Posts in the "Why Write Fantasy?" Category

• I Blame Tolkien

  Why Write Fantasy?

  I don’t really remember the exact moment I decided I wanted to start writing—I came to it late and played with the idea off an on during college and through the early part of my professional career as a software programmer—but I do remember the moment that fantasy first fascinated me. It was in third grade. My best friend had read The Hobbit, and had recommended I read it too. So i did. And I loved it. I adored it. It was my first exposure to fantasy, and I remember how transfixed I was, not merely by the story, but also the maps and the covers.

  The covers, if I’m recalling correctly, were these ones:

  

  The world, as anyone who’s read them will tell you, is so wide and deep it’s easy to fall into. I loved the fairy tale feel of The Hobbit and the deeper, more dangerous feel of The Lord of the Rings. I even liked (not loved, it took me three tries and nearly a decade to finish it) the feeling of myth that The Silmarillion gave.

  So when I started making up my mind that I actually wanted to write, I knew it would be fantasy. But the point of this week’s posts isn’t so much the origin of our writing and why we write it, but why we enjoy fantasy in particular. What it brings to the table.

  I enjoy writing science fiction, but I have to admit, I find it too similar to our modern day world at this point. There was certainly a time when science fiction was little different from fantasy; it was just that one looked backward and one looked forward. Today those paradigms have been broken over and over again, and science fiction has stayed ahead of the technology curve, but it’s getting harder and harder to do so.

  But for me, that’s only part of the problem. I enjoy looking back to another time. I enjoy the escapism of fantasy. But first and foremost, I find compelling because of the particular brand of agency it grants the characters (and so, to the reader). It gives a sense of power that we’ll never have in real life. And so, from this perspective, it’s fun to write about kings and queens; it’s fun to write about thieves and wizards; because in them we get to experience wondrous things, things we dreamed about as children. I think that’s why the buying market has trended away from science fiction and more toward fantasy. Readers are looking for the same things in fantasy that make me want to write it.

  So while I enjoy science fiction enough to dabble, I doubt that I’ll ever write a science fiction novel. Fantasy’s what I love, and that’s where I’ll stay.

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• Fantasy Is as Fantasy Does

  Why Write Fantasy?

  

  This week, we’re knocking around the essential question: why write fantasy? At least for me, it’s barely a choice. I feel compelled to write fantasy, and always have. I’ve tried my hand at the more “serious” stuff, usually under the lash of a professor, but I can’t help coming back. Addiction? Barely healthy compulsion? Undiagnosed brain tumor? Who can say, but there it is. I mean, I could try to legitimize or rationalize by talking about Jungian archetypes or how humans have been doing fantasy since the Epic of Gilgamesh (if not earlier), but at the end of the day, it’s pretty much hardwired. Why do I prefer the color teal to mint green, or vodka to tequila? I just do.

  When I was younger, I had more than one teacher or professor try to impress on me the importance of learning the craft of writing in the realistic short story format before trying my hand at speculative fiction, especially long speculative fiction. The speech usually went something like, “You need to master the fundamentals—pacing, dialogue, character development, tone, blahblahblah—before you’re ready to venture into other territory.” (more…)

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• It’s All About The Freedom, Baby!

  Why Write Fantasy?

  This week’s topic is; Why Write Fantasy?

  The answer is very simple. It’s all about Freedom! When one decides one is going to write fantasy, it is very liberating, because the writer is publicly throwing off the very last shackles that bind his so–called soul.

  I mean seriously, when one decides to become a writer, you are already severing all ties with workaday humanity. You are expecting, nay, demanding, that the cutters of wood and the drawers of water give you enough of their hard earned money that you can swan about cobbling together your little stories. James Branch Cabell once declared that a writer should learn all they could when they were young, but when they actually started to write, they should be a thing apart from humanity, so that they could follow the dictates of their inner voice without other people’s opinions messing it up.  Naturally, being James Branch Cabell, he used better words than that (Obviously, Jim wasn’t big on writer’s workshops).

  A writer is thus already something strange in the eyes of most people, and many of them become fabulous monsters. Oh, some of them try to maintain a facade of normality, (more…)

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• How Can We Not Write Fantasy?

  Why Write Fantasy?

  I wrote a novel about a girl who can turn into a wolf. Of course this is a fantasy, no one can turn into a wolf. (Though a world where there are fish with both eyes on one side of their head, where frogs can change gender, cows eat birds, and crows teach classes in tool-making, does make anything seem possible.) The belief that one’s wolf nature, or one’s dragon or cougar nature could rise to the forefront under certain provocation is absurd: no one can turn into another animal. As a metaphor for the complicated aspects that make up the human unconscious, it has a certain resonance, however. Following up the idea that if this girl was able to turn at will into a wolf, what adventures might befall her, is a natural progression. But still just a fantasy.

  So, let’s not write fantasy. Let’s write reality. Let’s only write things that can happen because they have happened. Okay. Here I sit before this screen, touching keys which create words on something which is not a page, which will show up on the Night Bazaar, which is real, and not imaginary at all. But where it is, and what it is, could take quite a bit of explaining. If you were to try to explain it to someone who died a hundred years ago, he would know that you are insane. In the Country of the Blind, the one-eyed man is locked up for having hallucinations.

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• One Foot in Reality, One in the the Fantastic

  Why Write Fantasy?

  Why write fantasy?  What can you do with fantasy that you couldn’t do writing realism?

  Hmm. 

  Why choose between them?  Why not use both?

  Albert R. Broccoli, the driving force behind James Bond in the movies, once described his approach to the Bond films as ‘keeping one foot in reality, one in the fantastic’.  I wholeheartedly agree–I believe that the more ‘real’ my reality is, the more easily the reader will accept the fantastic elements I use.  It’s sort of a corollary to Blake Snyder’s ‘Double Mumbo Jumbo’ (one piece of magic per movie!); if I make the rest of the story as believable as the real world, audiences will accept when I throw the King of Hell at them.

  Oh, let me clarify–I don’t write fantasy, per se.  My stuff is more ‘supernatural noir thriller (so far, with no sexy vampires)’.  To me, ‘fantasy’ has always meant ‘high fantasy’, with dwarves with hairy feet, D&D monsters and quests for some object of righteousness.  My stuff deals with the fantastic in a different way.  Since this post asks the question “Why write fantasy?”, and I don’t, I thought I’d address how I use the fantastic in my work (fantasy-fantastic; close enough.  Sue me.) (more…)

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• Fantasy? Fantastik!

  Why Write Fantasy?

  This week we’re discussing: why write fantasy? But perhaps the question should be, why not write fantasy? As a lover of the fantastic, I’ve never really understood the viewpoint ‘I don’t read fantasy or science fiction because it’s not real’. The subtext to this inevitably seems to be and therefore what’s the point? To which I would say: firstly, that’s the whole point! Fantasy is escapism! It’s an abundance of imagination and wonder in a few hundred pages and it’s also fun! Why would you not want to read fiction like that?

  And secondly I’d say: you’re right, it’s not real, at least not in the literal sense. But if you peer a little deeper into the mirror, reading fantastical fiction is often about reading between the lines as much as what’s offered up on the page.

  I’ve tried writing mainstream or contemporary fiction and it’s never quite clicked for me. I always want to go off at a tangent. I spent eighteen months living in Paris, and ever since leaving I’ve wanted to write about it, but I didn’t want to write exclusively about my experiences – I wanted to add another dimension. Something dreamy and fantastical. Something unexpected. (And I did actually draft that novel, but I guess it’s going to be sitting in a drawer for a while now.) I think this is why I love Murakami so much – you think you’re in an ordinary world, and suddenly you realize you’ve landed in a whole other dimension.

  I’m a reader and writer of fantastical fiction because it’s a joy to read and to write. Because it conjures other worlds. Because it places no limits on the imagination. Because it’s full of possibility. Because you can do anything and go anywhere with it. If everyone was confined to writing what they knew, fiction would be a much duller sphere. (more…)

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• All the doorways, please.

  Why Write Fantasy?
  

  Paul Tobin

  So… why write fantasy? This was actually a big question for me, because I spent a long time screwing around with novels that I wasn’t particularly fond of, trying to write what I thought was “proper” to write… the types of novels that get featured in “Stuffy Drawing Room Discussions Quarterly” because I wanted to feel that I had accomplished something as a writer. The big change for me was when I compared what I was trying to write with what I enjoyed reading. I was writing heart-breaking slices of everyday life and then reading tales of warriors kicking dragons in the arse, and vampires holding bloody knuckle contests with ghosts, and lithe swordswomen tossing naked stableboys from their beds in order to grab up their swords when the troll busts through the wall. I was reading fiction where magic was in the mix… where others worlds were not only just beyond doorways, but there were characters and villains in the books who KNEW where those doorways were waiting, and they had the keys and the magic words to fling them wide open.

  So my interests were clearly in different genres. But why was that?

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