Creating Gobight Martial Arts for My Novel

Throughout my story, Vanishings, there are themes about fitness, being different, and self-defense. My decision to have goblins train Tilly, Jess, and Zach in martial arts is about combining these themes. Learning a style of martial arts will obviously improve a person’s overall fitness, but the concept of appreciating our differences nicely fit into this with the goblin, Mort. But why include martial arts in a middle grade fantasy adventure story?

It was necessary that Tilly, Zach, and Jess receive training in hand-to-hand combat if they were to head into the dangerous territory of the Witch of Wythic Wood. They are new to magic, and it was logical they have more than magic to defend themselves. There are several reasons characters learn this skill in fantasy stories.

Fantasy stories are adventure stories set in a fantasy/magical world, so this is a way to bring action into the story—an important feature of adventures.

Training in martial arts helps to develop a character—showing their improvement in the craft and giving them credibility to set out on the hero’s journey.

An important element to fantasy is magic and martial arts leans into this nicely. It’s fun letting your imagination see the character’s ability to jump and spin high in the air, to increase strength in a strike, or have the heat in their hand leave a mark on their opponent—the potentials are endless!

Outside of the fun I had with this, I wanted to show that it’s important not to judge a person based on their looks—it’s their actions that matter. Goblins are often portrayed as evil creatures—and their features certainly lean into this—with their origins in European folklore with the word meaning rogue or evil spirit. So, why did I deviate from this?

Sadly, people tend to fear those who are different to them. This fear, xenophobia, seems to be so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that it’s hard to switch it off. It also means that, if one person, or a small group of persons, who look a particular way do something bad—that anyone who looks similar to this person or persons, will be unfairly tarnished.

I explore this idea with both good and evil goblins in this series. It’s also why my character Mort, is a good goblin who is highly skilled in martial arts.

On their way to Mort’s, Tilly, Jess, Zach, and Jenny (a fairy) discuss how Mort’s a good goblin who cares deeply about his friends, and how this is completely different to how goblins are portrayed in the fantasy books they’ve read. Tilly comments that you “can’t judge a book by its cover.”

Click to continue.

There were several things I needed to consider when writing the training scenes where Tilly, Jess, and Zach meet Mort, who’s asked three of his goblin friends to help train the children in martial arts. One, how could children go up against fully grown goblins who have longer arms, giving them greater reach? and Two, Goblins have weapons at the ready with their sharp fingernails and toenails.

These attributes made it necessary that the fight stances, strikes, and blocks be modified to counter them—whether it was a goblin fighting another goblin, them attacking another type of being, or another type of being attacking them. I don’t go into much detail of the technical aspects of this, preferring to leave this up to the reader's own imagination, but this is the concept behind it. To help you picture this, let’s consider Tilly’s seer magic and Zach’s wizard magic within the martial arts training scene.

How can seer magic (the ability to see past, present, and future events based on current decisions) help in combat?

In Vanishings, I considered how Tilly’s always seeing a few seconds into the future, but her magic’s been bound—limiting her visions in this first book. In the following books, she has full access to her magic, and will therefore know exactly what she needs to do at every second of the fight. However, I realized she still needed to be trained in how to block and strike her opponent when she’s at a physical disadvantage because simply knowing what’s going to happen doesn’t give her the skills to defeat her opponent.

It’s in this training session that I write in the discovery of Zach’s magical abilities with strength, stamina, and camouflage—perfect for combat! However, it was clear to me that he still needs to learn how to control these talents, as well as how to block and strike his opponent.

Even with his surprising strength, he still needs to get within reach of the goblin—whose long arms and sharp nails are problematic—and controlling his camouflage while avoiding these weapons wouldn’t be easy. I also considered that, while stamina helps, it’s no good if he makes a mistake and gets injured, increasing the necessity for him to become a skilled fighter with his magical abilities enhancing this.

Because of the modifications, it made sense to come up with a name to describe this new style of martial arts. In addition to that, naming it helps make it a unique feature of my story.

Coming up with a name was relatively simple. I wanted the name to identify it as a goblin style of martial arts, which is why the word gobight takes the gob from goblin.

Gobart, Gobtial, and other ideas didn’t sound right, so I switched from considering martial arts within the name to using the bulk of the word fight. Mashing gob and ight into one word we get—gobight, and I was happy with that.

And that’s how I ended up creating Gobight Martial Arts.

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)