The Role of Fantasy in Story

I really need to brainstorm this because as I was going about my day the other day the question popped into my head: "Should fantasy elements of a story be incorporated into the plot line or are they otherwise considered "decorations" in the story?"

In other words, are fantastical elements such as an alien race/s, hyper advanced technology, or the use of magic concepts that thicken or decorate a story, or should they be the seed that produces a story? I've noticed a number of stories where the fantasy aspect of it makes it interesting yet the actual storyline itself is still the same story whether it was science fiction or realistic fiction.

 

Totally depends on what you want to do with a particular story.

Speculative elements make good allegory, since you set the parameters. For example, the issue of Mage rights in the Dragon Age series is a freedom vs. security allegory at its core. Magic users can cause horrendous suffering because of criminality or demonic possession, so they're forcibly confined to hybrid school/prison facilities called Circles. The Circles themselves have issues with corruption and abuse of their charges. Should mages be allowed to live their lives freely unless they do something wrong, despite the massive risks? Should they continue to be imprisoned, even though they can't help what they were born as? Can the Circles be reformed to prevent abuses? Is there a better middle ground? That plot line, and the questions rising from, couldn't exist without the speculative elements.

For an example that's more purely plot than theme, one of my recently accepted stories is a fantasy murder mystery. The murder weapons were two enchanted coins, made of a metal that can store magic and let it out in a specific way. The story just wouldn't happen without the fantasy parts.

On the other hand, the events of A Song of Ice and Fire aren't primarily driven by its fantasy elements (yet). It's largely a feudal political drama; the magic is peripheral, though growing in importance as the series progresses.

 

I think the fantasy elements need to be glue of the story. Holds everything together in a way that just wouldn't work without it. Otherwise, why write fantasy? If the fantasy elements are just window dressings, should they even be there? I mean if the story would work without them, why add them? Is it just because people want to write something they can call fantasy?

I like to write zombie stories. I'm still not sure if they're science fiction or fantasy. It might depend on the story. But zombies are the seed as you called it. I have one story that hardly has any zombies in it, but the story still wouldn't work in a zombie-free world. I mostly write realistic fiction, but I'm finding there are ways to say things through fantasy stories about the world we live in without my story taking place in this world we live in. In order to do that I think a writer needs to really tell a story that could only take place in the created fantasy world. It can still mirror our society without taking place in it. Isn't every writer writing about the human condition? It doesn't matter if there are aliens or dragons or zombies. But I think genre fiction also has to play double duty with this. You're saying something about humanity in a world we have never experienced. And it is my opinion that both those things are quite important when it comes to these sort of works.

 

If someone writes a love story about a couple of police officers falling in love, does the story need to feature their radios, pepper spray, or firearms? When if the whole thing takes place at the bar they go to after their shift and then their houses? Are the pepper spray or firearms "decorations" because you aren't using them in the story?

You could replace them with fairy dust and magic wands, and it wouldn't make any difference to your plot. So you might ask, why replace them? I don't know, because you feel like it? And if you feel like it, someone else might like it better, because you like it better.

 

In my own experiences, if I write fantasy, I like to make the fantasy elements front and center. They don't have to involve magic or wizards or dragons, just whatever is appropriate for the story I'm trying to tell.

 

Escapism.

 

Personally, I absolutely adore fantasy elements in stories.

I've read a few books, however, that are clearly done just so the writer can write fantasy. Other than the magic and the wizards, the story is simply watery. I ended up putting those books down around halfway through because the novelty begins to wear off when the reader gets a handle on the magic system. It's got to have as much of a purpose and be just as fleshed out as the characters in the book, otherwise, it can get in the way.

^^ This is what I mean by the purpose of the fantasy elements. Not every story needs a magic wand or fire-breathing dragon, but other stories are made by those elements and wouldn't be as enjoyable without them. You and your readers can like them regardless of whether or not they are entirely necessary.
One of my stories could easily fit in some magic, but it'd just add more complexity that the reader simply wouldn't keep track of (and neither would I) nor care about. A separate story of mine has magic at its centre; the opposition of magic and the mundane. Take that away and there isn't a story.

 

Partly because of escapism. Partly because writing in a secondary world frees you from a lot of limitations; some might consider a secondary world a fantasy element, some might not. And partly John's answer. Why write stories as fantasy when the fantasy elements don't make the story? Well, why not?

 

I'm sorry, but a fantasy story where the fantasy elements are part of the story can still be an escape, and maybe even more so. I don't think this so-called "window dressing" approach is what editors and readers are looking for. If you really want to escape into your fantasy world and want readers to do the same, I think you need more than "window dressing" for it to be a success and actually do what you want in this genre.

 

Depends on your goal for the story. You can write a story in a fantasy setting where those elements don't have any particular impact on the story itself. This is something more likely to be done in a short story than a novel-length work. A short story about characters in that setting doesn't have to give any importance to the fantasy elements of the story any more than a story set in Los Angeles has to give importance to the fact that it is set in Los Angeles. You certainly can make those fantasy elements important, just like you could make the fact that a story was set in Los Angeles important, but you don't have to.

 

First, we have to kill the idea that a story that can dispense with science fiction or fantasy elements, should dispense with them because they are only "window dressing". This plays to a larger conceptology that stories should go a particular direction whenever possible, which is a completely non-sequitur meter by which to measure. We get presented with that meter all the time, when people read our stories and ask why a character is this, that, or the other thing, or why a story takes place on a space station when it could plausibly take place here on Earth. It's a false litmus test. Don't be fooled by it, as much as it gets shoved on our collective faces.

I'll resort to some tried and true examples because I am a one-trick pony:

Isaac Asimov's robot novels are not about robots. Those novels are about human ethics, morals, and the human soul. It's easy to argue that, this being the case, why not explore the ideas in question through actual humans? The answer is: there are plenty of books that do just that, but that's now what Asimov wanted to write. He wanted to use robots as a way to first simplify the idea, magnify it, then discuss it at length. The fact that he could have written a real-world novel about the same thing doesn't somehow disqualify his robot novels.

Or the film Her, which seems to be about computer A.I.s that pass the Turing Test so well that you can actually fall in love with them. Sorry, but that film is not about A.I.s with sexy Scarlett Johansson or (young) Peter O'toole voices. That film is about human relationships. It uses the A.I. as a hypothetical person, stripped of all the things we say don't matter, the superficial things, body, hair, bosom, etc. She has none of that because she's digital, and pretty much the coolest person you've ever met, and still things go wrong because we're really shit at relationships. There are a bunch of other things in that movie all pointing to the obvious message in play: the MC's failed marriage, the fact that he lives in the same building with another lost soul whom he dated in college but "it just never felt right", the fact that that lost soul is trapped in a communicationless marriage with a husband who literally takes a vow of silence when he leaves her and joins a Buddhist monastery (can't communicate becomes won't communicate), the fact that the MC works at a company where the service they provide is writing "beautiful hand written love letters" for other people to give to their loved ones... Honestly, it's impossible to miss. Again, we can talk about how shitty we are at relationships without including any science fiction elements becasue we are shitty at relationships and the proof is mundanely all around us. That doesn't make Samantha the AI window dressing. It makes her a metaphor, and metaphors are good.

 

Has anyone suggested otherwise?

I think you might have your finger off the pulse of what loads of readers want.

Your reasoning for this is?

 

@Bone2pick -- I'm not here to argue with you or play 20 questions. I have an opinion and shared it. You can do whatever you want. It doesn't make me wrong or my opinion invalid. This is the second time you have called me out in this thread. And I don't like it. I was basically saying the same thing as @Wreybies. Maybe he said it better, but I feel the same way he does about this topic, and believe I said similar things in my posts. So, please... You don't need to give me a hard time. You're free to share your opinions, but I'm not going to play games with you.

 

@deadrats You shared your opinions and I questioned them—that's ordinary message board behavior as far as I can figure. If that makes you upset I won't engage with your posts whenever I come across them. Problem solved.

 

It sounds to me like you're saying mostly the opposite of what Wreybies said.

 

I think you're right about this to an extent. @Wreybies response really made sense that what can seem like so called "window dressings" actually serve greater purposes to the story and can be vehicles for identifying the theme/deeper messages. But, i agree that the story would need more than just decorative fantasy elements to be successful. The fantasy should be a piece of the puzzle that has a purpose in the larger grand scheme of the story.

Thanks for pointing this out, it's a good point I'd hadn't recognized. The movie "Her" was also a really good example of the role of fantasy whether it's in the foreground or background of the story. I think you're right that the fantasy aspect of a story does or doesn't have to have a purpose because it's just making a conversation, an idea, or a lesson more interesting to listen to or discuss.

 

No. This is an overly narrow, limited view of the art. There's no reason for it.

 

But why?

 

Your point is well-taken. In fact, if you set a story in an 'other' world, people are often more openminded about what happens. And then they go away and think ...hey....

I remember one of the first books that helped me make that shift was Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. I read it while I was in high school, not as an assigned story, but off my own bat. Superficially it was about the colonisation of Mars and strange, non-scary aliens. Fun. I loved it. But then the theme began to sink in to my developing adolescent brain. This is what humans do NO MATTER WHERE THEY GO. They always wreck what was there before, don't they? Uh-oh....

 

If my story could take place in Dublin or New Orleans, is it doomed to be "unsuccessful" should I select the city based on its trappings? If not, why would the same logic not apply to fantasy settings?

 

I think scenes can have fantasy elements as window dressing or for added interest but the system itself (whether it's magic or otherwise) needs to be integrated into the story world.
Even if you don't explicitly tell the reader or inform them of the details of how it fits in, knowing how it does informs the writing and makes it more real. Just like politics is integrated into society at the foundations but it can be thrown into an otherwise unrelated scene with an offhand joke or something.

 

I respect your opinion, but instead of just saying no, why don't you elaborate why?

I think it really falls down to opinion. The fantasy I meant was magic systems, advanced tec, or other-wordly races. Really full blown fantastical concepts. I don't believe however that just adding these concepts into a story or even small things like AI in "her" is enough to make it a 'good' story. The AI in her adds to the level of impact the overall message has on us as viewers because he fell in love with a robot and it still wasn't perfect or worked out. I don't believe the writers threw the concept of an AI companion into the writing because bottom line they wanted to. I believe it was because the AI fantasy element drove the story's message home quite clearer.

 

Fantasy settings was not something I touched on. My OP was supposed to only focus on larger fantastical concepts then just a fictional setting. I should've been clearer.

 

I think @Wreybies said it best but I'm going to try and put a bit of my own spin on it.

So I'm a fantasy writer too. And I did have a 'phase' where I tried to re-jigger my fantasy stories into 'realistic' stories while still keeping the same themes. Did it work? Sure. But one of the side-effects was I lost interest in the stories. Author-interest should be kept in mind. If the author wants to write a fantasy, then the book will be better than if the author wrote a 'realistic' book because they felt like they needed to.

Now I personally do like to see the 'fantasy' elements solidly integrated into the world. If it's 'oh just like ours but the cops use wands!' I'd be- kinda put off. Play with it more! What else can the cops do with their wands? Do the army use them to? What about civilians? Etc. etc.

 

I think fantasy elements are something you can take two approaches to: a hard approach (where there are set rules) or soft approach (where things are left more ambiguous). This is from Sanderson's magic laws. The abilities of a character to use magic and fantasy elements to solve plot problems is directly proportional to how much the reader understands about those fantasy elements. But if you want fantasy elements to cause problems, that's a-ok.