Narrativia (goddess)

Narrativia is a goddess of writing. She is the patron deity of Sir Terry Pratchett himself, who is having a statue made in Her honour:

Terry Pratchett is having a statue made. It's a statue of a goddess, and he thinks she ought probably to be smoking a cigarette, and to be showing one breast. "There should be an urn, too. If there's an urn it's not porn – that's a Discworld cliché," he says, a bubble of laughter in his voice.

The goddess is one of Pratchett's own invention: Narrativia, the deity of narrative who smiles on writers (and perhaps especially sunnily on her creator). Discworld, created by Pratchett 28 years ago, is the fantasy world held up by four elephants balanced on the back of a giant turtle. It's a concept which started out as an affectionate lampoon of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy genre, but it has, over the years, become an increasingly sophisticated swipe at contemporary society, pointing out the ridiculousness of everything from Hollywood to the postal service, newspapers, banks and football.

And Narrativia has been beside him all the way. "If you've been a good boy and worked at what you're doing, then the goddess Narrativia will smile on you," he says, recounting his delight at a particular piece of her work, when he was writing Thief of Time more than a decade ago. He decided to call one of his characters Ronnie Soak. Soak is the fifth horseman of the apocalypse – the one who left before they got famous. His name was picked at random, so Pratchett was astonished when he noticed what it sounded like backwards. Suddenly, he knew of what this particular horseman would be a harbinger. "I thought chaos – yes! Chaos, the oldest," he says. "Stuff just turns up like that."

(Exracted from the interview with Sir Terry Pratchett, A Life In Writing, The Guardian, Sat 15th Oct 2011)

Narrativia must surely have taken her place in Dunmanifestin, as her recommendation comes from an even higher authority still?

Narrativia is mentioned in The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, when Lord Vetinari mentions lighting a candle in her honour before starting a lengthy memoir.