The Big Idea: Cameron Johnston

“Plot Armor” is a concept where the main characters of a story manage to make it through the story with few if any scratches, but in the Big Idea for The Last Shield, author Cameron Johnston explains how disposing of the plot armor made the story richer, grittier and with a lot more at stake.

CAMERON JOHNSTON:

It was a grey and windy day in Scotland and, being the massive history nerd that I am, I was standing on the battlements of a castle after climbing up and up a very narrow, and worryingly dark, spiral staircase. Oh, and did I mention those steps were wet and slippery? Fun, that. Ancient places like this were certainly not built to be in any way accessible to the elderly, ill, or mobility impaired.

That got me thinking: I have read a lot of epic fantasy and a lot of fictional battles, but only rarely do we read about the aftermath, of the wounded and the disabled warriors. What if, I pondered, we had a warrior in a sort of Bronze Age fantasy Scotland who suffered such a wound – what would their life be like? And how would they be treated medically? Real-world ancient medicine was more sorcery and prayer than science, ranging from the use of charms and talismans, or bathing in the blood of beasts to absorb their vitality, to letting dogs lick flesh wounds to promote healing (yes, this was a real thing). It’s a fascinating rabbit-hole of research to dive into.

The possibilities of combining my love of history and archaeology with a fantasy story like this lured me into exploring the idea further, so it did not take long for the writing to begin in earnest.

Of that Big Idea was born the aging warrior Briar, emerging from of the mists of my imagination fully formed, bronze sword and battered shield gripped in her calloused hands. After writing about seven truly monstrous characters in my last novel, I wanted to change tack with this one and write about somebody a little more heroic, but while Briar is loyal and good, she is certainly not nice.