Writing Horses in Fantasy: How Authentic Should You Be?

[sabolich]

Since so much fantasy is built around medieval-type worlds, complete with horses, I personally believes it behooves the author to use the critters correctly. However, as a lifelong rider and horse owner as well as a published fantasy author, I see egregious errors all the time. I know it bugs my non-writing friends who have more than a passing acquaintance with horses. What about the rest of you? Do you roll your eyes when you see stupid mistakes of authenticity, or do you just let it go on by if it's peripheral to the action?

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I am shifting the focus of my personal blog to helping writers who don't have the luxury of a horse in the backyard to study make their use of horses (and fantasy beasts in general) less cringe-worthy. The first post went up today and I'm curious as to how much this issue may worry the average fantasy writer. I've talked to some who were on the edge of grievous errors pre-publication and were so very grateful that someone caught it before the audience could point fingers and laugh at them all over the internet. What about you folks?

 

[Mouse]

Heh. Not read them all yet, but your point number two is something I've written very recently - my riders complaining of sore legs and backsides.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

To be honest nothing like this has ever bothered me in writing. I was many years back a museum assistant with archaeology experience. The latter gave me practical experience of everything from sword fighting, building a bread oven, cooking a dormouse, using flint tools for butchery, ancient breeds of animals, riding horses (both sides of the Atlantic and Africa -- the experience is very different) etc

If I was to worry too much about accuracy I'd never read a book and enjoy it again. I appreciate a writer sometimes has to fill in gaps in their life experience with imagination and that is fine.

When I want authenticity I go to non fiction, but when I want a great story I need good characters and an interesting plot.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

I never actually use horses or other such mounts in my writing because of facts of what you listed. Things like rider soreness and chaffing is bad enough on a smooth-hide animal like a horse-imagine how bad it would be to dragon riders. Their legs and thighs rubbing up against rough scales, they'd get cut to ribbons.


Feed is another good point. It always did bother me about how in a lot of things I've read and watched the rider just seems to disregard his horse's needs. Bringing up LotR, have you at any point, beyond the blatantly unrealistic 2000 heavy horse charge against the orcish PHALANX at Helm's Deep, would be this: Had you at ANY point in the films EVER seen the mounts get their feed or water?


And I doubt that the hoses would've remained so calm in the Worg Rider fight if it had been more authentic, either.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I find I need to understand as much as I can about the subject I am writing about. It means I can blag it with confidence. Say enough not to drop the reader right out of the story by hitting this is stupid button and not go into a info dump that would bore the pants off my reader.

Which means over the years I have studied everything from the forging of a sword to flying a Lancaster bomber.

As for horses, talk to someone that actually owns one, you will get tit bits of information that you won't find in any book about horses and horse riding. That's the sort of thing that will bring your work alive.

 

[sabolich]

Things like rider soreness and chaffing is bad enough on a smooth-hide animal like a horse-imagine how bad it would be to dragon riders. Their legs and thighs rubbing up against rough scales, they'd get cut to ribbons.

Ouch. Yes. Though must of the chafing comes from the saddle, you can get quite sore riding bareback when the horse gets sweaty. Any minor cuts will sting pretty fiercely.

Bringing up LotR, have you at any point, beyond the blatantly unrealistic 2000 heavy horse charge against the orcish PHALANX at Helm's Deep, would be this: Had you at ANY point in the films EVER seen the mounts get their feed or water?

And I doubt that the hoses would've remained so calm in the Worg Rider fight if it had been more authentic, either.

Movies have to forgo a lot of stuff like showing anybody feeding or watering their horse because of length limitations, etc. And like in a book, you have to decide which details actually advance the plot or are important to show. But they could certainly have shown riders moving around taking care of their horses in the background of certain shots, or the group watering their nags at a river crossing or some such. And oh, yes, it is very difficult for horses to take exception to a CGI-generated creature, isn't it? LOL.

 

[HareBrain]

behooves

Ha ha!

Good blog, though I don't have a firm position on the issue myself. As someone who has ridden horses (badly, and scaredly) I do appreciate it when authors slip in a few details that show they know what they're talking about, as it adds a sense of reality to the whole story. But even if an author does treat horses as four-legged cars, they can get away with it as far as I'm concerned if the rest of the writing is compelling enough.

 

[Abernovo]

Thank you for posting this. If it saves one author from these mistakes it will have been worth it. Getting such simple things wrong does annoy me, although I suppose we should acknowledge it happens across the board, not just in Fantasy.

I've been thrown when a horse refused and I've spent time cleaning hooves, rubbing down etc. Knowing these things can add to the plot. Horses get sick, go lame in real life, why not in fiction. Some even nip if they think you're paying too much attention to another horse, but that's another story.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Movies have to forgo a lot of stuff like showing anybody feeding or watering their horse because of length limitations, etc. And like in a book, you have to decide which details actually advance the plot or are important to show. But they could certainly have shown riders moving around taking care of their horses in the background of certain shots, or the group watering their nags at a river crossing or some such. And oh, yes, it is very difficult for horses to take exception to a CGI-generated creature, isn't it? LOL.

Well yes, but the point is, I believe they could've at least had some panicky horses in anyway. Aragorn wasn't thrown off a cliff by a horse.


Looking back, there was a few things wrong with it....

 

[Mouse]

As for horses, talk to someone that actually owns one, you will get tit bits of information that you won't find in any book about horses and horse riding. That's the sort of thing that will bring your work alive.

Exactly. If you don't know something, ask someone who knows! I've got a horsey mate who I go to for answers (and I've posted a horse thread on this site). Even if it's a stupid question, it doesn't matter. I once asked her if ponies could run as fast as horses.

 

[sabolich]

As for horses, talk to someone that actually owns one, you will get tit bits of information that you won't find in any book about horses and horse riding. That's the sort of thing that will bring your work alive.

Oh, indeed yes, the only problem with that being that often the stuff we most want to know about doesn't have a convenient expert close at hand to consult. The internet is a wonderful place, but still there are writers to shy, or too arrogant, or too inexperienced to ask. Some honestly don't think this stuff is important. As some here have pointed out, the story and characters must be compelling first. But the window dressing is important, too, if the setting is going to be any good, and I'm one of those readers who look for setting as well as story.

A friend of mine and I actually have been working for years on a book aimed directly at writers, about what it feels like to ride, what it's really like to work with young horses, cranky horses, ride jumps, pack in the mountains, etc. Alas, it's still underway and I don't know when it will be available. The problem in fiction remains, however, hence the blog meanwhile. I serve as the Horse Police on my writers' workshop, poking holes in people's depictions and helping them get it right.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Great points all. Another one is, as mentioend by Pat Rothfuss in Name of the Wind, the whole working up to a gallop thing rather than an instant 'Yah! Yah!' scenario.

On Lord of the Rings, we're taking about the legendary, nay, supernatural Riders of Frickin Rohan! And, Shadowfax, being the best of their best, is more than a mere animal. I think a creature that comes from anywhere at a whistle might able to jump a couple of spears...just saying...

 

[Fitzchiv]

Widening out from horses I'm having a similar issue with map drawing to be honest, and being increasingly bothered about how 'authentic' what I produce is. I very much want a real ink on paper representation of the world I'm creating, but get far too anal about whether a certain mountain range looks correct, or whether a river basin corresponds to a glacial feature etc.

My advice to you would be to read into your subject as much as you feel comfortable with, for example if you felt confident having a conversation with a bog-standard horse rider - then go with that. Bear in mind the vast majority of your readers likely won't be riders, unless of course your project is titled "Riding Horses When Fleeing Dragons" in which case you may need to invest more time ;-)

 

[Phoenixthewriter]

Unlike a few people here, I am a stickler for detail. There is hardly a movie that goes by I don't nudge my wife and go, "Yeah right..." and point out some real world issue with what was going on.

In this case, I prefer to do a little research. By little, I mean one or two webpages answering my question and then going on from there, but I do it so it sounds real.

-The distance a horse can travel in a day
-How much water or food they require to maintain their strength
-How often riders should take a break, and even throw in a horse coming down with some illness on a long ride to a location they've never been, perhaps with drastic climate changes.

I find small details like that bring out a realistic sense to the story. Now, if you really wanted you could just make a world where they ride four-eyed oxes that look like rhinos with wings latent in their geneology so they cannot fly. And for whatever reason, they can run for days on end and get by on their food storage.

Personally though, I like the realism.

 

[sabolich]

In this case, I prefer to do a little research. By little, I mean one or two webpages answering my question and then going on from there, but I do it so it sounds real.

-The distance a horse can travel in a day
-How much water or food they require to maintain their strength
-How often riders should take a break, and even throw in a horse coming down with some illness on a long ride to a location they've never been, perhaps with drastic climate changes.

I find small details like that bring out a realistic sense to the story.

Lessee....the distance a horse can travel in a day. You do know that's an incredibly loaded question, right? It depends on the terrain, the fitness of the animal, the fitness of the rider, the weight/experience of the rider, the road conditions or lack thereof, the availability of feed/water, the weather, how much gear the horse is carrying...

How callous is your rider and how great is his need? Is he willing to run his horse to death to deliver a message or does he need the beast to get where he's going weeks from now? Does he have access to remounts? The Pony Express riders averaged 10 miles an hour, 250 miles a day, covering 2000 miles in 10 days on average, over uninhabited country of all types of terrain, including high mountains, high desert, open plains, and river bottoms. They changed horses every few miles to get that speed, and traveled very, very light.

On the flip side, the wagon trains were lucky to cover 10 miles a day. Medieval travelers a'horseback without encumbrances might manage 30 on really excellent roads, of which there weren't many. Cavalry might cover as much as 40, up to 60 or more on a forced march (oh, my achin' buns...). There is no "average" for travel on horseback save that the average 15-hand horse walks about 4 miles an hour without being prodded. That does not take into account steep terrain and heavy loads. 20 miles in the mountains is a long day (picture Cascade Mountains or the Rockies or Alps).

Horsey illnesses are good plot devices, as you've noted. So is throwing a shoe. Most people I know don't carry the wherewithal to put a shoe back on around with them (we do when we pack in to the mountains) and most don't know how anyway.

I see another blog post coming...

Sue

 

[Phoenixthewriter]

Heh, well dang you blew me apart lol. I very much enjoyed your post. I can honestly say, while I may not know a lot of the specifics, I try my hardest to take as much as I can into account.

For instance, I have a group of Priests in my novel riding to a forgotten tomb in the hopes of uncovering the grave of their god. They're riding horseback and are covering about 80 or so miles per day. They are traveling light and are on a mission where they have left without permission and must move rather quickly. They are however traveling from a centralized location to the climate conditions of say Arkansas, to a place like Michigan.

I don't do a ton of research, but I do my best to... do my best

 

[Toby Frost]

To my mind, and I know a bit about riding but not a vast amount, it becomes bothersome when it becomes naggingly unrealistic. I suppose it's possible that a horse could be trained to withstand the presence of monsters - dogs and horses in the story I wrote could be alchemically doctored - but one that behaves like a car with legs is more difficult to get. The other thing that throws me is the over-abundance of horses, where every peasant owns one, even an old nag. Horses were and are expensive, especially big fighting horses, and ploughing would be done in medieval times by oxen or possibly donkeys - or villeins. Similarly, there were other things to ride if you had to travel.

 

[goldhawk]

Ploughing was done by oxen until the horse collar was introduced to Europe. Horses did not become common until the 12th century.

The Roman legions use mules to carry their supplies because a mule can carry slight more than a horse and can survive on forage that would starve a horse. However, throughout the ages, infantry walked to battle. This is because a man can travel further in a day than a horse. Horses were used when a burst of speed was needed. Even when there were heavy knights, you could only get one, maybe two charges from them a day. The rest of the fighting had to be done by men on foot.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I agree that it's important for the writer to know these things, even if most of it never makes it into the actual words of the story. If the story is built around the knowledge of the details, then it won't go astray as some of the ones you mentioned -- even if we never see some of the details actually happening.

We hardly ever see people in books or movies going through the motions of daily stuff, but we still know that they eat, and pee, and everything else. I actually despised it when, in the movie Rob Roy, we saw Mary peeing in the lake, and heard it in surround sound. Unnecessary detail, to me. But it's good to have the sense in the story that people are tired or hungry or have to pee, even if we don't have to watch them -- same for horses.

Good idea on your part!

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Heh, well dang you blew me apart lol. I very much enjoyed your post. I can honestly say, while I may not know a lot of the specifics, I try my hardest to take as much as I can into account.

For instance, I have a group of Priests in my novel riding to a forgotten tomb in the hopes of uncovering the grave of their god. They're riding horseback and are covering about 80 or so miles per day. They are traveling light and are on a mission where they have left without permission and must move rather quickly. They are however traveling from a centralized location to the climate conditions of say Arkansas, to a place like Michigan.

I don't do a ton of research, but I do my best to... do my best

Uh, yeah, Phoenix, there is no way a horse can actually travel eighty miles a day. You MIGHT manage I think, thirty. And never at full speed for very long. What happens if you run a horse hard for too long a period is what is known as "breaking their wind" in which they have to breathe too hard and their lungs get damaged. When that happens, nothing can really be done but to put them down.