Along with much of the rest of the world, I have found myself captivated by a fictional teenage wizard for much of the last decade. Over the course of reading the Harry Potter series, however, I came to realize that there is a major risk in writing a magical fantasy novel. In creating a magical universe, the author is free to invent all sorts of awesome phenomena: love potions, healing charms, the Force, etc.
The potential problem with this is the use of one of these magical inventions work your way out of a corner. If one of your characters is falling into a pit of acid: no problem, you invent an incredible base charm which neutralizes the acid and saves the day. Heroine trapped by a herd of hungry dragons? No problem, a sudden bout of scale-leprosy appears to set things right.
Why is this a problem? In an ideal story (according to literary theory), the characters succeed or fail because of their own actions. Even the sort of story in which a character repeatedly gets the worst of it despite his/her virtue, it is still the relation between what s/he deserves and what s/he gets that is important. It is a failure of good story-telling when the two are unrelated.
This means that framework of the universe must be laid out in its entirety long before the climax of the story. Exposition is vital, there should be no magical interventions to save writers from there own poor planning. In fact, any magic in the final chapters should be well understood by the reader long before it happens.
I won't ruin any books for you by evaluating whether or not the author stays true to this rule, but keep this in mind the next time you open a fantasy book.
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1 comment:
So where's the magic to save your blog from poor planning? And your fantasy football team?
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