Common Elements of Fantasy: Quest

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation

Quest

·       Character(s) are on a mission to find something– spell, item, person, information, etc., for a definite and significant purpose. Sometimes to destroy it instead of use it, like the ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The purpose might not be clear in the beginning, but the importance is.

·       Not lightly undertaken. Sometimes preordained or spiritual, but always requires struggle, danger, sacrifice, and hard work from the questor. Basis for characters’ internal quests.

·       Internal (control of magical abilities) or external (Holy Grail), explicit (Knights of the Round Table spending decades looking for the Grail) or implied (wizard working towards being High Mage – of course she’d need to be in control of her magical abilities).

·       Often the element around which the rest of the story – or at least that thread or phase of it - revolves.

·       Many characters in fantasy are on a quest for something even if the story is primarily about something else.

Fantasy Characters

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation

Characters

Magical characters come in a variety of flavors.

Animals:

·       Animals, of varying degrees of intelligence and/or human-like characteristics

o      Animals as intelligent as humans, which makes them magical. Might have their species characteristics intact to various extents. Can be singletons, can have their own societies, can be fully integrated into human society. Many of these stories don’t have fantastical characteristics beyond the presence of intelligent animals, but some are full-on fantasy worlds. For a fabulous essay on animal stories read “Cheek by Jowl:  Animals in Children’s Literature” by Ursula K. LeGuin in her book “Cheek by Jowl.” (“Redwall” Brian Jacques, 1^st in Redwall series)

o      Animals as helpers. Can play many roles.  Familiars - part of the power system of a magic-user. Used as eyes and ears. Magical servants. Beloved regular animals who play a key part in the lives of their humans.

o      Magical beings in the form of animals. Not really animals at all. Can be higher level beings or parts of our own souls. Allows the characters to interact with spirits on a corporeal level. (“Golden Compass” by Philip Pullman, first in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy.)

Mythical creatures

·       Mythical creatures – dragons, unicorns, spiders, krakan. Intelligent or not. Can be creatures of chaos or order. Sometimes working with humans. Sometimes main characters or an obstacle to overcome. Readers are likely to come and ask for books with dragons, more than anything else, I think. (“In His Majesty’s Service” by Naomi Novik, first book in the Temeraire series.)

Fae

·       Fae – Non-human, non-animal sentient beings of great power and with belief and value systems that usually bear little relationship to ours.  Can be portrayed as ruthless, violent, and not really friendly to humans. Gleaned from traditional folk sources; often spread with immigration from whatever culture they originated with. Tinkerbell is not representative. (“Ink & Steel” by Elizabeth Bear, part of a duology from the Promethean Age universe.”

Shapeshifters

·       Shapeshifters - Generally human to animal and back again. An individual might have one alternate form or many. They might be a magic-user or inherently magical. Many are from traditional lore, like werewolves. .Even though some are traditional horror fodder, they are also found throughout fantasy playing differing roles. (“Kitty and the Midnight Hour” by Carrie Vaughn, 1^st in the Kitty Norville series.)

Traditional Horror creatures

·       Traditional horror creatures – werewolves, vampires, mummies, zombies. These have genrecrept all over, including into fantasy. Their appearance the lives of historical and literary figures in books such as “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” both by Seth Grahame-Smith are representative. They’re often treated sympathetically, or at least not as objects of unmixed horror, more misunderstood, and can be fully functioning and vital members of whatever society they’re part of. (Betsy the Vampire Queen by MaryJanice Davidson – all sorts of monsters.)

Want to make a mention of  “Sunshine” by Robin McKinley.) (Voodoo Wars)  Best vampire novel I’ve ever read.  

Settings of Fantasy: Time

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation

Time:

·       Past/Present/Future in relation to Earth’s timestream – These usually apply to Alternate Earths or Slipstream Earths, places that are intimately involved with versions of our reality.

·       Internal time stream of a different land – the timestream of a place completely separate from Earth would have no reference to earth events. Author must create their own timeline.

·       Time moving differently – Where there is a connection between Earth and a Different Land, time becomes an issue. It might move very differently between the different worlds or planes and that can be a major element of the plot.  “Rip van Winkle” by Washington Irving.

·       Alternate time – Alternate version of an Earth time period not taking place on Earth. Medievalist worlds are numerous, for instance. Katherine Kurtz’s Dyreni series is a great example.  Many of the elements of medieval society are present – a very powerful church that is pretty close to Catholic, monarchy, chivalry, gender roles, feudalism, etc.  But it is obviously not Earth – different geography, cultures, presence of magic, etc.  

Settings of Fantasy: Place

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation

Place:

Skillful world building is vital in Fantasy.  When creating a strange, irrational world, it’s incredibly important to create internal logic and consistency. It’s also helpful to make it familiar to one degree or another to increase the reader’s sense of automatic connection and ease the transition to the strange.  Unless, of course, your goal is the creation of a world that’s confusing and completely illogical, which might be the case depending on the story you want to tell.

Often times the landscape plays a role in the story, and/or has a physical, moral, and/or magical connection to its inhabitants. It can act as another character. Sometimes it’s sentient.  In Christopher Stasheff’s Wizard in Rhyme series, the condition of the land and people is directly, magically related to the condition of the Monarch.  She is truly the steward of the kingdom.

Definitions of place:

·       Alternate Earth – An Earth we almost recognize but with irrational differences. Magic has always been a part of Earth.  A hole opened up and let the things from fantasy and nightmare through. (“Keeping it Real” by Justine Robson, Book 1 of Quantum Gravity series.  Quantum Bomb of 2015 rips a hole through the fabric of realities.)  Mother Earth is fed up and technology dies and unicorns appear. (“Ariel:  A Book of the Change” by Steven R. Boyett, Book 1 of the Change series)

·       Slipstream Earth – An extra layer to the Earth we know that only some are aware of.  Often the story consists of either someone becoming aware of that layer, or that layer threatening to become known to all. – Harry Potter, Wizarding and Muggle worlds.

·       Different Land – Someplace other.  Narnia, created by C.S. Lewis.  A land that couldn’t exist here.  Needs to be internally consistent - following the rules of good storytelling, but other than that there are no limits.

Relationships of place:

·       Immersive: story takes place entirely within a different land with no reference to Earth at all:  Lord of the Rings.  

·       Portal:  Someone from Earth transported – willingly or no – to a different land – “Wizard of Oz”, L. Frank Baum. 

·       Intrusion – Someone or something from a different land comes here.

·       Can also be some sort of bridge between worlds – traffic moving both ways. Vivian Vande Velde’s “Now you see it…” has characters moving from a fantasy world to Earth and back again to get their hands on a pair of glasses that filter magic instead of light. 

Fantasy: Magic

From my MLA 2012 Fantasy presentation

Magic

·       The Fantasy threshold.  If a book does not have magic, it’s not Fantasy Literature.

·       In its broadest sense, magic is a way of talking about non-rational happenings and beings.

·       Manifestations of magic:

o   Overt - Explicit, traditional – magick –wizards and sorcerers.

o   Inherent – Beings that don’t necessarily do magic but are magic. Vampires, fairies, gods.

o   Implied - fantasy that has a lot of non-rational happenings that aren’t talked about as magic at all.  In Jasper Fforde’s “The Eyre Affair” characters jump in and out of books all the time, and yet magic is never mentioned in that series. In fact the series is written as if it’s rational – very 20th century British. Yet it’s obviously full of something science can’t explain; it’s not rational. And therefore it’s fantasy, regardless of the tone.

·       One of Fantasy’s defining characteristics is that sense that you’re somewhere you’ll never be able to visit.    For fantasy worlds to be true, the impossible would have to be true - there would have to be Fairies in downtown Minneapolis, gods would be manifest, or you’d need to be able to travel in and out of books. 

·       Magic works differently in every world.  There are some accepted general “systems,” mainly, as far as I know, passed on by osmosis.  But it’s up to the author to come up with a system that works for them and for their story.  However, if the author intends the reader to take it seriously (and sometimes that’s not the intention at all) it must be well-thought out, internally consistent, and make sense within the confines of the world the author is building.  

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:

Sword and Sorcery & Epic/High Fantasy

So I'm finishing up the Fantasy presentation for the Minnesota Library Association conference, and I've had a devil of a time figuring out how to define Sword and Sorcery (S&S) and Epic/High fantasy.  Where are the dividing lines?  Do I want to include tropes for Heroic and Quest? Is there enough meaningful difference? All these are important fantasy elements, but it's not easy figuring out how to talk about them coherently and meaningfully to folks who are not very well-acquainted with them.

With the help of the resources I've consulted, I've decided to treat S&S and Epic/High as tropes, and Heroic and Quest as elements that can appear in many different tropes.  That seems meaningful to me, and should make them fairly explainable.  This has been one of the hardest things about this entire presentation, frankly.