Various great writers and authors wrote a fantasy book that includes a transition from one world to another. I'm referring to the genre known as "high fantasy", and some examples include Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia. In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling used, more specifically, Platform 9 and 3/4 to get Harry to the "world of magic", so to speak. In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis used the wardrobe, the painting, etc., a various number of different "transitions" between the two worlds. In Alice in Wonderland, Dodgson uses the rabbit hole to get Alice into Wonderland. See what I'm getting at? In a fantasy book I'm writing, I'm wondering if I should include some sort of transition (in which case you guys can help me out here ), or just pull a Maze Runner (by James Dashner, teenage sci-fi), and throw my MC in the fantasy world without any recollection of how he got there... but that might complicate things. Any ideas? Thanks.
Going for a James Dashner sure would complicate things...You'd have to have a lot of pre-story stuff laid out, unless you like to write by your seat Hmm...can you give me any background info on your character? Maybe your setting too?
Well, I actually have the entire plot laid out, but in the beginning, I just put: "Bob (let's call my character Bob for now, shall we?) ends up on a sandy beach, where the forest barely touches a wide ocean surrounding the island. Basically, the setting is the outskirts of an island, and all around is water. I don't suppose I can make my character be pulled down underwater, only to drown and reawaken here, unless that's been done to death? Bob is actually originally from the world in question (corny, I know, but I'll run with it for now and see what happens), but he has no recollection of ever being there, so I'll just treat him as a native to Earth, e.g. he's seeing the world for the first time. Ahh, basically it's a typical high fantasy story; teenage boy ends up in an unknown world, and... a bunch of random things happen from there (fill this void in with as many images of fighting dragons as you wish ).
^Haha. Well, the drowing thing is tragic, but you could have him fall down into a water spout. Those rocky caves that shoot water up through them. And maybe just as he's about to conk out, he gets swept away into the other world (full of dragons)?
Yeah, I suppose that could be plausible. Hmm.. yeah, now that I'm thinking about it more, that might actually work! A water sprout in a rocky cave.. I can already think of a billion reasons why he was there in the first place Thanks, Taylee! Btw, my world isn't actually full of dragons. Of course, like any other (most other, I should say) fantasy books, there are indeed dragons in it. Haha whatever. Thanks again for the great idea !
You're welcome. Haha, I was just kidding about the dragons though Glad I could be of service. *salutes*
Don't do a creepy stranger trope(or is it a cliche, hmm things to think about) Maybe a hole in the ground, is that bad, oh well then. Do what you wish?
Why ask us? It's your story. Unless, of course, it comes from everyone else instead. This may sound harsh, but it is not meant to be. Think like a writer, and exercise your imagination.
A hole in the ground is along the lines of what I was thinking - since the other end has a beach, Taylee91 gave me the idea of a water spout in a cave, kinda like a Alice in Wonderland thing (falls in a hole, comes out the other side). Thanks !
Suggestions: 1. Takes an exotic experimental potion or drug 2. Gets disintegrated by an experimental weapon 3. Time machine experiment goes awry 4. Gets abducted by other dimensional being 5. Stumbles across a dimensional portal device 6. Reincarnates in another dimension during NDE 7. Finds out he's really not of this dimension when he discovers ability to flit across the two. 8. Brain scan goes awry. 9. Hallucinogenic LSD trip goes awry 10. Weird TV set is actually a dimensional portal device 11. Gets sucked into a freak transdimensional infundibulum. 12. Freakish mist envelopes him 13. Falls into a black hole 14. Black hole falls on him. 15. Space warp drive experiment goes awry 16. Faster than light attempt goes awry 17. Hadron Collider opens portal 18. Freak storm opens portal 19. Skydives through a freak cloud 20. Freak solar flare electromagnetic storm catches him unprotected in spacewalk 21. Enters alien machine on far side of moon 22. Gamma ray burst envelopes spacecraft. 23. Crust boring machine encounters mysterious Minerals 24. Elf-like creatures abduct him for experimental purposes 25. Dons a special helmet 26. Follows an attractive woman into what he believes is a subway entrance. 26. Boards a train that is really a transdimensional machine. 27. Is hired by a mysterious man to deliver a package and gets caught in a transdimensional intrigue 28. Falls from a window and is intercepted by a space time anomaly 29. Deep meditation does the trick 30. Is invited there on an urgent time-restricted mission by one of the transdimensional denizens? 31. Discovers he's not of this dimension but was planted here and is now involuntarily fading back. 32. His body seems to disolve in the bathtub when radio falls in and "he goes down the drain"? 33. Transdimentional dies and protagonist gets his heart as a donor transplant causing him to fade in and out? 34. Fillings in his teeth somehow intercept and augment an incoming SETI signal and he is whisked?
Oh my god. That's all I'm saying. OMG. Thanksss some are a bit... far-fetched (which you seemed to be able to catch by putting the "?"'s at the end!). 31 is actually my plot - he was planted in this dimension, but I'm not sure about the "involuntarily fading back part". I guess I can pass through with a "time bomb" (he's planted in this dimension for say, "x" number of years, and at that exact moment gets teleported back?). A physical transition seems to attract me more, so I'll look over your other examples just in case... thanks for all the awesome ideas! Btw, I don't think that due to the fact that he's 13 years old (my mistake - didn't put that in), he'll be getting heart transplants anytime soon, but maybe I could use that idea somewhere else... Seriously. Some of those are really good, Radrook. Thanks Didn't see this before, sorry - you must've posted while I was typing up my own post! Anyway, tbh, you are right. It is my story, and I really should think up my own ideas. However, I'm merely using these ideas as guidelines, since I haven't really had a lot of background on this type of stuff (fantasy books). I've only read the big ones like Harry Potter and Narnia. Thanks for the advice, Cogito!
All of those are wrong. He covered himself in a chocolate shell and was eaten by the space baby. I have spoken.
Hahahahaha nice! Maybe your MC can have an accident like get stuck in an avalanche or falling off a cliff and he blacks out?
Glad I could be of some help. When I wrote them I was under the impression that you were writing from a pure fantasy standpoint. Maybe because of the references to Alice In Wonderland and those other fantasy stories that were mentioned in the posts. So farfetchedness became of no concern. But now I realize that it isn't a pure fantasy scenario. So that restricts the imagination to what we can explain via what we currently know about physics. It all depends on the degree of hard science that we want to include in our story. Some writers simply describe a transition from one world to another and have the MC claim to be baffled. That gets all the complicated explanations out of the way. Others, like Isaac Asimov who have a solid grounding in the natural sciences, prefer to provide a solid scientific hypothesis for the transition to another reality or other dimension. I just recently watched the film where this fellow winds up in another reality but all the explanations they provide are so nebulous as to be confusing. In such cases I prefer to be told that no one knows how it happened since detailed but inadequate explanations distract me. But if a scientific hypothetical can be convincingly explained, then I prefer that instead of the "nobody really knows" approach. BTW If indeed your protagonist is thirteen years old then that doesn't really change anything in the way he might be transported. It just brings in the parental concern factor and the way that we have to portray his thinking about what happens to him. In short, we have to convey a thirteen year old's personality instead of an adult one. But all other factors remain the same. Is your target audience adolescents? There are parameters that have to be adhered to when write for certain non-adult age groups. You know, such as vocabulary level, foul language, sexual depictions, and how we describe violence. So if you have any particular publisher in mind its best to get their guidelines. Or you might google the subject to get a general idea what the requirements are. Better now than after putting 70,000 words on paper.
Yeah, I'm basically targeting around the same age group as most of those "teenage fantasy-fiction" authors (e.g. Harry Potter, Eragon, etc.). And you're right - most of your ideas can be expressed through a teenager's eyes .. anyway, I do have a general idea after reading a bit of teen fantasy; it seems that it's more based on the world and the details in the fantasy rather than the actual violence, etc. if you know what I mean. In other words, "fantasy books" are mostly all about the "fantasy world". 70,000 words... in retrospect (my retrospect, anyway), that's not incredibly long - I've written longer after a couple hours of perfecting it, I've decided to go with one of your ideas (not saying which, though, since it's an experiment and I might change it if I hit a few too many plot holes). Thanks again! I'm assuming you're joking, right?
Absolutely not. At the end, it zooms out and they're all in a snow globe. I seen it in a dream, I did.
