Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m delighted to welcome author Keith W. Dickinson to talk about low-stakes fantasy stories – or, to be specific, whether these stories are actually as low-stakes as they seem! Keith’s own low-stakes fantasy novella, Glunda The Veg Witch, is coming out very soon, described as “a tale of heroism and hotpots”, so what better time to talk about this subject than now? Keep reading after the end of Keith’s post to check out the synopsis for Glunda, to find out more about it!
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Keith W. Dickinson: You may have noticed that cosy, low-stakes fantasy is having a bit of a moment right now. Thanks to books like Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons by Quenby Olsen, and Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes, a different, more intimate type of story is being told. But what makes a fantasy cosy, and why are these stories thought of as ‘low-stakes’?
Legends & Lattes is the tale of an orc named Viv who gives up a life of adventuring and swordplay to open a small coffee shop. Viv doesn’t do battle with monsters and armies, but with her own hopes and fears as she attempts to get her business off the ground, to build a community of found-family around her, and to deal with the possibility of falling in love for the first time. It is a beautiful, heart-warming tale that is a joy to read, but the one thing it isn’t is a story in which the stakes are low, not to the main character at least. For Viv the stakes are the highest they have ever been!
I had to think about how low-stakes stories work when I wrote my own; Glunda The Veg Witch. Without a Big Bad to go up against, where does the conflict come from? Who or what is the main antagonist? But then I realised it’s like life. We all live lives full of conflict and struggle, but we rarely have a Big Bad of our own to deal with. Our antagonists are tradition, and expectation, and the unwritten rules that everyone seems to know except you. They are the foes with which we do battle, and whilst they may not seem like much to some, to us they are as fierce and as terrifying as any mage, orc, or fire-breathing dragon can be.
Glunda’s main antagonists are societal traditions and the weight of expectation. She becomes Head Witch right when the witches’ main rivals, the Drupe Mages, decide they’re not going to share power anymore, a shift in the natural order of things which threatens the Veg Witches’ place in society. And the fact that Glunda is the one who allowed it to happen threatens her standing with the other witches, something from which she may never recover. It is not a story of war and great heroics, but a struggle for respect and understanding. If things go wrong the world will not end, life will go on, but it will be the end for Glunda, and all she had hoped to be. When you look at it like that, are the stakes really as low as they might seem?
In terms of stakes Glunda is more akin to a Discworld novel, where the stakes matter but the story is more about the people involved, the low-stakes sweet spot in my humble opinion. Many of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels could be considered low-stakes but for the involvement of Lord Vetinari or some kind of otherworld entity intent on causing havoc. Certainly his focus on character, humour, and human interaction are trademarks of the low-stakes aesthetic, with his witch novels especially being very much proto low-stakes tales. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg may have saved the world, but it is how they dealt with people and the world around them that they will be remembered for.
It can be a challenge writing a low-stakes tale, much like cooking without a lot of salt or making a movie that doesn’t rely on fast cuts and loud noises to keep your attention, but it can be very rewarding too. If you get it right, as did Baldree, Pratchett, Olsen and Chambers (Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild Built is a great example of how low-stakes can work in a sci-fi setting) you can create a story that sticks with you long after the act of reading or writing it is done. Low-stakes stories may not change the world, but they can change the lives of the characters involved a great deal, and if we as readers care about those characters they can change our lives as well. The stakes may be low, but the love, warmth, strength and humanity are anything but.
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“A witch’s boots told the story of her life. They showed you where she’d been, where she was going, and what kind of a witch she would be when she got there. And, most importantly, they were proof that said witch was not someone to be trifled with. She was to be listened to, and obeyed, and yes sometimes even feared, because her wisdom was hard earned and her wrath swift and mighty. They would have to be, for her to have lived in such boots for so many a year. No one trusted a witch in brand new boots, and rightly so as far as Glunda was concerned.”
Glunda Ashwillow is on top of the world. About to become head witch, and the youngest ever Guardian of the Golden Key, the only thing standing in her way is her old enemy, the Drupe Mages. They have the key, and they’re not willing to give it up without a fight.
With a coven of quarrelsome witches to contend with, and a fief full of farmers on the verge of revolt, can Glunda beat the mages and get the key before she runs out of veg? Or is there a cold, hard, carrot-less winter ahead for all concerned?
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An author since he was eight years old and asked for a typewriter for Christmas, Keith lives in the north of England where he spends his time writing stories about airships, murder, thieves, witches, sky pirates, tiny robots and talking cats. His first two novels, steampunk detective stories starring Dexter the mechanical cat and his meat-sack sidekick John Sinister, are available now.
Keith has been around the world, set foot on six of the seven continents, ridden a camel, trained as a yoga teacher, got a tattoo he doesn’t regret, and invented a board game that he still hopes one day to inflict upon the world.
Find out more at Keith’s website.
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Thanks so much to Keith for this great guest post – I hope it’s given you some food for thought, and left you keen to check out Glunda The Veg Witch! Now more than ever, I think a nice bit of cosy fantasy is always welcome.
Glunda The Veg Witch publishes on the 31st October 2023, and is available to pre-order now. Check out the links below to order* your copy:
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