Today I hit the 50% mark on Midnight of Lanar’ya. I’ve just wrapped up several pivotal scenes for the first major climax and am working on the interlude sections between Peak One and the climb to Peak Two (other writers will know what I mean). So, to celebrate hitting that milestone, I thought I’d make a post about why I tend to avoid writing human characters in my fantasy fiction.
Several of my friends have wondered why I tend to have my main characters be elves instead of humans. It’s not just because I think Drizzt Do’urden is awesome or because I like pointy ears. I tend to write from an elven (or dwarven) perspective because my stories are from an outsider’s point of view. In Lanar’ya, the major race of the central civilization is human. Elves keep to themselves (as do dwarves) but relations between the races is peaceful and amicable. The main character in the books is an elven commander. The other commanders are all human. The elf, Jarl, will outlive them by a long margin. It gives him a different perspective on things. He has to deal, quite frequently, with the death of friends to old age while he is still in his prime. Not only that, but his point of view allows me to build a conspiracy and a mystery that spans decades instead of a few years. It makes the whole story more believable to have it told from an elven perspective.
Human characters in fantasy fiction rarely have the same outsider feel to them. As humans ourselves, we feel like we should innately understand another human character, even one who can cast spells. So, when we look through their eyes, we’ll see things in a closer light. We’ll tend to identify with them more and wonder why they aren’t more like we are. But elves (or dwarves or ogres or orcs or whatever) allow us to look through their eyes while accepting a good many more dissimilarities than a human character would.
That’s not to say I won’t write a story with human characters. One of the series I’m planning out for my next major project will have several trilogies written with a human-only cast. However, I do tend to find it easier to write about a human society from an outside perspective. Hence my choice of primarily elven (or other demi-human) characters.
Also: elves are cool.
