![]() Though it’s set in another world (and there’s even a disclaimer at the beginning of the book to remind readers of this fact), the book wears its influences from real-world Eastern and Western cultures on its sleeve-especially when it comes to the dragons. Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree took this difference and ran with it, to spectacular effect. The dragons in Game of Thrones, for example, are prime examples of a typical Western interpretation, while The Neverending Story’s luck-dragon, Falkor, bears much more resemblance to the Eastern version. To make a few sweeping generalizations, Western cultures tend to see dragons more as aggressive enemies, while many Eastern cultures cast them as nature’s guardian spirits. In truth, there are very few traits that are truly universal to dragons. But at the same time, if your heart is set on writing about dragons in particular, you’ll want to balance creativity with certain conventions that readers will recognize as draconic-otherwise, why bother calling them dragons at all? What Makes a Dragon Draconic? When writing about your own dragons, you’ll want them to be memorable-unique enough to stand out from the crowd. Another still might think of something cute and cuddly, like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon-when he’s in a good mood.Īnd there’s the catch. Another might describe a guardian spirit with fur as well as scales and more of an affinity for water than for flame. ![]() One may conjure up a picture of a hulking beast as large as a castle, with wings like a hurricane and fiery breath that brings death. And it would be a difficult hunt indeed, these days, to find someone who hasn’t watched, read, or played something with a dragon in it at one point or another.īut ask two people to describe a dragon, and you might get two very different answers. Almost every culture around the globe has some sort of wyrm or draconic creature lurking in its mythology or folklore. Everyone knows, or thinks they know, what dragons are all about. Writing about dragons seems a deceptively easy task.
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