 Fantasy: September 04, 2013 Issue [#5850] |
  Fantasy
This week: Own Your Fantasy World Edited by: Annette  
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Own Your Fantasy World
Don't write as if you're surprised by your own fantasy world.
You need to know your fantasy world intimately before you start dropping characters and plot into it. As you introduce your world to the reader, find a way to make everything appear normal and expected. If you are surprised at your own world, just think how weird it will be to your reader. So, when you describe something, make it read in the same way as you would describe your own living room. What I mean by that is that the way you would describe your living room in details that are normal to you, that is how you should describe the fantasy world your characters live in.
I recently started reading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Several times, especially in the first chapters, I felt as if he wrote from the point of view of a third party observer, much like a touriste. This was especially strong in the first two chapters. The reason it struck me was because the first two chapters are written from a Martian woman's point of view. The descriptions of her surroundings should be entirely written as if everything is normal.
Now, I am not going to mess with Ray Bradbury much more than this. Especially since the following chapters make it clear that nothing is what it seems on Mars. People, Martians and Earthlings alike, see what they want to see. It becomes eery and worrisome at times how few of the descriptions can be trusted to be "real." However, in the context of people getting tricked into seeing things - this works perfectly. It just didn't work for a person from that place to look at things as if they were surprising. And, really, she didn't. The woman wasn't surprised at her surroundings. It was the narrator.
This is why you, as the creator of your fantasy world want to be sure your descriptions don't come across as if you haven't fully formed your world. Don't be afraid to be descriptive, colorful, and even *gasp* use plentiful adjectives. Adjectives are good. If the people in your stories have blue spiky hair with shimmering sparkly things that erratically whiz around their cone heads as they happily saunter across pink and blue polka dotted grass that is lightly wet and sticky too - then let your reader know! 
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For my first ever Fantasy Newsletter "Magic" , I got the following replies:
Dawn Embers  wrote: Magic is fun to add to a story but I prefer it to have limitations and consequences. Unless it's so withing everything that it becomes mundane, it could become too easy if there wasn't something to counter that fact. Wearing down, losing strength, risk of backfire and such all help keep it useful but not have it solve things in a too easy manner.
Thank you for commenting on my first ever fantasy NL!  Yes, limitations are needed. Otherwise, there would be no balance and at some point, the magic would just take over, which would be boring.
Jimminy Jingle!  even commented publicly in his forum "Charlotte's Castle" "New Letters"
That was such a cool discovery to find my newsletter in your forum. Thank you so very much for posting about it and your kind assessment of the newsletter.
BIG BAD WOLF is Merry  wrote: Watch for dragons. "Dragon's Eyes"
Will do. At least if they know magic.
Mitchopolis  wrote: All excellent considerations regarding magic in a story. An approach I like to take is to never explain the magic or specify too many details as to its applications, origins or limitations, but always have the implication by the magic practitioners that limitations exist, rituals are required, and not all aspects are understood. I like to equate magic to science in that it is not easily understood and that understanding constantly changes as new aspects, discoveries and applications are uncovered, but unlike science, magic is often rooted in belief, faith and powers beyond explanation.
Great newsletter.
First of all: thank you for the praise. Your approach makes sense to me. I can agree that in magic rules don't have to be rigid. There can be outliers, discoveries, strangeness. As long as you as the writer keep to that theme, your readers will believe you. I guess it would not be well received if magic was so easy that it weren't special any longer. That, I think, was one of the points I tried to express - but didn't. I like your words "beyond explanation." So true. Magic should be beyond explanation, at least in the textbook sense. It should, however, be comprehensible in it's presentation to the reader. If there is somebody so powerful that they can do anything they want without consequence - what's the fun in that? Even Voldemort, who seemed to just magic himself anything he wanted ended up with the stun of all stuns when he tried to kill Harry Potter. Ouch.
SantaBee  wrote: Thanks for sharing these wonderful ideas on magic. All these are great suggestions for defining the witch/wizards abilities. Thumbs up!
Thank you for the thumbs up. It's nice to know it was useful to you and others. |
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