Worldbuilding 8: non-human characters
Magazine
An elf, a dwarf and a goblin walk into a tavern: no, that's not the first line of a terrible joke. All too often, however, it is the default setting for fantasy literature; a convention that, from some angles, rather resembles a cliché. In this article I'll examine some of the pros and cons of having non-human characters and how they affect your worldbuilding.
The first and most fundamental question to address is: are such characters necessary? And, I'd suggest, the fundamental answer must be: yes, if and only if the story needs them. If you are inserting elves and dragons because you think you ought to, or to make the world more interesting, you are very likely on the wrong track.
The principal reason for a non-human character, I think, is that the story requires an encounter with the other, with a realm beyond the mundane. Perhaps you need to set human behaviour in a wider context and see it from a different perspective; perhaps otherness is a metaphor for those aspects of life we do not fully understand. Or perhaps you have devised a plot, a problem, which is not accessible to merely human resolution.
If your story does require non-human characters, the next question is: do you want to use conventional fantasy types (elves, dwarves, goblins)? There are good reasons for doing so; such character types are probably familiar to the reader and they have, over time, accrued a host of traits and behaviours that you can use, off the shelf as it were, without needing to invent a novel history for them. And in some respects, using the regular character types is a homage to the genre, a way of paying your dues.
A further advantage of this approach is that regular readers of the genre have an in-built meta-world, an accumulated vision of the standard fantasy world that means they ‘know' how elves behave, where dwarves live, how goblins perceive humans. You can tap into this prior knowledge; it relieves you of the need to explain everything afresh and avoids information dumping. If your characters have a specific function that's different from their traditional roles you must explain that; but otherwise you can rely on the reader's experience and intuition.
If you choose this route your characters will require less preparatory work but you will leave yourself open to the risk of cliché. How many fantasy novels have you read where the elves are noble but a bit stand-offish, or the dwarves drink lots of beer and speak in Celtic accents? Where dragons eat damsels and perch uncomfortably atop a huge heap of second-hand jewellery? If you are writing a comic novel and you want to play with stereotypes, you can have fun with this; but if you are aiming for something more serious you may want to think about it.
What do non-human characters bring to a story? First and most obviously, they offer that different perspective. They can comment on the activities of humans from outside, allowing you to zoom out and see things from a wider viewpoint and communicate that viewpoint to the reader. This is an excellent way to describe our limitations and the human condition generally.
Bear in mind, though, that using characters in this way can rather homogenise humanity. We become just another faction in the story, a category. In a sense this makes us, well, less human. There is also the risk that their godlike omniscience usurps the story and acts as a kind of universal spoiler. If an irritatingly sagacious elf can explain everything, the plot, however exciting and effective, becomes a sideshow.
Commentary, then, is clearly not enough. Your non-human characters must have a function in the world you have created and, more importantly, in the story you are writing. They must be integral to the plot. Their actions (if you get them right) will often provide an alternative viewpoint in infinitely subtler ways than a commentator can. And if they are active in the plot they belong to your world in a more natural way; they don't merely decorate the setting.
If you adopt this traditional approach, you don't have to adhere to the rules. You are enticingly at liberty to play with the conventions of the genre. One fairly obvious way to do this is to alter or upset the reader's expectations. Orcs, for instance, are pretty much always villains; if you make them more ambiguous (perhaps entering into an uneasy alliance with their traditional enemies, or acting in line with a moral or religious imperative) you have an additional layer of complexity and nuance to work with.
Equally, if you open your story with the elves acting in character for the genre (noble, aloof, sensitive, often on the side of humanity against other non-human groups) and then allow them to turn bad or drink all the dwarves' beer, you can again upset expectations and add a new series of twists to your plot.
The salient point here is balance. Use the scaffolding of convention to support your story but be prepared to take risks. Accept the boundaries of the genre but don't be afraid to push them. The world you have built is both magical and flexible, and non-human characters help the reader to see that. They are familiar and unfamiliar in equal measure and this makes them extremely useful plot elements; they can go places and do things that humans cannot and at the same time they can interact with human characters in ways that make both groups more plausible and engaging.
And there is the nub of our argument; non-human characters are quite often humans in disguise, telling us things about ourselves and opening up new possibilities for storytelling.
On the other hand, it would be an amusing challenge to write a fantasy story that begins: An elf, a dwarf and a goblin walk into a tavern...
When he isn't editing, Noel Rooney writes a regular column for Fortean Times magazine, and wilfully obscure poetry. He lives in South London with his family and rather too many animals.
Worldbuilding 1: character names in fantasy novels
Worldbuilding 2: the basics of writing fantasy fiction
