Creating Monsters:

No excellent fantasy is without its share of evil and monsters. There are so many magical creatures to choose from and any number of ways to change what one writer uses for good into evil, or vice versa. The short lists includes: elves, faeries, unicorns, dragons, goblins, and many more. I admit to being partial to some of these and using them as needed. But for a truly great monster I decided to create one, none other than the symberveen. I’ve shared a little with you already about the creatures. But how did I formulate the idea of a symberveen? And where did the name come from?

I knew I wanted a creature that posed a unique threat to my heroine, Missie. I considered what scared me? The greatest threat to mankind is a living, breathing, human who has power over others. We have met some of them in real life, those charismatic souls that use their God given talents to subdue and control others for their own purposes. We have seen them in our world’s history. (Hitler comes to mind.)

So I formulated a question. What if a charismatic and driven character has the power to control not only other humans, but monsters too? And if controlling the monster what kind of threat could that monster have besides murder and mayhem?

My villain uses mind control. He can actually reach into the minds of the symberveen and control them to do his bidding.

Then the other question that I asked was: What characteristics would the symberveen have that made them unique. For this I considered many legends and settled on Big Foot. According to some, Big Foot lives in small family units and in isolated locations. I had the base and now I needed to expand on it. I didn’t want them to look anything like Big Foot except that they are tall and fury. So the symberveen have bear-like faces and human like hands with claws.

Lastly I considered a name. It had to sound menacing. When I think of mind control, I think of anger, hostility, which to me translates into heat. That equals fire. You might say that someone experiencing another’s controlling personality would be simmering and ready to explode. Simmer then became symberveen. My logic may be chaotic to you, but it works for me.

Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Yours,
N. R. Williams