Islands & Fantasy

I recently stumbled across an intriguing lecture series on iTunes regarding islands—their history, their culture, and even their atmosphere. This led me to think, what is the connection between islands in fantasy? What fantasy stories contain islands? What are the pros and cons of using islands in your own story-world? These are questions I’ll explore in today’s blog post.

First, some pros of using islands in your story:

• Writing a world set on islands is a fairly unique choice. There are other examples of island fantasies, like Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Chronicles or C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader or Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Choice. However, on the whole, islands are an untapped treasure mine for fantasies.
• The setting of an island can provide a frame for the story to orient your readers and allow you to construct realistic limits on the action.
• Island stories often include ships and pirates—always a good thing, in my opinion.
• Islands are so very intriguing in our own world, and they develop such an interesting flavor and tradition all their own. Consider Ireland, England, Japan, Indonesia, or any other famous island in our world. Use these real-world islands as inspiration.
• Islands provide many interesting cuisine options like sharp shellfish and seaweed. Can be quite interesting for detail and, perhaps, character squeamishness.

Now for some cons:

• The most important drawback to an island fantasy is that it can be limited, not only geographically but also in terms of characters. If you do decide to use an island story, consider carefully whether you want your island(s) to appear in isolation or connected to/warring against a mainland for more variety.
• Also, as with many other stories, an island setting will not save your story if you have a boring plot and cliché characters. Islands can only do so much—you need to work out the rest yourself!

And that’s it for today, folks. What about you—have you ever written an island fantasy? What are some of your favorite island stories?

(Side note: My first book is coming soon on Monday, March 11. Stay tuned for the announcement!)

Fantasy Settings Around the World

Typically, when I think of the setting of fantasy books, the image that comes to mind is medieval: girls in long dresses, curses, castles, dragons, dungeons…you get the picture. But fantasy settings can actually span the whole course of history, plus some more. In fact, the settings that you draw inspiration from in creating your fantasy world can be any culture and any time in history.

 So before you decide to stick with tradition, why don’t you take a look at the wide range of possible settings that fantasy has to offer. Here’s a list of the pros & cons of fantastic times and places to get your imagination fired up.

1. Medieval

• 
  Examples: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan, most books by Robin McKinley

• Pros: Lots of traditions and ideas in literature to draw on. Plenty of examples to study. Also, the medieval setting is perfect for fairy tales with their usual delightful magic.

• Cons: can be very, very, very extremely cliché. You can exploit these clichés, as Patricia C. Wrede did in her hilariously witty Enchanted Forest Chronicles. However, if your story is the same old-same old that readers have read so many times before, they might get rather bored.

2. Arabian

• 
  Examples: Castle in the Air (part of Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle series), The Book of Wonders by Jasmine Richards

• Pros: much less cliché than a medieval fantasy. Plenty of atmosphere.

• Cons: needs careful research. Also, since Arabian culture is so tied to Islamic culture, there may be religious complications or overtones in your setting. Plus, you’re pretty much forced to use a genie or two.

3. Oriental

• 
  Examples: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (Mongolian fantasy), Eon (which I don’t recommend, incidentally, but it is an example of Oriental-style fantasy)

• Pros: very unique, even more than Arabian. Works well with dragons and the color red.

• Cons: Again, it does require some research to make it seem authentically Oriental. Plus, again, the major religions of either Buddhism or ancestor worship really clash with the Christian worldview and faith.

4. Egyptian

• 
  Examples: Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan (which are technically modern fantasies, but they’re the closest I could think of to Egyptian)

• Pros: As with Oriental fantasy, it’s very unique—so unique I couldn’t even think of a true example of one. Plus, those pyramids are just begging for fantastic explanations, right?

• Cons: Again, there’s the Ancient Egyptian religion to deal with. It’s a very messy mythology that doesn’t really make sense, but a book set in Egypt without Egyptian mythology seems incomplete.

5. Ancient Greek/Roman

• 
  Examples: Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan (again, technically modern fantasy, but with a few elements of the ancient settings as well)

• Pros: Once again, it’s unusual and not entirely cliché, although it does seem like Ancient Greece has been done a lot. Personally, I think it would be fascinating to take just a few elements from this time period—togas, for example—and insert them into a medieval fantasy world just to see the damage they’d cause.

• Cons: It requires research, of course, just like most other settings. And as with Egyptian fantasy, there’s a whole load of mythology to deal with and explain or eradicate (which also begs the question, can/should Christians write a non-Christian mythology? But maybe more on that question in my next post).

6. Other Historical Time Periods

• 
  Examples: Peter’s Angel by Aubrey Hansen (soon-to-be-released, set in a fantasy setting that’s much like the American Revolution), The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge (a beautiful book written in flowing old style set in mid-1800s England), The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb (ties in the Russian Revolution and WWI)

• Pros: Tons of freedom to explore elements of history and setting from any time in history that strikes your fancy, whether Aztecs and Incas or African legends or Indian tales or WWII-era fantasy. If you can dream it, you can write it. Sweet deal, right?

• Cons: The more obscure the time period you use, the less people will be familiar with it and the more you’ll have to research and carefully explain everything.

7. Modern/Crossover

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  Examples of Modern-only: Percy Jackson series (see above), Raising Dragons by Bryan Davis, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

• Examples of Crossover: Chronicles of Narnia, Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke

• Pros: not as much research involved and less explanation required. Much easier for modern readers to relate to modern characters in a modern world.

• 
  Cons: Let’s face it: these two types of fantasy have been done over and over again. They’re almost as popular as medieval fantasy, if not more so. Still, popularity has its reasons, so even though it’s cliché it’s a popular cliché.

• Tip: If you’d like to write modern fantasy, try setting your story in an unusual but modern setting, like what Susan Cooper did by setting her Dark is Rising series in Scotland. That added a lot of atmosphere and character to her stories that many other modern fantasies lack.

8. A Whole New World

• 
  Examples: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, The Lord of the Rings (although it does stem from medieval fantasy in some ways), A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

• Pros: You get to create your own world, unconnected from any culture on earth! What could be more exciting for a writer than pure world-creation?

• Cons: You have to create a whole entire world. Isn’t that a little much to ask of a mere human? Shouldn’t we leave world-building to God? Theological questions aside, creating a cohesive and non-cliché world is a huge task, so don’t start on it lightly. It’s often easier to take a certain time or place as a starting point and build from there rather than creating from scratch.

Since we’re talking about fantasy, it’s impossible to summarize all possible settings in one post. So why don’t you share your story’s setting, plus any inspirations you may have gotten from historical times and places. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

It's All in the Details

The details you use in your story could be the most important part of your writing, because they are what brings your story alive to the reader. Without physical details, we wouldn’t know that Harry wears round spectacles or that Mr. Tumnus carries an umbrella.

To illustrate my point, let me show you a few examples. Which of the following makes the scene come to life in your mind’s eye?

A girl and a man walked down the street.

Or:

Two people walked down the sidewalk along Main Street: a little girl with serious brown bangs over her eyes and a middle-aged man, his charcoal suit hanging on him lopsidedly.

Or:

A 5-year-old girl wearing a floaty pink dress, her blue eyes wide, held her father’s hand as he led her down the cobblestone street of Paris, past Nicholas Flamel’s house.

In both of these latter versions, we can see the people and the place much more clearly. It would be even more clear if we could add another sentence describing the sensations of taste or sound or touch or smell that the two were feeling. In other words, the subtle placement of physical details in all five senses is the key to bringing your writing to life.

Easier said than done, right? Wrong! Here are some obvious places to inject more details into your writing:

1. In Names

We’ve been talking a lot about names the past few weeks (here, here, and here). Well, that’s because they’re so important—in real life, when we meet someone new, we typically learn their name. It should be the same in writing. Names are the one universal part of human experience. So use them!

2. In Character Descriptions

Introduce new characters by giving us more than just hair color/eye color. Sure, their physical appearance is important, but as someone once told me, “You don’t choose to be pretty. You’re born that way. It’s what you do with your looks that counts.”

So, in the same way, go beyond a character’s looks and focus on a key detail like a favorite concert t-shirt or the Beats headphones and pink iPod a character incessantly uses. Doing so makes that character come to life as a multidimensional person. For fantasy, use the wooden carved necklace a hunter never takes off or the moon-white earring of an assassin or the curved scars on a princess’ cheek. All of these little details can cut to the core of the personality of your character in seconds.

3. In Setting

Introduce each new setting using a minimum of two senses (usually sight would be essential). That means every time you have a new scene or your characters go to a new place or even enter a car, you should take a few seconds to describe the white leather lining of the seats, the peeling aqua paint, the smell of Chinese takeout lingering in the baby’s car seat. Let the place become real in your mind’s eye, then describe it so your readers can be engulfed by your story.

4. In Dialogue

Pepper your dialogue with gestures and descriptions. Make your characters interact with the setting: have your cleanliness-obsessed astronomer fiddle with her bottle of sanitation gel. Let your Rangers move around, checking that the horses are saddled properly, that the sentries are distracted.

Also, give your characters habitual gestures and hand motions to illustrate their speech—make your evil villain’s sidekick have a nervous habit of nodding, or maybe have your drama queen fiddle with her eyebrows when she’s nervous.

Whatever you do, add detail. Go back to each page of your writing and make sure you’ve added the necessary physical details so that, to your readers, your writing happens in a real place with real people. I guarantee you that you’ll learn a lot more about your story and your characters than you expect.

Can you think of any details you’ve read in stories lately that really stood out to you? Or what about in your own writing—written any cool details you’d like to share?

All photos courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.