About Fantasy

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation: 

Why I like fantasy:

• The enchantment.
• The ability to go somewhere in my mind that I’ll never go in reality.
• The sense of internal journey that I find in so much of fantasy.
• Fantasy can persuade me to go places emotionally that I don’t generally go voluntarily.
• It tells really good stories
• It helps me engage with my reality in new and startling ways.”

Good fantasy tells really good, highly emotionally engaging stories, with direct language, compelling characters, and an emphasis on the conflict between chaos and order, good and evil, although it’s sometimes difficult to figure out which is which, and they are often masquerading as other things.  Fantasy is over-all an optimistic genre, believing that the good fight is worthwhile and the goals attainable with hard work, sacrifice, and the will to win. Victory is not cheap and it’s often hard to figure out what actions will lead there, but with the hard-won restoration of order comes joy and enrichment, and the human spirit shall overcome.  So often this is not true in the real world, or in the fiction that mimics the real world; it’s good to find a place where this attitude is not only not ridiculed, but embraced.

However, fantasy is not necessarily about escapism.  The stories I find most compelling are those that speak to me personally, that seem to be as much about my internal conflicts as the external. The internal Hero’s journey, for instance, which is a very compelling aspect of the human condition, and something we all go through periodically.

One of the functions of Fantasy is to externalize those internal journeys, and give us the opportunity to fight our internal demons externally, if at a remove. Fantasy characters are challenged all the time to face their fears, to give of themselves, to sacrifice, and the reader is challenged right along with the characters. 

Given the irrational nature of our internal worlds, realistic fiction can’t perform this function nearly as well as fantasy can, with its allowance for flights of fancy and rampant irrationality that actually makes sense.

Many of the characters in fantasy are on personal journeys of discovery, often unintentionally. Throughout their stories they discover all sorts of interesting things about themselves, often resulting in new powers and positions.  The coming of age theme is part of this, but as it happens to characters of all ages, it’s more about them coming into their own. This is a major theme in fantasy literature, and again feeds back into the externalizing the internal.  Aren’t we all on our own journeys of discovery all the time, whether we realize it or not?

One thing fantasy authors are adamant about is that fantasy is not allegory or metaphor. Not that things in fantasy literature don’t have other meanings than what’s written on the page, but that those meanings are determined by the reader, and are therefore many and varied, not assigned by the author.  There is no one right answer when talking about what a fantasy story means.  Under this stricture, magical realism is not strictly fantasy, because it’s written as metaphor, and the author gives clear instructions on what the fantastical elements represent. It would be more appropriate to say that it’s fiction with fantastical metaphorical elements.

Fantasy is moving back into the mainstream. It’s probably the oldest form of fiction. Gilgamesh, the oldest narrative we have, is what we’d consider fantasy – imaginative literature with irrational elements. However it wasn’t until the 17^th century that fantasy was first posited as a separate kind of literature, along with the recognition of realistic or mimetic fiction. Can’t recognize one without the other.  Before that it was all just narrative. The first Conan story was printed in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1932, and the first science fiction award (sf being a subset of the fantastical) was in 1955, and the first fantasy award was in 1972.  It’s fairly young, as far as being a genre goes, and it’s aggressively genrecreeping.  More and more realistic fiction is including fantastical elements, and if you look at the top rated movies and television shows, the trend is even more noticeable.

Fantasy has an incredibly wide age appeal.  People of all ages read fantasy intended for people of all ages. Did you know that there are versions of Harry Potter printed in England with adult-appropriate covers?  They’re all black and restrained, so adults can read children’s fantasy on the underground without embarrassment. People tend to be life-long fantasy readers as well, from a very young age.  There’s something about training your mind to stay open to the possibilities and wonder that keeps people coming back.

A lot of fantasy is made up of series.  Many of those are the same story told over 3 or more volumes.  Big stories take a lot of room to tell. 

Fantasy is literature. A lot of the basic RA questions are the same – especially those pertaining to emotion and style.

Mood – humor, drama, etc.
Length – long, short, series, short story
Storyline - Character-driven vs. plot-driven, complexity of the plot.

Pacing – fast-paced, steady, leisurely

Writing Style – minimalist, lush, extensive description, etc.

Characters – strong female, children, pets, etc.

However, some of the questions and many of the answers are unique to Fantasy: