Novel based on Atlantis

I'm reading Taliesin by Steve Lawhead at the moment. It begins on Atlantis and then moves to Britain and the Arthur legend. I'm only a few page into the book.

Another example of that type of writing might be the novels of Stephen Pressfield, which are based on ancient Greece and Macedonia.

So, I would say your idea is just fine, you just have to write it well. I do think people who write in this sub-genre sometimes get so involved in the imaginary world they create that they can lose sight of the "story" itself. Does that make sense?

In that case, have you seen the Arthur segment of the In Search of Myths and Heroes documentary by Michael Wood? It's well worth watching if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Back to your question about the imaginary world of Atlantis . . .

This is an issue not only with your story idea, but also with science fiction and fantasy writers in general. Some readers just love all the details and description of the setting; it adds to their enjoyment of the story. For others, all the details can get in the way.

A casual suggestion: Write your story using only the details and description needed; always keep the "story" at the forefront. Ask yourself as you're writing the story whether any particular descriptions or details actually adds to the storyline, or whether you're adding it because it's enjoyable for you to write down all the things you come up with in your imaginary world. Then, when you get done, if you think more description would flesh out the story, then edit the story to include that.

I haven't looked at or read anything about Atlantis for quite a while, but for a time - years ago - I was very much into archaeology, and - at that time, I didn't look at Atlantis as a mythological place; I viewed it as a submerged city that hadn't yet been identified.

With that line of thought - if I were to write a novel about Atlantis I most certainly would not make it a mythological place. I'd make my best educated guess on where it was located and make the civilization consistent with whatever "mother" culture the Atlanteans were part of. There are/were several possibilities.

Writing such a story as mythological would be about the same in my opinion as writing a story about St. Pierre on Martinique before it was destroyed by Pelee and making it totally mythological. Definitely not something I'd do. Puma

Cirse said:

I've been kicking ths idea around for quite awhile. I'd use Santorini aka Thera as my model, along with the minoan civilization. I dont really want it to read like high fantasy. I want it to feel like a historical fiction. U guys think there would be any interest in that?

Click to expand...

I think there'd definitely be interest. There's been a persistent interest in Atlantis going all the way back to the ancients.

Have you read Jack Whyte's Arthurian novels? If not, I highly recommend them as an example of playing a legend as straight historical fiction.

Following along from what Puma said, one person who was very interested in the Atlantis story was Tolkien. He used to have dreams about a drowning city thought that because the idea of a drowned city was so common in the mythology of distant and disparate Indo-European cultures, it may actually be based on real events. It was where he got the idea for Numenor, and it turns up in a lot of his lesser-known writings.

I think it is a very interesting idea, and I think playing it straight would be a great way to go.

Not an expert in Atlantean lore by any stretch, but I remembered reading something about much of the Mediterranean once being dry land, and that the loss of Atlantis could be part of the same "Great Flood" narrative attested to in Genesis, Greek myth, and other sources.

A little googling turned up this article, which might be worth following up:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/15/1100384498979.html?from=storylhs