First, school settings are familiar. As readers, it’s quite simple to wrap our minds around
the idea of a school, simply because we’ve all been in school before. We know
what to expect—homework, exams, classes, nice teachers and nasty ones. Even if
we haven’t gone to boarding school (or homeschooled), it takes only a sight
stretch of the imagination to picture the setting of a school.
Second, though, what makes these books interesting is that
it’s school—with a twist. The school
settings of fantasy books are intriguing not because they’re familiar but
because they’ve got something different to them. Hogwarts in Harry Potter is
interesting because it teaches magic. Princess Academy is exciting because it’s
preparing uneducated mountain girls to act like princesses. Vampire Academy is
intriguing because…well…let’s not go there. The point is, all of these schools
sound much less boring than our schools were (although this may be an issue of
“the grass is greener,” since learning takes work wherever we may go to
school!). The “school with a twist” concept is interesting because of the way
it combines the familiar with the exciting.
What’s more, these school stories are places we’d like to attend. Of course, we might not want to have to
fend for our lives against dark wizards (Harry Potter) or prepare to marry a
prince we’ve never met (Princess Academy), but in general, the school is
engaging enough that we’d want to trade our own “boring” school experiences for
these more exciting fictional schools.
An often-overlooked and very subtle benefit of school
settings, though, is the innate structure
of a school story. The school year has a very definite beginning and end, along
with breaks for Christmas and the like, which forces authors to condense the
story into one-year units. While such imposed structure may not work for every
story, it does wonders to the outline of the story when there are definite
deadlines by which x actions must take place.
A complement to the structure of school stories is the automatic multilayered plot. Obviously,
on the surface level, there is conflict arising from teachers and homework and
exams. However, there are also opportunities for conflicts among classmates. Then,
too, in fantasy stories, there’s usually some darker villain looming in the
shadows who must be conquered by the end of the school year. So many layers of
conflict embedded in the story make it much more lifelike and interesting.
So there you have it: top reasons why school stories are so
popular. They’re familiar, they have a twist that keeps them from boredom, they’re
places we’d like to attend, the stories have structure, and they have an
automatic multilayered plot.
Comment below and let me know your favorite school story, or
tell us if you’ve been writing a school story yourself!
