What goes into inspiring a writer? Take a down that long, unusual road with me.

True confessions time here. While I don’t watch a great deal of television, I do like competition shows. Chopped, Forged in Fire, Project Runway and Face Off are some of my favorites. Although it may hurt your brain to think about it, the shows have some strong similarities (Chopped  was actually the inspiration for Forged in Fire but that’s another story…) The all involve challenging artists to create something in their chosen medium, under some pretty heavy constraints, and with a time limitation. Often, the artists are also given something to act as an inspiration for their work. I am always amazed how multiple people can experience the same inspiration and come out with entirely different sorts of works.

On the other hand though, it really shouldn’t be that surprising considering that an inspiration isn’t about copying someone else’s work—that’s called plagiarism and my son in law school assures me that’s a very bad things and should be avoided at all costs. LOL No, an inspiration, triggers an idea, a mental picture, a question, something that gets the ball rolling in a particular direction–at which time, it’s probably a good idea of those standing downhill to get out-of-the-way of said ball…just saying.

For example, I was watching the movie Pride, Prejudice and Zombies with my husband one afternoon. As I was watching it, the structure of the story struck me. Yeah, I know, who looks at story structure watching a movie? I know, I’m weird. We just accept that fact and move one. So moving on… I noticed the story structure and found the way the storylines woven in and around each other pretty brilliant.  It got me thinking how that same approach might work with another mythology—dragons! So in that fashion, PP&Z did inspire my dragon series. The end result looks very little like the inspiratio—at least in my humble opinion—but that’s often the case between inspiration and final result.

The overwhelming number of dragons in British mythology proved to be another inspiration. Actually a lot of different inspirations, but we’ll get to that. Today, I want to look at just one of them: Uther Pendragon, the father of the famous King Arthur.

 [Just a side note: One of the fascinating—and crazy making—aspects of mythology is the number of different accounts of the same story. Since until the early modern era, tales relied on oral tradition for transmission, each teller would craft a slightly different version of the story, making finding the ‘real’ story nearly impossible.]

The best known version of Uther’s story comes from Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae (1136). Uther is the youngest son of King of Britannia, Constantine III upon whose death, Constans, his eldest son succeeds to the throne. Constans is murdered by an advisor Vortigern, who seizes the throne. Uther and his other brother, Aurelius, flee to Brittany, when they grow safety into adulthood.

Now Vortigern decides he wants to build a castle, but his choice of site seems plagued with mystical sorts of problems. So, he was advised to offer a sacrifice of a young boy. Well, that young boy turned out to be none other than Merlin himself who advises Vortigern that the troubles he’s been experiencing are because of—wait for it—two dragons sleeping in an underground lake below his chosen castle site!

The king’s men dig down and unearth the two dragons, one red and the other white (the two dragons of Welsh fame.) The two dragons fight furiously, with the red finally winning the day. Vortigern took the red dragon as his symbol but the red dragon was also considered a prophecy of the eventual coming of King Arthur..

Sometime later, as adults, Aurelius and Uther return to Britannia, where Aurelius kills Vortigern and becomes king. Under Aurelius’ reign, Uther helps Merlin bring the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland  to Britain. Later, while Aurelius is too ill for battle, Uther leads his army against Vortigern’s son and his Saxon allies. On the way to the battle, Uther sees the dragon-shaped comet, which Merlin interprets as a sign of Aurelius’s death and Uther’s glorious future (harkening back to the red dragon). Uther wins the battle, but returns to find that Aurelius has been poisoned. Uther becomes king and adopts the use of a golden dragon as his standard.

Intrigue follows with Uther falling in love with the wife of his retainer, the Duke of Cornwall. With magical assistance from Merlin, possible shape shifting and the like, provided Uther access to the Igerna, the Duke’s wife. The stories varied, but typically ended with the death of the Duke, and the birth of Uther’s son, Arthur by Igerna some months later.

While all the variations in the variations occasionally made me want to beat my head against the wall, and scream “What’s the REAL story?” they but it did lead me to an interesting line of inspiration: What if…. (A word of caution, when a writer says “what if”, it might be a good time to politely excuse yourself…)

So, what if those dragons in Vortigern’s basement were real and his intrusion kicked up an all-out dragon war—both amongst the dragons and between dragons and men?

—What if Uther was battling not just Saxons, but dragons also, but started making alliances with the dragons?

—What if it was a dragon not Merlin who helped Uther seduce Igerna? (Cue the notion of dragon persuasion…)

—And what if Uther’s final victory over the Saxons brought peace not just to men, but between men and dragons. What would be required to broker such a peace? Well, that could get complicated, depending on what the dragons were like and what they required.

Hmmm, that sounds like the inspiration for the Blue Order … and the need for more inspiration to figure out the nature of English dragons.

Cue theme music: Tune in the same time next week for another episode of ‘Inspiring the Writer—Jane Austen’s Dragons!’

So what was the last time you found inspiration somewhere and what came of it? Tell me in the comments!

You can find previews of Jane Austen’s Dragons here:

Pemberley: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon

Longbourn: Dragon Entail

Netherfield: Rogue Dragon

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Check out the Jane Austen’s Dragons series here:

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