Myth Building

Interesting question. My religion in my fantasy WIP is based on very vague concepts in real life, mixed in from mainly Christianity and Norse mythology. Any superstitions or cautionary tales I have are based on that made up religion, so I suppose they are indirectly based on existing stories. For an example, the dominant religion in my world has taken over the older pagan customs of each place, and a lot of that mythology was assimilated. Some of the old gods have become demons in the New Faith. There are a lot of superstitions for each demon / god, a lot of festivals each year to ward them off or placate them. Even though I've elaborated on the stories and customs, the basis is still similar to our world.

The only fairy tale type stories I have in mine so far - one is based on a 1,001 Nights sort of thing, the other is based more on Greek mythology and is supposed to illustrate that no one can understand the wisdom of God, and it involves limpets. It's a bit silly, I suppose.

Other than that, the other stories I have are historically based, as in they're hero tales or what have you based on the actual history of the fantasy countries, exaggerated and with a bit of magic thrown in as they were passed down through the ages.

You might want to do some comparative mythology, to check out what different mythologies have in common, and how they differ. Perhaps the first comparative mythologist in history was a certain Xenophanes, who pointed out about 2500 years ago that people make gods in their likeness, black people like black people and northern Europeans like northern Europeans, and that horses and cows and lions would do the same if they could.

For hero mythology, you may want to check out Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile. Most legendary heroes depart in some way or another from this profile, so consider it an average profile:

1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while
2. his father is a king, and
3. the father is related to the mother.
4. The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence
5. he is reputed to be a son of a god.
6. Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but
7. he is spirited away to safety and
8. reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,
9. we learn no details of his childhood until
10. he journeys to his future kingdom, where
11. he triumphs over the reigning king and
12. marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and
13. becomes king himself.
14. For a while he reigns uneventfully,
15. promulgating laws. But
16. he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and
17. is driven from the throne and the city and
18. meets with a mysterious death,
19. often atop a hill.
20. If he has children, they do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, yet
22. he has one or more holy sepulchers.

As to creation myths, Scott Leonard's book Myths and Religion has some classifications of myth motifs that various authors have proposed. The one I like the best is Marta Weigle's; she builds on work by Mircea Eliade, Charles H. Long, etc. in Creation and Procreation: Feminist Reflections on Mythologies of Cosmogony and Parturition, she proposes:

1. Primordial elements meet or mingle or otherwise get disturbed.
2. A god creates by secreting something, like sweat or blood or semen or a parthenogenetic child or a spun web or excretions.
3. A god either sacrifices him/herself or gets sacrificed to form the raw materials for creation.
4. The hatching of a cosmic egg or dividing a closely-embraced earth and sky.
5. Someone dives into the primordial ocean to get some sand or mud to create land with.
6. The first people emerge from a small, cramped world into our larger world.
7. There are two creators who either cooperate or compete.
8. Deus faber is the "divine maker"; where a god forms something out of some material.
9. Ex nihilo is "out of nothing", often creation by a god's command.

Some of these motifs should be easy to recognize in Biblical, Greek, Norse, or whatever other creation myths you might be familiar with.

Turning from structure to function, you may want to consider what myths "do"; here are some functions:

Etiological myths or Just So Stories: these explain how something came to be. "Just So Stories" is the title of Rudyard Kipling's was inspired by such myths; there are some much myths in the Bible like the Adam and Eve story for why snakes crawl on their bellies and the Tower of Babel story for why people speak different languages.

Charter myths: these justify some practice or institution of whatever. In the six-day creation story of the Bible, God rests on the day after his labors, celebrating the first seventh-day Sabbath in the history of the Universe.

Related to that is legendary founders and lawgivers and inventors like Moses, Romulus (Rome), Lycurgus (Sparta), Theseus (Athens), Perseus (Mycenae), Minos (Crete), Cadmus (brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece), Daedalus, etc. Lawgivers often claim to get their laws from gods, and inventions are sometimes attributed to gods, like Prometheus giving fire to humanity.

Finally, some myths seem designed to teach moral lessons, like the story of Daedalus and Icarus, who escaped Crete by constructing wings for themselves and flying. Daedalus flew cautiously, and made it to mainland Greece. However, Icarus dared to fly much higher. As he approached the Sun, the wax in his wings started to soften and his wings fell apart, making him fall to his death. So this story may be interpreted as a warning not to be too reckless.

My fantasy story centers around prophetic verses which I created from scratch. The MCs guide their actions by how they interpret them. I also have elements of the story reflect Biblical allegory, a kind of Ralph Waldo Emerson meets the Book of Luke approach.

I've written down some of the myths and legends from my fantasy world. Its fun and can help with building common cultural prejudices, and give names people from that culture may mention or take invain. Since most widely-known myths come from religion, they're never very relevant to the stories (my characters aren't very fond of organized religion, a trait they no doubt inherited from their creator).

I've created a series of myths for a WIP and all from scratch. They are all "creation type" and trickster myths in the oral tradition and are shared around the campfires. Each one relates to an aspect of the story at that particular moment and hopefully reveal something about the characters and how they view their circumstances.

Well, myths come out of the (prehistoric) background of your world, generally. If you don't already know that background then you've got some work to do.

Hmm, actually, the only myth in the story I'm currently writing is that you should never go into battle on a full stomach, as it will inspire you to fight harder. Who wants to go to the Afterworlds on an empty stomach?

Other than that, the main character has been too busy trying to not get a bayonet through the kidneys to really care about religion overly much.

Though I really should work in some myths...hmm...

I started a thread similar to this in the Novel Forum. You might get some information there that will help answer your question. I asked the question without regard to genre.