Writing from an elf's perspective

I would arguably approach it the way that I would approach ANY culture that differs from the main POV. Whether it's a different species, or simply a different human culture. So I would look at the culture you've created for your Elves, determine how that is informed by their unique experiences, and then how that would affect their views of other societies.

IE, presumably your Elves are longer-lived than humans, so an easy one would be melancholy over the fleeting nature of human lives and societies since what Elves build may last for millennia unchanged, while human civilizations come and go.

Depending on just HOW different your Elves are from your humans, their views may even become outright incomprehensible.

Tolkien actually did this fairly thoroughly, both in terms of Aragorn and Arwen, and earlier, Beren and Luthien.

That doesn't mean you can't do it even better, mind.

You might want to contemplate all the "fairy bride" relationships in European folklore, where an immortal temporarily joins with a mortal; it rarely ends well.

I dunno about BETTER, but certainly a different take.

efreysson said:

Although I feel it might ring a bit hollow when... you know... they actually ARE the superior race.

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So? Even if they are superior, they don't have to be jerks, rubbing their superiority in everybody else's face. What's stopping them from being nice?

Curlz said:

What's stopping them from being nice?

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You've seen what happens with people who believe themselves to be superior IRL?

D. E. Wyatt said:

You've seen what happens with people who believe themselves to be superior IRL?

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1) I've seen people who were legitimately superior in real life (e.g. immensely skilled/talented at, say, music or a particular sport) who recognized their own higher level of skill and yet were super-nice. Often they are happy to teach people at a lower level and, on those rare occasions they meet a similar talent, are legitimately delighted to interact with someone on their own level. (Of course, some are also jerks, but more are nice then you might expect).

2) Believing oneself to be superior doesn't mean that belief is accurate. I've known a lot of people who "act superior" who are, frankly, utterly mediocre. The need to put other people down is, as often as not, a sign less of superiority, and more of insecurity. If you know you're good, there's no need to go around boasting about how good you are - people will be able to see it for themselves.

3) In both of the above scenarios, we're talking about PEOPLE. Elves may approach the subject from a completely different perspective.

If you're going for an inhuman perspective, you'd do well to include a human sidekick to contrast the character, and react as the reader might react and act as a target for exposition as to what's going on with this elf.

To me there are two fascinating aspects about Tolkien's elves.

1. Age

How would you deal with living thousands of years? How can you handle the changes in society and technology that would happen during that time? Many elderly humans never learn to make the most of new technology.

Will you have to have multiple careers during your life? Do you go back to school, or even have a sort of second childhood, where you are freed from responsibilities but perhaps subject to more authority?

How do you not get bored? At some point haven't you seen everything there is to see? At some point does immortality become a curse?

These questions about age are very relevant to humans of advanced age. Although they'll never reach 1000, they start to encounter the same concerns.

2. Civilization in decline

Tolkien's elves handle this with varying degrees of grace. The Lothlorien elves isolate themselves. The Rivendell elves play a supporting role in the affairs of men. The elves of the Hobbit are actually antagonistic.

I think the Rivendell elves are the most heroic of these. They recognize some of their responsibility for the mess men are in. And although they know their days in Middle Earth are numbered, they hope to instill in men the best elvish qualities before they go.

This has a lot of relevance for America, which won't be the world's leading power forever. Or probably for Tolkien, it had relevance for Britain, which had already passed its zenith.

efreysson said:

One could turn this into a character growth issue, with the protagonist having to grapple with their own prejudice. Although I feel it might ring a bit hollow when... you know... they actually ARE the superior race.

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One flaw of the elves is that they're a bit too superior. I know, sounds like that interview answer when you say your greatest weakness is perfectionism. But the problem with the elves is they're static. They think they've got everything figured out, so they never improve. How have they been elite scholars for millennia and they've never invented internal combustion? Maybe that's on purpose, given the negative view of industry in Tolkien. But at least they should have invented lasers or telescopes or frickin modern medicine. Do they really have an herbal cure for everything? And maybe the avoidance of technology is a kind of cowardice. Yes, technology can bring problems, but men will encounter those problems and try to find a resolution where technology can be incorporated into a just world. If there's any virtue men in Tolkien have over the elves, it's courage.

Technological innovation is also driven as much by necessity as human creativity. The presence of magic in fantasy societies often supplants the need for technology, thus technology becomes less likely to advance or develop significantly. Who needs cars when you can just use a Wand of Teleportation? Why develop pharmaceuticals when curing a disease is just a visit to a Cleric away? You see the same thing in most real life human societies, where it's the NEED for something that drives innovation.

As for the herbal cures, it's funny morngnstar mentions that considering there's a renewed drive towards natural remedies and away from chemical pharmaceuticals.

Many human innovations are adapted too, from other cultures, whether through trade, migration, conquest, etc. If elves stay in one place and live statically and in balance with nature, their technology level is going to stay the same.

I always assumed Tolkien's elves spent much of their time in meditation, the same way Buddhist monks do.

Necessity, creativity? Hmm, I think you're on to something D.E.--but don't forget curiosity, an aspect of humanity that might be deemed both blessing and curse, depending upon incidental context.

I had the opportunity to craft multiple POVs, to include other than human (think humanoid: elves, shape-shifters, etc.) in THE STEWARD series, a folklore fantasy/mystery/police procedural mash-up. Interaction between the diverse sentient races, each with its own agenda and anthropological/cultural aspects, illustrated that differences were more superficial than the underlying core similarities, with one rather glaring exception--only mankind consistently demonstrated an overwhelming capacity for curiosity and creativity.

So yes, writing from other than a human character's POV is very doable--and can be a whole lot of fun. Let your own curiosity and creativity take flight; just don't be surprised if that character takes you somewhere you never dreamed you'd venture. Go for it! Best of luck!

ironmikezero said:

Necessity, creativity? Hmm, I think you're on to something D.E.--but don't forget curiosity, an aspect of humanity that might be deemed both blessing and curse, depending upon incidental context.

I had the opportunity to craft multiple POVs, to include other than human (think humanoid: elves, shape-shifters, etc.) in THE STEWARD series, a folklore fantasy/mystery/police procedural mash-up. Interaction between the diverse sentient races, each with its own agenda and anthropological/cultural aspects, illustrated that differences were more superficial than the underlying core similarities, with one rather glaring exception--only mankind consistently demonstrated an overwhelming capacity for curiosity and creativity.

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Y'know, this conversation, particularly the connection between (lack of) longevity and creativity reminded me of that Highlander episode where a popular singer who was Immortal died for the first time, and after her first death (at the hands of her mentor, who wanted to preserve her talent for eternity) she lost her ability to truly create. She regained it by the end of the episode after a scare in which she nearly lost her head. Duncan explains that the ability to create is tied to human mortality, and the knowledge that life is finite. When the singer thought she would live forever she lost that spark, but learning there were still limitations restored it again.

It's an interesting concept.

efreysson said:

I can easily see an elf as having a very different sense of time than a human. As in, a human would get utterly bored after five hundred years, but to an elf that just isn't that long a stretch.

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But why? Just a genetic predisposition? If so, you can't build much story from that, and also it doesn't have much applicability to human readers. If you can explain how elves experience the passage of time differently, human readers can get a different perspective on their own lives.

After all, the human race has had societies that have gone through long, long stretches with little to no real change. Heck, Australian Aboriginal culture was about 40.000 years old and still basically at the Stone Age when white men encountered it

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There is the Guns, Germs, and Steel explanation, which is that Eurasia-Africa just had a higher population base. If there is a random chance of any individual human making an innovation, Eurasia-Africa will likely discover it first, and if it's significant it will spread throughout. And then you get innovations building on innovations. So Eurasia-Africa was ahead in advancement, the Americas with somewhat less land and population were slightly behind with writing and hierarchical societies, but no metal tools, and Australia being a small isolated continent had little technology.

Or "vibrancy". Or it simply is the brevity of human life that pushes us to achieve, achieve, achieve as fast as possible, and when this is done by generation after generation the effect stacks up.

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Could be. I don't know the answers, and coming up with them is part of the creativity. But they're interesting questions, right?

efreysson said:

Yes, it is. I've sometimes wondered just what an elf could find interesting about humans, and I've always felt that "human spirit" is way too vague of a concept. But now I'm thinking. An elf has all the time in the world to do things, as long as there isn't a war brewing or something. Humans have to create fast if they want to live to create anything. So an elf bard would know a long, epic poem of ancient times and be able to perform it with inhuman beauty. But a human bard is able to react to current events and trends, and throw out one poem after another. Some will be misses but some will be hits.

So an elf might find human artistic expression unrefined, but rather interesting all the same.

Come to think of it, the elf in this scenario is a lot like me at the start of summer vacation. "Pff, I have plenty of time to do all those amazing things I've been wanting to do."

Then suddenly it's snowing.

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Well you said it. Things can happen suddenly that can kill a stereotypical elf. And the elf probably knows it. So does it really make sense that they believe they have all the time in the world to do something?

BeautifulRoses said:

Well you said it. Things can happen suddenly that can kill a stereotypical elf. And the elf probably knows it. So does it really make sense that they believe they have all the time in the world to do something?

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That's just it: It's no different with human beings, and yet that still doesn't stop us from doing INSANELY stupid things that can get us killed. So if very mortal humans can think they're indestructible, why not ACTUALLY immortal Elves?

Steve Brust's 'Dragaerans' are an interesting take on elf tropes.

D. E. Wyatt said:

That's just it: It's no different with human beings, and yet that still doesn't stop us from doing INSANELY stupid things that can get us killed. So if very mortal humans can think they're indestructible, why not ACTUALLY immortal Elves?

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The humans who think that are typically young though, with incompletely developed brains. Possibly with alcohol involvement. When the OP talks about the elves developing severe procrastination, having humans and elves in a story naturally leads to a desire to contrast the two on a species or racial level. But to do that almost requires a monoculture, otherwise with variety within elves and within humans, differences no longer become a human vs elf thing, just becomes a matter of two different personalities and opinions between individuals.

When it came to designing my story's elves, I thought about what fundamentally annoys people about elves. It's their superiority combined with ther passivity combined with idealization that culminates in a sense of unwarraned self importance and unwarranted respect. One runs into problems when all three are present. People talk about being show to change, or achieve, or lacking creativity, or having low curiosity, low passion being bored with life having seen it all and so on. On the periphery of the stage it works okay, but how does one avoid it being boring when it's from that kind of elf's perspective? Sounds inherently boring.

D. E. Wyatt said:

Y'know, this conversation, particularly the connection between (lack of) longevity and creativity reminded me of that Highlander episode where a popular singer who was Immortal died for the first time, and after her first death (at the hands of her mentor, who wanted to preserve her talent for eternity) she lost her ability to truly create. She regained it by the end of the episode after a scare in which she nearly lost her head. Duncan explains that the ability to create is tied to human mortality, and the knowledge that life is finite. When the singer thought she would live forever she lost that spark, but learning there were still limitations restored it again.

It's an interesting concept.

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I don't agree with the show's take here. While human mortality can certainly be a theme of creative inspiration I don't think it's intrinsic to the creative drive. I think the creative drive all by itself is intrinsic to humanity. Creativity is about more than art, creativity is also the process by which new discoveries about the world are made. It takes creativity to look at a wildfire and think "how can I harness that?"

efreysson said:

Yes, it is. I've sometimes wondered just what an elf could find interesting about humans, and I've always felt that "human spirit" is way too vague of a concept. But now I'm thinking. An elf has all the time in the world to do things, as long as there isn't a war brewing or something. Humans have to create fast if they want to live to create anything. So an elf bard would know a long, epic poem of ancient times and be able to perform it with inhuman beauty. But a human bard is able to react to current events and trends, and throw out one poem after another. Some will be misses but some will be hits.

So an elf might find human artistic expression unrefined, but rather interesting all the same.

Come to think of it, the elf in this scenario is a lot like me at the start of summer vacation. "Pff, I have plenty of time to do all those amazing things I've been wanting to do."

Then suddenly it's snowing.

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This, however, is definitely one way in which an elf's approach to art might differ from a human's, however. Another angle that occurs to me is conflict. While we have many examples of human art that focuses on serenity and expressions of pure beauty, conflict is a huge driver of art; it is arguably essential for the storyteller's art. Many humans take delight in tales of the bloody, the macabre, the power of the victor and humiliation of the conquered in battle, things you don't see associated with fantasy elves in the same way. (Tolkien's elves composed songs about great battles and the like but they strike me as much more focused on being part historical record, part commemoration for those lost. They glorify heroic deeds but not the battle itself.)

morngnstar said:

There is the Guns, Germs, and Steel explanation, which is that Eurasia-Africa just had a higher population base. If there is a random chance of any individual human making an innovation, Eurasia-Africa will likely discover it first, and if it's significant it will spread throughout. And then you get innovations building on innovations. So Eurasia-Africa was ahead in advancement, the Americas with somewhat less land and population were slightly behind with writing and hierarchical societies, but no metal tools, and Australia being a small isolated continent had little technology.

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Felipe Fernández-Armesto in Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature alternately suggests that one of the biggest contributions to technical stagnation is isolation; trade spreads ideas as well as goods and then people continue to iterate on those ideas and pass those improved versions around. Given a lot of the book's theme is about exploring how geography and climate affect the development of civilization and culture, he also points out two different approaches humans have taken to their relationship with nature (and these exist on a scale, not a black and white divide). One is to submit to nature (the native societies of the Arctic are a prominent example, where ignoring the harsh conditions of the land substantial lower your chance of survival) and one is to conquer it. I am probably greatly over-simplifying the thesis of the book here but you might already be seeing things to work with in an elves vs humans comparison.

efreysson said:

Tolkien fought in World War One. He couldn't possibly have come out of it with any delusions about "the glory of war". And unlike humans who have been without a major conflict for a couple of generations, the elves would remember the horror.

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Yeah, I feel like one of the reasons things are going wrong in the world right now is that very few remember WWII, and not many even remember Vietnam. They're flirting with WWIII like it's a game.