Welcome to the latest installment of “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration. Today:
Dragons are among the most popular and enduring of the world’s mythological creatures, believed to have been real for centuries.
Dragon tales are known in many cultures, from the Americas to Europe, and from India to China. They have a long and rich history in many forms and continue to populate our books, films and television shows, as brave heroes routinely fight to slay the beasts.
It’s not clear when or where stories of dragons first emerged, but the huge, flying serpents were described at least as early as the age of the ancient Greeks and Sumerians. According to Scott G. Bruce in his introduction to “The Penguin Book of Dragons” (Penguin Classics, 2021), “In the ancient world they took the form of enormous serpents, ready to crush with their coils and kill with their venomous breath.” For much of history dragons were thought of as being like any other mythical animal: sometimes useful and protective, other times harmful and dangerous.
