The Influence of Folklore on Genre Fiction

Folk magic and folklore began with the common people (folks), or as author Jessica Nettles put it on the panel, “As long as there are people, there is folklore.” With so much emphasis in fiction having been spent on the rich or leisurely class, how has this notion of the commonplace protagonist influenced your writing?

Danielle Procter Piper: I shall admit a wealthy protagonist is not often necessary, but written as such for convenience sake. So many stories involve characters doing things while not at a regular job, that it’s easiest to explain it away by making them wealthy/important enough to be free for whatever adventure the story calls for. That said, I love the new wave of stories I’m seeing where characters do have fairly regular Joe lives and there are consequences for vanishing to save the world or what have you when school or work is imperative. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: The first thing that comes to mind is Alan Moore and John Constantine. He said he wanted to make a magic user that was from the streets and not some lofty white tower. I’ve always loved that.

As for my work, the best examples of folk magic are in my Jake Istenhegyi stories. Jake, the protag, doesn’t use it as much as he gets used by it. The stories are set in 1930’s New Orleans so, of course, vodun, is the first thing to play with but I was able to dip my pen into Golems and Alchemy. While doing research into some of the folk tales of the swamp, I came across the Boodaddy and I used it albeit I did take some creative license with the creature.

A story I am working on currently, Crown of Feathers, is about a boy on the brink of losing his mother but, against the advice of the granny witches that live on the hill, he finds a way to snatch her from the claws of death. Although it doesn’t work out the way he plans. I’ve been doing a lot of research into Appalachian death culture and hedgewitchery.

So, yeah. Long story short, folk magic always somehow influences me.

Jessica Nettles: I feel like my characters are commonplace almost always, probably because I see myself as pretty commonplace. In that space of the commonplace there is the folklore. As a Southern woman, folklore is part of my infrastructure. We are taught it from the time we can hear stories and learn what’s important. This feeling of being commonplace and being “not the lady or the Southern Belle” has made me aware of the people who farm the land and are the plain folk. I was raised not only around women like my granny, who taught me how to pick peas and read, but also around my daddy, who took me fishing, taught me to fix old furniture, and to also watch where I put my hands and feet in the woods. My characters often are those sorts of people instead of the well-off. I know those people best.

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