange side of speculative fiction. They have a magazine called Electric Midnight that publishes weird specfic: scifi, horror and fantasy with pulp momentum and modern edge.
 
I love what they say: “We’re here for stories that don’t behave: the kind that slip their leash, stare back at the reader, and leave a faint burn mark on the page.”
 
Their preferred story length is 2000-6000 words, however, they will also consider flash fiction down to 500 words.
 
Check out their full guidelines at paranoidrobot.press
 
As usual, I don’t know any more about these publishers than the information I’ve just read out from their websites. Whoever you choose to submit to, always run a check on Google for reviews and comments, and read the terms and conditions of publication to ensure they suit you.
 
But will you write about the manic earbud? About an intelligent owl diving off a cliff? Or the melancholic centaur—I like that one. Why is it melancholic? Whatever character you create, see what happens when you explore what they believe about themselves or the world, that might not be true; or why they want what they want. Because the heart of a story beats with the reason why. Tell me why in 250 words or less; just hit the submit button at annatizard.com.
 
Until next time, go forth and be inspired!