 Fantasy: October 20, 2010 Issue [#4015] |
  Fantasy
This week: Close encounters of the magickal kind Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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All that I see or seem is but a dream within a dream
Edgar Alan Poe
Welcome to this week's WDC Fantasy Newsletter. I'm honored to be your guest host.
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Greetings, fellow Earth travelers. As we approach Halloween/Samhain, and prepare to greet - or run with - gaily attired fairies and goblins and princesses and other hobgoblins past present and perhaps future (yes, young space avengers ), think also of the time of year. The veil will be thinnest between tangible and spirit worlds, as well as between other worlds, those of the faeries and dragons and elementals that reside alongside us.
Those little kids running about dressed in faerie and superhero garb, or as vampires and pumpkins and trolls, collecting candy and treats, can easily mix with creatures of otherworlds crossing over to join the celebration or, if not pleased with the fare, to cause some mayhem. They can mingle and play alongside the kids skipping among crunchy leaves.
Share your recollection or observation of those beings in a story or verse. Don't recall your trick-or-treating of past days, but instead, the feeling of running in the wind, not sure if it's a leaf or troll chasing you across the yard. The sound above, in the trees, a prankster weaving TP or, instead, a dragon skimming the tops of blushing branches with webbed wings?
We often use lush prose to describe magical worlds, to convey a sense of the arcane or the possibility thereof. Also, we may want to convey a heightened sense of aesthetics -- a majestic dragon, an imperious queen, a shimmering pendant, and so forth. Now, let's greet them today, in our world, when the veil is thin and they walk among us in the suburbs and cities and countryside.
An inherent advantage of the fantasy genre is that it offers a dazzling diversity of settings - including the world we know and inhabit. Let's open our eyes and engage our senses in our own backyard; share some of the 'otherworld' stories being written by our fellow inhabitants of Earth.
There are both advantages--and pitfalls--of writing the fantastic into our own backyards.
Fantasy in which the adventurers encounter one thing after another isn't as engaging as adventurers struggling to survive in a world with its own internal logic or ecology. Why not write what you know, and imagine, in your own hometown or neighborhood or city?
When you set a story in your hometown, you already know how people make their livelihoods, what they eat, how they worship, and what their family relationships look like. You know how kids act, who's considered an outsider, and which people and groups have power. You know what houses, roads, and grocery stores look like, and you know what people wear and do for fun and the functional literacy rate. Just by living, you've done a lot of the research for your story already. Plus, your readers know much of the landscape, too, so you have much less explaining to do.
A modern setting may come easily to us, but the standard for accuracy is higher as well. Looking at a map, reading travel guides, watching movies shot on location, and relying on a memory of a visit several years ago are not, for most of us, good enough research techniques for contemporary fantasy. If you find yourself relying on these techniques, you should consider setting your story somewhere that doesn't really exist, so that getting every detail right won't be as important.
If your characters will drive through this place, then drive it; if they will walk, then walk it. If you're working on a novel, don't live in the setting, and can't travel to scope the area regularly over the duration of your writing process, then have someone, or several someones, whom you can quiz about nitpicky details. What time in the morning does the fog usually lift in April? Where would kids find a patch of woods to explore? What's the traffic like on Main Street on Sunday afternoon?
There's lots of opportunity for character development - both for the creatures of parallel worlds and the mortals with whom they engage! However, to make the story work, do research local legends either by talking with neighbors or visiting the library or any historical memorials. Where are the faeries or undines (water elementals) most likely to reside? Where will you and your reader most likely encounter hamadryads (creatures whose lives are intertwined with trees)?
See our world through their eyes, hear our voices with their ears, or skinpads, or wingtips - whatever beings drive your story. In other words, the characters could be our neighbors. Imagine imagine that the twenty-something slacker in the apartment down the hall is actually an elf slumming among humans. Pretending that magical forces operate at the same grocery stores we shop at, visit the same clubs, or farm the same land gives a neat twist to our everyday surroundings. Show them encountering us ~ what do they think, feel, know and desire? Get to know them that their story drives your story.
Then as their story unfolds, the fantastic elements are believable in our environment. Tension builds as we see magick becoming 'normal' - frogs may rain off the apartment roof when their daily chores are finished, clearing out crawling pests. An apparently fantastic exhibition set in an apparently mundane backdrop. But keep it believable - share the possible, if not proven. If frogs rain down, it could be magic or a ravaging storm. If the fantastic elements are too explicit, then we begin to wonder why anybody lives in a goblin-infested building and why no one's home video has made the evening news.
Subtle magic may work best in a place rife with enchantments, where any reasonable person would believe that noises in the basement were due to goblins. In the same way, explicit magic may work best where all buildings have goblins, and they only become an issue for your human character because he's a light sleeper.
Think about how you want magic to work in your story and decide if it will be believable in a modern setting. While contemporary settings allow us great fun in playing off of expectations--our readers think they know how this world works, after all--we need to be careful how we breach those expectations. Both too little and too much magic are hard for readers to swallow.
Consider Stephen King and Ray Bradbury, both of whom have brought the fantastical and magickal into today's world to interact with mortals. Now, with an open mind, see how some of our members have interacted in prose and verse with creatures across the veil.
Write On!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Is he a stalker - or something very much worse? Will the young girl escape?
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#1374839 by Not Available. |
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Big Foot, booze, not a good combo, oh, and I've inherited a mountain & a sword - REVISED.
#1715771 by Mage  |
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Thank you for sharing with me this exploration of interaction among the fantastic and mortal beings that co-inhabit our Earth.
As you pass candy or visit with the wraiths and faeries, the heroes and villains clad in fantastical garb, see if you can spot one of the creatures crossing over from other planes and, if you do, perhaps you can begin a conversation in prose or verse.
Samhain Blessings )O(
Write On!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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