Bard

As someone who both loves telling stories and loves music, it may not come as much of a surprise that I love the concept of a bard. I have a friend who has been working on a massive series, taking place in a medieval world in which all of the characters are based on her real life friends. I am proud to say that, in her five book series, each of which follows a singular character until the last when everyone comes together, I am the subject of one book, in which I am a bard with the power of randomness. I don't remember if I've gone into that before, though I feel like I have, but suffice to say I love her rendition of me, and the fact that I am a bard in her story could not make me happier.

But as much as I love them, I've never been particularly good at writing a bard. There's something about trying to tell a story in rhyme that doesn't quite click in my head, and generally ends with the story becoming incredibly boring and childish. I mean, granted, that's not always necessarily a bad thing, but when it's the only way I can write them and I want to put them in more mature, serious scenarios, it doesn't work out too great.

Not being great at writing music in and of itself probably doesn't help. You need a pretty extensive knowledge of words that isn't quite the same as what you need for writing straight fiction. You need to know every possible synonym, every way you could rearrange the words, just so that you can line up the words in the proper places. You need to count the number of syllables in each line so that it sounds good to say. There needs to be a flow that's just a little bit different than the flow of a novel, because it's not just about the story, but the sound. And while I have more of an ear for that than some other people just from having been exposed to music for so long, I don't have enough of one to be able to figure out what exactly is wrong when I know that there is something wrong. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty big distinction.

And of course, without any actual music, ideally you'd want the musical qualities of what a bard is saying to be able to translate through text alone, which sounds just about impossible. There are instances where it happens - we've all experienced it - but as far as I'm aware, there's no rule or explanation as to why this happens. It just kind of does. And I'm sure that that's something that varies from person to person, and there's no way to actually write something so that everyone who reads it really gets the idea.

I love the idea of bards. I love the idea of a traveling storyteller who knows the history of the world, can play and sing, and gets joy from spreading happiness to the masses. But good lord, if I could actually write one.