 Fantasy: May 29, 2013 Issue [#5703] |
  Fantasy
This week: Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing Edited by: Satuawany  
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This week's article comes form Lynn McKenzie  , a reader and writer who adheres to no genre restrictions. She's taught me a lot about writing and now she's putting her focus on fantasy to share some ideas with you.
Check out the writing side of LM:
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Lots of fantasy is set in a fantasy world. But what about fantasy set in the “real” world?
I’ve read a lot of fantasy works over the years, and while I enjoy stories set in alternative realities when they’re done well, I have a special affection for ones which are set in the modern-day world, because they seem increasingly rare. To see someone grounded in our present day society, dealing with a fantastical element which has suddenly popped into her existence, is fun and intriguing.
Bear in mind, I’m not talking about paranormal fiction, which has exploded in popularity in recent years. The Twilight series, just to name one famous example, is firmly set in the present-day world. Paranormal fiction, however, usually has more in common with horror fiction, although there are arguable exceptions. In this article, let's consider the elements of more mainstream fantasy.
Many famous writers have used this technique to produce excellent books. J.K. Rowling, of course, began her Harry Potter series in a small town in England before introducing us to the wizarding world, and most of those books feature a great deal of “Muggle” details which offset the fantastical elements quite nicely. Descriptions of Harry wearing "trainers" (sneakers for American readers) or Ron wondering about electronic equipment in The Goblet of Fire not only give readers a laugh, they make the stories more believable.
Or consider the TV series The Twilight Zone. In its many incarnations, it almost always showed an ordinary person’s life turned upside down by an unexpected, inexplicable event; for instance, the bank clerk who can hear what people are thinking because of a coin toss in George Clayton Johnson’s “A Penny For Your Thoughts”, or the man with a dictation machine which can create and delete objects from the real world in Richard Matheson’s “A World Of His Own”. (Hey, I want a computer that does that!) If written effectively, fantasy in the real world can not only be interesting, it can be quite commercially successful.
Don’t think that because your story is set in the here and now that you can get away with sloppy background material, however! It’s important to use the same techniques that you would use in creating a fantasy world to set the scene in this world for your readers. No, you won’t have to explain how a DVD player works, or even what a tablet computer is. However, you should use your writing skills, engaging all of the reader’s senses, to make each scene so real in terms of place that your readers won’t think twice about its believability. If you do that well, they’ll be hooked even more and will believe the fantasy elements of your story. While you're working on making the real world believable, don't forget those fantastical elements; show us just how strange they may seem to those ordinary, "Muggle"-type humans in either the tale or in your audience.
So if you love to write about worlds that never were, why not switch gears and give our world a try? Have a scuba diver discover an intelligent magical dolphin, or someone poking around a junkyard uncover a discarded magician's crystal. If nothing else, you’ll gain practice for making your own worlds more realistic.
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Here are a few stories on WDC set (more or less) in the “real” world.
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