Writers-and-Publishers.Com: Harnessing the Power of the Internet to turn writers into profitable publishers

On Fantasy Stories: An Essay On Fantasy and the Writing Thereof

by Darren Andrews

USING THIS ARTICLE: The article below may be copied to your site or ezine on condition that you include the byline. If you do not wish to include the resources (if any) or if you only wish to include a portion of the article (which must include the byline) then you must provide a link back to this page so that the full article can be accessed by your readers should they wish. You have permission to copy the HTML source code (for the article only) and any links. Please notify the author of your use of their article and provide a courtesy copy of your publication. Thank you.

PART I

I read my first fantasy book as a child. I cannot remember whether it was The Sword of Shannara (by Terry Brooks) or Tolkien's The Hobbit that I read first, but I do remember that I became immediately enchanted by the genre.

I started seriously writing my own material in 1991 after meeting my then-hero, Terry Brooks. He critiqued a little of my work and gave some useful advice on characterization. Since then I have written on and off over the intervening years amid many other pursuits and responsibilities.

I learned quickly that there are different types of fantasy story, and perhaps I should clarify exactly what I mean by fantasy. It is common in bookshops today for anything to do with fantasy, horror, futuristic fiction, etc. to be placed under the heading of science fiction. I cannot blame booksellers for this, after all many writers and readers do not agree exactly on classification terminology - and some books seem to straddle between two or more genres.

In this essay I will be dwelling on the more traditional high fantasy, of which J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings is a great, if not the greatest, example.

The Purpose of Fantasy

Any kind of writing is a serious responsibility, factual or fiction. Dorothea Brande in her classic work Becoming A Writer, wrote:

"If [fiction] is sensational, shoddy, or vulgar our lives are the poorer for the cheap ideals which it sets in circulation; if, as so rarely happens, it is a thoroughly good book, honestly conceived and honestly executed, we are all indebted to it." ( p. 19)

A fantasy story is like a vessel. It can contain the sweetest nectar or the foulest poison, or in some cases something quite tasteless in between. The two extremes just mentioned are probably not encountered in such stark contrast in any other genre.

Sadly, those who have not read good fantasy usually have a somewhat distorted view of it. This is quite understandable when one looks at the so-called fantasy ('sword and sorcery') movies and TV shows that abound. I have only ever watched one movie that I thought had some merit as a true fantasy (Ladyhawke), except of course for the recently-released The Lord of The Rings movie (part I) which, though inevitably falling short of the book, has brought real fantasy (if that's not an oxymoron) to the screen at last.

The 'let's focus on the special effects and cliches' mentality of fantasy movie makers is but a reflection of the same attitude in many fantasy novels. Fortunately there are a few that do rise above the base and mediocre. What is it that these latter have that the others do not? What makes these succeed whereas others just find their way into the next bargain sale?

I believe that in order to understand this we need to comprehend the power of fantasy.

The Power of Fantasy - Symbolism and the Inner Consistency of Reality

"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things…" (Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, Tree and Leaf, p. 9)

Fantasy literature is purposely imaginative. The author of fantasy has the ability to engage the reader's imagination more powerfully than the author of another genre - IF it is done correctly! High fantasy has a very clear purpose in doing this: it is to take the reader on a journey to reaffirm certain principles of good and evil, of morals, of the spiritual and unseen. Fantasy breaks free of any attachment to political correctness or populist thought. It is liberating and yet at the same time a solid reaffirmation of age-old realities. It is the child growing to adulthood, engaging in the struggle between the powers of good and evil and fulfilling their part in life. Fantasy is an optimistic view and a moral accomplishment of what otherwise would destroy us.

There are some important things to consider here if you would master the craft of writing effective fantasy. I want to break this down a little more…

Fantasy is replete with symbols. This is perhaps the main reason why fantasy can engage our mind more than other genre; symbols are powerful ways of getting something into a reader's heart, mind and soul. Fantasy uses symbols that have been around for a long, long time. Many of these symbols go back to deep ancestral beliefs, they go back into history, into legend, into mythology, and into the very scripture of the Bible itself.

This should be a key point to keep in mind when you are writing your own novel. Be aware of these symbols. Look at the way successful authors use familiar symbols and concepts in their writing. In part II we will be taking a look at perhaps two of the most successful of modern fantasy writers…

PART II

J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien's knowledge of mythology, and his love of and expertise in the field of philology (the love of words) were outstanding. This gave him a powerful advantage in his writing because he was able to construct what he called his "secondary world" on the deepest symbols and traditions of the "primary world" - at least on those symbols familiar to the Anglo-Celtic/Christian world. When you are 'world building' the setting for your novel (I prefer the term 'subcreating') you must portray an inner consistency of reality. In other words, your world and the things it contains must be believable. I think a lot of authors fall down in this regard. They make the laws, the history, the inhabitants, and so forth, of their secondary world too far removed from the primary world. Tolkien, in his famous essay, On Fairy-Stories, put it this way:

" 'the inner consistency of reality' is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World." (p. 46)

Robert Jordan (author of the hugely-successful The Wheel of Time series)

Like Tolkien, Robert Jordan has taken familiar and cultural symbols and ideas and put them into his own subcreation. When you start to really look through his books (and Tolkien's) you see that little has been just 'made up'. Fantasy, powerful and effective fantasy, is not about making things up. Rather, it is about taking pre-existing deep-seated beliefs and symbols from the past, and then with careful skill placing them into a secondary world without straying into the ridiculous.

Jordan's world has many seemingly strange objects, places and people. But are they totally made up? Do the Aes Sedai have no origin in the Aes Sidhe of Irish myth? Are the artefacts known as angreal (and their variations) not perhaps based on the Sangreal relic-tradition (otherwise known as the Holy Grail)? Trollocs on the Trolls of Scandinavian myth? (Apologies to those who have not read the books and who might be wondering what I am going on about - you can find out more by following the Robert Jordan link in the resource box at the end of this article).

It seems almost every word and name in The Lord of the Rings has some origin, even if just etymologically, in the real world if you start looking.

This brings up another important truth. Successful fantasy writers draw a lot of their ideas from cultural mythology, chiefly Norse and Celtic. I think all of the fantasy authors I have read have done so. This is powerful because it links in with our ancestral 'memory' for wont of a better word.

So, in keeping the material of your secondary world tied up and originating in the primary world, the shift is less severe and the resulting subcreation more believable. Fail to produce internal consistency in your world and you have already lost any hope of any true success in the realm of fantasy writing.

The true fantasy author must not only be a subcreator but an enchanter (or enchantress!). The reader must be invited into the author's secondary world and enchanted to stay by those images and feelings his mind conjures up, and be the better for it when the last page of the book is finished.

Darren Andrews has been interested in fantasy writing since his youth and still turns his hand to writing when time permits (which is not nearly as often as he would like!). He now works as an Internet technology marketer and owns a few sites including www.writers-and-publishers.com which you are presently visiting. You can email him at darren@writers-and-publishers.com.

RESOURCES...

If you want to get hold of a top-rated book on writing fantasy then take a look at Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. There are some excellent reviews here.

If you are looking for a resource on mythology, folklore or legend from anywhere in the world then try the Encyclopedia Mythica. It's a work in progress but it is free.

Review and buy Robert Jordan's first book in The Wheel of Time series.

Hot! Pay a visit to Writers-and-Publishers.Com's Lord of the Rings Store. Check out the official movie website at www.lordoftherings.net. Pre-order The Lord of the Rings DVD. Two hours of extra content and a ten-minute behind the scenes look at The Two Towers. Click to buy!

Review Dorothea Brande's short but classic Becoming A Writer.

Check to find Tolkien's essays, including On Fairy Stories here.

"I know a lot of people who want to be a writer, and it's a very different thing from wanting to write."
Nine Winning Habits of Successful Authors by Rachel McAlpine, quoting Robert Jordan in interview. Read a larger extract from the Jordan interview here.

Can You Write A Bookin 14 Days or Less?Want To Know How?

Can You Write A Book
in 14 Days or Less?

Want To Know How?