Writer to writer: From think to ink - Gail Carson Levine 2014

Creature country
Character nitty-gritty

Okay, we have our critter. Now for its world, its setting, which can be ordinary and modern . . . or not.

It’s writing time right off: A dragon or other magical creature of your choosing moves in next door to your main human character, who lives in a home very much like your house or apartment. This dragon arrives with a mission, a reason for coming. Your human character may want something, too—protection from a bully or friendship or a good science project or anything else you like. Write the scene of their meeting and bring the modern world into it. If you like, keep going. Write the whole story, the novel, or the seven-book series.

When I start writing a fantasy, I ask myself questions, write notes, make lists. What kind of universe is this? So far, most of my books have been set in fairy-tale land—several are sort of medieval, one is sort of ancient Mesopotamian, and one is modern except for a single witch. Next time, who knows?

I may ask myself, and you can ask yourself, Am I writing a drama, a love story, a tragedy, or a mystery? Or a funny story, which will call for a different, goofier universe than a serious tale.

What kind of characters inhabit this world? Fairies? Dragons? Philosopher eagles? A combo of different sorts of creatures? People? Animals? Or plants that have somehow become ambulatory and able to think and communicate? Rocks or paper clips? Anything can succeed if we make it succeed.

You can list some aspects of the real world that you love and aspects you definitely do not love. Long ago, I read a short story about an alien who adored Earth because we eat food. In his home galaxy there was no such activity. Our characters could enter a world without birds and any concept of flight, for example.

We can list the basics: size, time, light, colors, sound, smell. Write down how your world might express them. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, for example, light moves slowly. But Terry Pratchett doesn’t change all the essentials, and we shouldn’t either. Some—probably many—aspects should be what we’re used to, or the reader will feel lost.

More writing time! Try creating a story in which all the characters are objects you find on your desk.

Realistic stories are generally (not always) set in places our readers are familiar with. Most people can imagine a school, a city street, a park. They won’t visualize the exact school, street, or park that is in our mind’s eye, but close enough. As we show the scenery and describe the important landmarks, our readers see the town or city or countryside.

There’s less familiarity in fantasy, but there’s some. If we’re writing a medieval fantasy, most readers have seen enough movies and TV and read enough books to picture a castle, swordplay, tights and a doublet, or a princess gown. We don’t have to say that a castle has towers and a moat, but if it lacks one or the other or both, the reader has to be told. Also, we need to show the setting, so even if the towers are ordinary, we may want to point them out the first time they come into view. They may add to the mood or have emotional meaning for our MC, by representing home or the enemy, for example.

Our readers are going to assume that the rules of our natural world apply to our story unless we tell them otherwise. We don’t have to mention that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the sky is blue. But if the planet in our story has two suns, a green sky, and no moon, readers must be informed. However, when I write fantasy, I keep it as simple as I can and pity the poor reader who has a lot to follow. If I don’t need a green sky, I don’t put one in.

In my opinion, readers should be able to imagine our fantasy elements: see, hear, smell, and feel them. If something is invisible or inaudible, then the other senses should be recruited to fill in. I have no patience with silent, invisible force fields crashing into objects that also can’t be perceived—unless the writer is being funny and I get the joke.

When I’ve set a story in a place that doesn’t exist, I avoid identifying details that are closely tied to the world we all live in. I made an important dog character in A Tale of Two Castles be a Lepai mountain dog, a breed that readers won’t find in any kennel club. If he’d been a poodle, the reader might be jolted momentarily out of the story, might think, I have a poodle too! What kind of cut does this one have?

The white people in my fantasies are never European; the blacks aren’t African. There is no Europe and no Africa where they live.

On the other hand, when I had Kezi in Ever be a gifted weaver, I learned about weaving, because the process seems universal: fiber that has to be made into cloth. Maybe I could have made something up, but I didn’t want to complicate my story.

At the beginning of this chapter we brought a dragon into a modern house, but often the process goes the other way. A human leaves home and enters an unfamiliar realm. How can we do this in an original way, without using a door, a mirror, a wardrobe, or a rabbit hole?

Well, the entry point could be connected to our MC’s character. Suppose she’s great at math, and one day she walks into math class and none of the problems add up. The teacher looks exactly like Mr. Mikan, except this Mr. Mikan has bushy eyebrows. She’s in. That simple. I’d guess there are lots of ways to do this. I bet you can think up some right now. Look around, wherever you are. Listen. Sniff.

What might you change, what little thing—your cat reciting a nursery rhyme, the car you’re in developing legs rather than wheels—that could plunge a character into strange and unknown circumstances? List three possibilities. Pick one and use it in a story.

More writing time!

• Invent a new imaginary creature, not a fairy or an elf or an ogre. Describe it. Put it in a story.

• I sometimes wonder how progress happened, especially early human progress. For instance, how did somebody realize that metal could be extracted from ore? How did farming start? Who invented shoelaces? I once read that in the Middle Ages buttons were purely decorative, sewn on clothing just to look pretty; they didn’t fasten anything. How did buttons migrate from decorative to useful? Imagine how something was invented without looking it up. Who was there? What was the dialogue? Was there an argument? Write the scene.

• Write dialogue among a statue, a river, and a jack-o’-lantern. Before you start, think about how each might express itself.

• Write a scene in which you introduce a fortune-teller and show the reader that his power is real.

Have fun, and save what you write!