Prophecies, badly done, are a waste of space in your story. They may even be actively detrimental to your writing. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include them in your writing at all, though. Done well, prophecies can be exciting, intriguing, puzzling, heart-rending and completely captivating.
In the last article, we looked at the common problems with prophecies in fiction, particularly fantasy fiction. The good news is that everyone’s favourite trope isn’t verboten; merely needing to be approached with some intelligent design and awareness.
So, here to raise your consciousness and send you singing on your way into the world of writing, are a few suggestions and examples of how other authors have overcome the problems of over-cliched writing.
Make the prophecy’s inevitability the major turning point of the plot.
Tell me if this is familiar: once a prophecy has been made, and we’re aware of the characters’ destiny, then the prophecy itself is largely forgotten. If we’re lucky, it’s referenced at convenient keystone points in the plot’s progression. Slain a hobgoblin? Great! Check one mark off the list. Now what’s left? Oh, a sudden but inevitable betrayal.
This is a little awkward because it highlights just how shallow the prophecy is. Think about if someone had foretold your destiny in real life – to win the lottery, not quite pay off your mortgage -well, something more exiting than that. I bet that if you had a God, an actual God, telling you something was going to happen, it’d be preying on your mind a fair bit. I’m sure it’d come up in conversation more than once. Especially if you were at a bar and wanting to impress someone.
Yet, too often, I read stories where the characters apparently forget that there’s ever been a prophecy. What? Seriously? Can you imagine this happening in real life? Yet the characters get so blasé that, forty pages on, they blindly ignore the limping, seemingly friendly barkeep who was not-so-subtly-mentioned-by-the-Gods only a chapter ago.
Morons.
So, one approach to enhance the realism of your story is to bring your prophecy into the story more. Have characters try and understand what’s going to happen. Is it futile to try and second-guess destiny? Are the protagonists desperate to have the prophecy fulfilled? Your characters, broadly speaking, are going to be intelligent. Have them apply their intelligence to the situations at hand.
People like to think about their own futures. Have your characters extrapolate what their lives are going to be like if the prophecy succeeds. Is the future looking rosy? Bleak? Awkward? How is what’s happening to them tying into their expectations? Do they begin to doubt the prophecy? Are their actions strengthening it, creating a chain of events that increases the likelihood of a particular outcome?
Thwart the prophecy.
Often prophetic instructions signify a breaking dawn. They herald the overthrowing of the bad guy, the ushering in of a new era of discounted popcorn and snacks for every peasant. Predictably, then, the story unforlds with the antagonist trying to thwart the prophecy and the good guys trying to make it come about.
Consider what happens if you want to reverse the roles. What happens if a prophecy has already taken place and been fulfilled, and not everybody’s happy with the outcome? What happens if the Gods decreed that Evil Overlord #13 would rule over the Empire for a thousand years of good health, and we’re only at year 350? Pitting your protagonists against not only an antagonist, but the decrees of Fate itself makes for some interesting reading.
This also gives the clever, thinking-ahead plot builder the capacity to expand on a series of Xanatos Gambits, which, if executed well, lead for a terrifying opponent and a series of frustrating adventures for the hero. Nobody wants to make it too easy for them, after all.
Tragedy
As a reader astutely pointed out, prophecy and predetermination has an important role to play in tragedies. Now, strictly speaking, most stories written nowadays aren’t tragic, more closely hewing to the Hero’s Journey or other storytelling aarchetypes. However, the Greeks were deeply into tragedies, and they were generally agreed to be some pretty top-notch thinkers, so consider what makes prophecy such an important force in tragedy.
Firstly, we are given the sense of the inevitable. The hero, flawed either in nature or by unfortunate happen-stance of birth, is placed into a situation where they are forced by the nature of their character and circumstance to inevitably destroy themself. Watching the events unfold is striking for the audience because they know what’s going to happen. It’s like clicking on a Youtube link to a video of a train wreck. You know it’s coming, and it’s going to be horrible, but it’s relentless intriguing nonetheless.
If you’re intrigued by the processes that tragedies undergo, there are tons of resources to guide you. Check out Christopher Booker’s work, Shakespearean tragedies, and for an introduction to Greek tragedies, Sophocles is your man. Look at his Theban Plays to see if tragedy is your thing.
Get Delphic
Straight forward prophecies are boring and formulaic. Go get that sword. Kill a dragon. It sounds like a shopping list.
Luckily, there’s another way to pass on a prophecy that addresses all the good things about destinies while limiting the downside. This is to provide the prophecy in the form of a riddle, which will be unravelled over the course of the story. This unravels our Gordian-esque knotty problem with one sure stroke.
- The characters don’t have a clear idea of what they’re in for
- Readers can enjoy trying to solve the puzzle presented to the characters
- Retroactive revelations become a solution and a recognition, not an annoyance
A great example of using non-direct oracles is in Dave Duncan’s excellent The Reluctant Swordsman trilogy. Wallie Smith, a nuclear technician, finds himself transported into a seemingly stock-fantasy world. A God gives him the following riddle:
First your brother you must chain.
And from another wisdom gain.
When the mighty has been spurned,
An army earned, a circle turned,
So the lesson may be learned.
Then finally return the sword
And to its destiny accord.
This is the essence of excellent, cryptic prophecy. The unfolding of the prophecy itself is barely underway when the first book in the trilogy ends, but hints have already been laid out by the author as to how the story will unfold.
Of the dozen people I’ve lent the series to, none of them accurately predicted the fulfilling of the prophecy until quite near the end of the series. Ultimately, everybody was left feeling satisfied with the resolution of the storyline, and agreed that the prophecy gave the characters direction, motivation, and ultimately assured the success of the story.
So why would a prophesier choose to be indirect? There are quite a few reasons. They may wish to test the hero’s mettle and intelligence. They may wish for the quest to be revealed in stages or as wisdom is gleaned. They may be in a state of confusion themselves. Remember that, depending on your methodology, consulting tea-leaves and entrails is not an exact science.
Approach with intelligence
The fundamental solution to the problems with prophecy is to approach it with intelligence. If you take the easy, mindless path of throwing a prophecy into your story without real thought, you’ll end up with a shallow, predictable book. Train yourself to ask questions.
If you read my stuff regularly, you’ll know I’m a big fan of constantly questioning and assessing your writing processes. Doing so forces you to flesh out answers and create a more wholesome, rounded product.
I’ve put together a Resources Page, which includes a list of questions you can ask yourself about your own prophecies. Answer for yourself as many or as few as you’d like. I recommend you take the time to scan through. Like with most practises in life, if you see a question you’re hesitant about answering, it means tyou probably should. Your story-writing muscles could be a little under-developed in that area, and the only way of strengthening them is by flexing.
Have fun!
Go do the Write Thing.
