Real World Inspirations for Fantasy Creatures

#writing #fantasy #worldbuilding #inspiration

Easily the best part of writing fantasy is getting to come up with a bunch of new, fantastical creatures to go along with it. You can have your standard dragons and unicorns and gryphons and the like, and you put your own spin on those creatures or keep to the more "traditional" characteristics, or you could come up with your own animals entirely.

But where do you get that inspiration from? You can only knock around in the echo chamber of your own brain for so long before things start to get stale. Luckily, our own world is full of flora and fauna that can spark inspiration. Here are some of my personal favorites from the fauna category:

The Indian roller looks like someone took a Photoshop pass at it. That someone was Nature.

First up is the Indian roller, a species that looks like it went through Photoshop but naturally has this vibrant blue patterning, I kid you not. I admit to not knowing much about these birds as I keep getting distracted by their pretty colors to the point where I actually forget to Google more information about them. It's actually taking me longer to write this newsletter than it should because I keep staring at this picture. So let's move on to another bird:

The version of this bird that has "ear" tufts looks like a little dragon and I adore it.

This is a pennant-winged nightjar. The males naturally grow those extra long wing feathers, and the little birds need to spend so much extra energy flying with the additional weight that I don't know what evolution was thinking on this one, but these little guys are so cool. There are also a bunch of different kinds of nightjar, some with different wing feathers and some that have extra long tail feathers, because nature just couldn't decide which accessories it liked best.

For the Southern Echo series, I actually combined these two birds into one, creating an intelligent bird named Luken who helps run information from the helm to other parts of the ship by using his striking wings and long feathers in signal patterns. Luken is also a perfect brat who will not leave main character Nate's hat alone for reasons I don't understand, but find amusing.

Moving on from birds, we have:

Maned wolves are what you get when Evolution wakes up one morning and chooses fabulous.

This is a maned wolf. It woke up like this. Maned wolves (which aren't technically wolves) live and hunt in high grasses, and use those ultra long legs to their advantage. They are so bizarre looking, and I love them. No current creatures in the book based on this species, but I think about them enough that I'm sure it will happen someday.

And finally:

These are the fins of a killer.

This is a lionfish. If you presented a lionfish for a professional character design critique, they would tell you that this is an over-designed fish and send you back to simplify. Nature, however, didn't understand the assignment and made it poisonous, too.

The ocean is full of wild, mesmerizing, terrifying things. A LOT of them. So if you want inspiration for something dangerous and/or creepy, look to the ocean. It won't fail you.

And since the Southern Echo series takes place on a world that is 98% ocean, I had to go internet diving for some of these nightmares. You'll see a siren inspired by this over-designed fish in the first book, and that's the last spoiler I'm giving you for now.