Are You Writing Serious Fantasy?

[Nar]

Thinhyandoiel:

Not the above problem though. Why won't he DO something!?

It depends why he's not doing anything: is he thin in your mind, or is it not the right time for him in the story? I had a problem with a nonresponse: heroine called out & hero didn't answer, so I had to decide: Is he gone? Did something drag him off? Why is his voice not in my head? So as background, I rewrote the entire story from his perspective to get him into my head-- just side notes, but when I went back to the scene, & she called him, he had something to say, and it rolled along. You can try creating some backstory for him on the side and see if it affects the character in your story. Or, just follow the flow of the story and see if he comes out later.

Saxony Tarn: I forgot to tell you my casting for your dwarf-character. I'm envisioning Jeremy Irons. Wait, listen. As nontraditional casting, it would strike a blow against Tallism, and he's a great actor, he can work it. He has a suitable dwarven melancholly: 'It's Eru's world, and he's only our stepdaddy.'

Elenna: Of course you can post on a serious fantasy work in an original world that you maybe hope to publish. That's what most of us have in the works. Our main issue in this thread is how to get out works that can stand by Tolkien and not just in Tolkien's shadow. At this point we're into techniques for bringing our stories up to the level of LotR. How do you write? How do you develop your world? What makes fantasy into the kind of book that fits into a reader's life like a key into a lock and opens up-- who knows? That depends on the book. Fantasy involves a sense of play for the author. The author can put anything in. There is a constraint, though, that Littlemanpoet might refer to as 'a sense of place.' (It's quite a few pages back in this thread) Any author might use magical or surreal elements to make a point or symbolize something, but a fantasy author must achieve a story that holds together as in another world, even if it's just a state of mind-- that story cannot just be our world with magic soup dropped in to make a highfalutin symbolic point. A fantasy author has respect for the story as story and the place as a place-- we are the closest in spirit to the first storytellers, because we treat with our stories as if they were real.

As to the current questions: Things that grew? Oh, yes, that pickle jar (the one my heroine is fending off my fearsome monster with) It's turned out to be quite the Silmaril-- who would have thought it of a pickle jar? It sent her out of the world just has she was about to be chomped *big sigh, comes out from under desk*.

Littlemanpoet: Places. I've found that I can only believe in the transition from reality to other world if the settings are compatible. I tried to send my heroine through from her room to someplace outdoors, and I just couldn't believe in it. Once I figured out it had to be room to cave, it all came together. The story has to make sense at some primitive lizard-brain level. My lizard-brain just doesn't believe you can change indoors to outdoors, even with massive magic.

[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Nar ]