On Writing Ekkreth Stories
So you want to write an Ekkreth story, but it's not working. You can't figure out how to start, it doesn't sound right, it just doesn't feel like Fialleril's do.
I am obviously not the expert on this, but I've have seen one or two people comment on Biting His Own Tale that they struggle to write Ekkreth stories and/or think mine are neat, so I thought I'd take a stab at writing a guide/conglomeration of tips I've figured out.
(This is also intended as an exercise for me to articulate why I make the decisions I do as a writer, because I think that's a good thing to do once in a while, so spoilers for my fic, Biting His Own Tale)
Reading Double Agent Vader the first time (it was one of the first Star Wars fics I ever read), I was instantly enamored with the Ekkreth stories. I wanted to read them, understand them, write them. Problem being, no matter how long an hard I thought, I couldn't come up with a single idea. It felt like Ekkreth's tricks were all way too clever and neat for me to ever come up with something comparable and the style was so cool and mysterious that I didn't know how to copy it.
Then I committed myself writing Biting His Own Tale. I started writing down notes and then drafting my main story, and the ideas started pouring out. I had two different ideas for Ekkreth stories to go along with Glittering Chains, I had other ideas for other sections as well. Sometimes the ideas for Ekkreth stories influence my main plot--the story of Ekkreth being beaten inspired both This Story Can Kill You and the section I'm currently posting.
I am echoing Fialleril when I say I don't really think it's possible to write these stories without having some "real" fictional events to relate them to. So pick a fic idea you've always wanted to write, and start writing it. Personally, I'm kind of obsessed with time travel fics. You probably don't even have to actually write that fic, just starting to plot it out will give you ground to stand on.
Ekkreth stories have a point. They're not historical tales meant to accurately recount a true event, though they may do that too. They're not novels, meant to entertain, though they may do that too. They're not comedies, meant to make you laugh, though they may do that too. Ekkreth stories have messages for the Amavikkan people who are telling them and listening to them and creating them.
- What do Amavikka people in general need to understand to survive?
- What do your characters need to understand to survive?
- Are your main story characters living up to the lessons and values of Amavikka culture, or are they failing to do so?
- What is the point of your main story? Why are you writing it? What do you want your reader to learn from it?
The intersection of these answers is where your story's moral lies. In Glittering Chains:
- Amavikka people in general need to remember that no matter if their depur sometimes appears nice for a moment or favors them over other slaves he is always cruel, and he'll never make them free.
- Anakin needs to understand that Ventress is keekta-du and therefore a fellow slave. He also needs to be reminded that all Sith apprentices are slaves to their masters in some way or other. This understanding will influence how he interacts with both Ventress and Dooku later on. Slick needs to understand why the way he went about trying to free himself was cruel to his brothers, and that while Ventress could not help him, Anakin can.
- Anakin is living up to the role of Ekkreth by recognizing both Ventress and Slick as fellow slaves he can help. Ventress is very explicitly failing by continuing to follow Dooku's orders and refusing to think on Anakin's warning that Dooku has not freed her. Slick was failing by dooming his brothers for his own freedom, but is moving toward Amavikka values by taking Anakin's offer to help free other slaves.
- My point with Glittering Chains was to clarify Slick and Ventress' decisions, and to force Anakin into having a more complicated plan than just "kill Sidious and all the Sith," because I think it's important for him and the audience to consider redemption whenever there is the opportunity.
So my Ekkreth story needs to be about Ekkreth guiding someone to realize they are keekta-du and then show that person deciding to do something about their situation once they understand it.
Figuring out the moral of your story early will help you figure out its structure. I knew I wanted my story to talk about being keekta-du, so I came up with a situation where I thought someone might become keekta-du (a sex slave convinced her owner loves her), and from there I came up with the mechanism of Ekkreth's trick (Ay'leli has to be the one to steal the keys because she has access to Depur's quarters), and Ekkreth's method (getting Ay'leli to empathize with her fellow slaves by getting her to care for one child). From there, I thought up some symbolism that fit both the situation and the moral (Ay'leli is going to have to steal some keys, so there needs to be some chains for her to steal the keys to. Also, Ay'leli's chains are prettier than the others, but just as strong).
Doing it this way, you can get the thematic and literal elements of your Ekkreth story and your "real" story to overlap in interesting ways, because the thematic elements are most important, while the literal elements can, ultimately, be whatever you need them to be. For an example of a connection of literal elements from Fialleril, Ekkreth steals pieces of the actual moon while Anakin steals the death star plans, a connection which comes directly from the "That's no moon," line in the Phantom Menace.
Doing it this way, with the moral first, you can get the thematic and literal elements of your Ekkreth story and your "real" story to overlap in interesting ways, and this kind of connection can also help justify why your Amavikka character would be thinking/telling of this particular story in their real situation.
I promise you your thoughts about how the world works, and how people should act, and what we should value are important and valuable and interesting. You can and should write about them if you feel driven to.
Values you're passionate about are far more fertile ground for cool world building and deep metaphors than quirky world building and random metaphors are for good values.
(P.S. This is not to say it can't ever happen the other way around, it absolutely can.)
(P.P.S. It's okay if you pick your moral and then you realize it needs to change after you start writing. This happens to me all the time, that's why it's called a first draft.)
Consider the Medium: Oral Storytelling
This is a lesson straight from the mouth of my epically cool high school humanities teacher when we read the Iliad. Other real examples of the things I'm about to talk about include the Vedas and aboriginal American stories, so they're not unique to European tradition. When a story is being told outloud, the listeners have to be able to keep track of who is who and who is doing what, and they can't go back and read a section again like you can with a written story. Also, in oral traditions, stories are passed down by memory, and repetition makes memorization easier. We are writing our stories down, but both of these circumstances must still affect the way we write them, if we want them to sound like they are from an oral tradition.
- Clarify speakers often, and do it before they start speaking/acting rather than after or in the middle of their dialogue to avoid the pronoun game even more than you would in other writing you do.
- Refer to characters the same way multiple times. Their titles can be quick ways to give your audience information about them.
- Consider how your words sound. Words that sound good and share a rhythm and vibe are easier to remember. There often multiple different epithets for the characters in the myths to help keep the meter of poetic sections.
- Read your story out loud! This is how Ekkreth stories were meant to be experienced. Better yet, have someone else read it out loud and listen for places where they stumble. If you're not comfortable reading aloud, or you don't have a private space to do so, you can use text to speech to listen to it.
Prototypes have to be tested by the people who are going to be using them, in the way they are meant to be used if they are to become useful to those people. You can treat your stories the same way.
Real World References & Questioning your Muse
Consider fairy tales, religious stories, poetry, children's books, bedtime stories, etc. What tools to they use?
- What parts of them sound the best? (Do they repeat certain phrases? Do they rhyme? Are they written in meter?)
- What kind of stories to they tell? (Are they complicated or simple? Are they super realistic, or kind of mystical?)
- How do they introduce characters? (What do they include descriptions of? Physical traits? Character traits? Actions they often take? Their role in relation to other characters?)
- Does the character's reasoning always follow real world logic? (If they do, how does their world influence the way they act? If not, what rules are they following instead?)
Ask all the questions you can about setting, characters, plot, style, etc. The answers to the above questions with regard to Ekkreth stories are, as I see them,
- There is lots of repetition of descriptions and titles. There is repetition in structure where there is repetition in the story (if Ekkerth asks five different animals for advice, they will ask questions phrased in similar ways, and get responses phrased in similar ways). The beginnings and endings of each story have several repeated phrases, lending a sense of familiarity no matter how wacky the middle gets.
- The stories are relatively simple. Ekkreth is going along, finds Depur has done something bad, Ekkreth does something to fix the bad thing, the people run away, Ekkreth taunts Depur and then flies away, this story can save your life.
- Characters are introduced by their names and titles and something of the way they act. Ekkreth is trickster, sky walker, wandering traveler; no chain can hold them forever. Depur is the master, the slave owner; he is Ekkreth's enemy. Leia is elder sister, mighty one, Ekkreth's daughter; she can endure anything.
- The character's reasoning doesn't really follow real world logic. Otherwise, Leia would just step on Depur in every story. Otherwise, Ekkreth's tricks coudn't work every time. Otherwise, there's no way Depur would be that dumb every single time. They are following a set of rules that teach the lessons and values of Amavikka people while acknowledging their limitations. They can't kill their owners, so Leia can't kill Depur. There are always small opportunities to defy Depur, so Ekkreth always has another trick. Every depur is both cruel and prideful in someway, so Depur will always be fooled by flattery.
Looking at real world examples can also be the inspiration for the structure and plot of your story, Ekkreth's tricks (heist movies might be good for this), or characters (there's a Norse myth about Loki catching a fish which inspired the way I wrote Umakkar).
Try mapping out Kadee's favorite story, "Depur's new clothes." See what changes happen when the person trying to sell the Emperor intangible clothes isn't a random tailor trying to make a fool of him, but instead Ekkreth trying to free the people from Depur. How would Cinderella's story change if instead of a girl looking for a night of freedom from her awful family she was Ekkreth disguised to get into Depur's party? Are they there to steal something? To trick Depur into marrying them? To distract him from the people escaping out the back of his palace?
Use references. Study them, copy them, improve them. In exactly the same way a visual artist must observe real humans to learn how to draw humans, you must observe real fairy tales, folk tales, movies, religious stories, poetry, books, children's books, songs, bedtime stories, etc, to learn how to write your own.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition...
Repetition is a tool of meaning in any kind of story. The things a storyteller chooses to mention more than once, the things they return to again and again, build meaning and change it with every echo. I've talked a bit about aesthetic repetition (repeated titles, names, phrases), but not about thematic repetition. Making these match up is one of the greatest tricks you can play as an author.
Knowing the intended moral of your story is going to come in handy here. It is repeated at the end of every Ekkreth story that "this story can save your life," not just because it's a good line, but also because that is what Fialleril considers the essential message for Anakin, every slave on Tatooine, and us, the audience.
In my story Elder Sister, Umakkar asks Leia three times, “Who are you, who would stand in the path of the storm?” not just because she keeps standing there, but because it gives Leia the opportunity to change her answer time. Her changing answer shows her figuring out her own identity through the trial of outlasting the storm, and it also displays what I believe is her most essential trait: the strength to endure.
Stories are something you can add to your main story to repeat the themes in the main plot. As Anakin defies Sidious, Ekkreth defies Depur. As the scanner comes to Tatooine, Ekkreth delivers the wisdom of the animals to the people. As Pooja interprets a secret flower language to save the rebel senators, Queen Polana uses a secret flower language to warn her people.
Like wearing the right color shirt can bring out the color of your eyes, the right Ekkreth story is a chance to echo the point of your main story, drawing it into the light.
Review the Source Material
Go back and read Double Agent Vader again, with a critical eye. Pay attention to the way mythology is woven into characters understanding of the world and their emotional journeys. Leia musing on how Ekkreth reminds her of Torhu, one of Alderan's spirits, was a big inspiration for me in writing Rex thinking of Anakin as being like a sea monster. Neither Rex nor Leia is Amavikka or even close to as deeply entrenched in their respective mythologies as Anakin is (his narrative is almost always accompanied by an active story being told whereas they mainly just think about their mythologies), but even they are actively using mythology to interpret their real world.
Also, I meant what I said about listening to Ekkreth stories aloud. There are wonderful podfics of DAV by @darlingsweet that can help you get a feel for how Ekkreth stories are meant to sound.
Finally, Commit to the Bit!
When fics have their own plot and then randomly mention "blah blah blah Ekkreth! blah blah," it actually tends to take me out of the story rather than drawing me deeper in. It's a distraction. It makes me think, wow I should go reread DAV again instead of this.
It's much the same form of imitation that makes a lot of sequels fall flat--where the creators knew they did something good with the original, but failed to appreciate what exactly it was, and so end up including all the surface elements without creating depth (think a lot of Disney's Star Wars content: lots of flashy lightsabers, big space battles, anyone can have the force now, not so much for consistent themes, or the Pirates of the Caribean sequels [or for an even worse example, the Avatar the Last Airbender movie]). It's saying, "Well whenever Fialleril wrote the name Ekkreth it gave me lots of feelings, so I'm going to also write the name Ekkreth in my story. That will cause people to have feelings about my story." I promise you, it won't. Not on its own.
Where Fialleril's writing excels most is in making the mythology matter to the characters. Making it affect the way they think and act. Anakin takes responsibility for his actions and turns his back on Sidious twenty years early, without Luke or anyone else around to guide him towards doing good because of these stories. That is the singular, most basic, and most powerful premise of DAV. It is an argument, not just for the power of Amavikka culture in Anakin's situation, but the power of storytelling and beliefs in general.
Writing full Ekkreth stories is much, much harder than including surface level references. I absolutely do not claim to have mastered any of these tips, my own stories are all works in progress, but effort and connection are the cost of depth, and depth is what creates all those wonderful and terrible feelings you feel when you read the name of Ekkreth.
These are, so far, my guiding principles when I write Ekkreth stories. I hope they are interesting, and helpful to someone. They are also, I hope, applicable to any story that tries to intertwine myth with reality. Please feel free to add/argue anything I've missed, I'm sure there's lots, especially with the number of people who have taken to interacting with Fialleril's mythology.
(P.S. Obvious disclaimer, but this is the internet: when I say things like "Fialleril does blah blah blah because...," I am guessing. I'm not in their head, I've just read lots of their fics and posts. I'm interpreting the data I have as best I can, and then phrasing my guesses very confidently.)
(P.P.S. Happy Christmas if you celebrate, happy holidays to everyone else. All the holidays I've ever heard of, religious and otherwise, have fascinating stories behind them which you can analyze in depth, if that's anyone else's idea of holiday fun.)
