Writing Blog Number 2

20240208 Using Fantastic Realism Settings

Fantastic Realism Settings

Continuing with the settings theme, this one is a little obscure and does follow on from the last post.

Fantastic realism Settings are those where a really out-of-place thing is set in the real world. More than just another town or suburb, this is taking something that really does not exist and placing it in our world. For example, a castle in Ireland is hardly fantastic; a castle in New Zealand is really out there. Or it could be a cave system underneath Rhode Island, a eucalyptus grove in Germany, etc. Or, going further, a magic school in England, an Egyptian temple in South Australia, etc. In these cases, the magic place has to react with the realistic setting which surrounds it.

This is really hard to do. Even something as well thought-out and created as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter universe is somewhere that is hidden by magic and somehow Muggles don’t see or notice magic trains or kids running into walls.

First, you have to work out how things could be there. What created the caves? Underground rivers, lava, limestone erosion, a subterranean civilisation? If they are just caves, then that makes no sense. Fantasy or not, the setting you have chosen is still our world and these things need to make sense in our world. In my own cave-based book, the caves were dug by a lizard-man civilisation. That was it. In another book I read, the writer set the caves in the side of a mountain, and the indication they were the results of an old volcano. Makes sense. Another classic example is that castles were built for defence; placing one in the middle of a field or a town that is not a capital of some sort makes no sense. Even Harry Potter gets this right – Hogwarts is on top of a mountain, protected by water on some sides. That’s where an old stronghold would have been built. Even in horror, these things need to make sense. That two storey run-down house in the bad end of town that is haunted indicates that, at some time, it was a rich area, and so the world should reflect that past glory.

So, while you have this fantastical place in our world, its placement does need to make sense if you want it to exist in our world.

Now, a personal opinion and a tangent (and one I have seen reflected in "what we don't want" lists in publisher websites). Special fantasy schools in young adult fiction are becoming cliché, and I can see why the publishers are rejecting these sorts of stories more and more. Since Harry Potter, they are being done to death in fantasy. Magic schools, fighting schools, schools to read language, rune schools – I have read so many of them. I do understand that many YA novels have a majority of action at schools nowadays, not out of the school system, as it was in my day. I think this is because a lot of youngsters only interact face to face with others at school (the out of school interactions are online), and that is fine, and publishers don't seem to mind normal schools, but these specialised fantasy schools have been overdone.