6 Reasons to write (and read) fantasy

Fantasy – the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable. This is the dictionary definition of a word that encompasses one of the greatest of book genres. But why is it so great? Why should we read fantasy, let alone set out to write more of it?

“It’s not real,” “it’s escapist,” “it pulls you away from the important things in life,” “it’s for kids,” “it’s nerdy” – well, I won’t argue with the last one, not that being nerdy is a bad thing! But the rest of these are common criticisms of fantasy as a genre that I feel can be strongly argued against.

Is fantasy for kids? Yes! Is it for adults? Yes! Fantasy is for humans, and it is so much more than magic and fairy tales. If fantasy didn’t speak to the human soul, how can you explain why one of the most popular book series of all time is fantasy? Yes, I’m talking about Harry.

So what are those innate characteristics of fantasy that make it so powerful, so worthwhile to pursue as both a reader and a writer? 

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1. Delver Deeper into Our World

I mentioned that some people disregard fantasy as ‘escapist,’ as pulling us away from real life and the important issues and pursuits we face here in the ‘real world.’ Well, J.R.R. Tolkien would argue that fantasy is escapist, but that it is not a bad thing.

One of my favorite quotes from him on this matter is this: “It is part of the essential malady of such days – producing the desire to escape, not indeed from life, but from our present time and self-made misery – that we are acutely conscious both of the ugliness of our works, and of their evil.” 

By escaping from our own world and entering another, we are better able to see the horrors, joys, injustices, and beauty of the world we live in. I would even argue that fantasy is not as escapist as it may seem. Fantasy stories, like any other stories, center on characters, relationships, and the fundamental components that make up souls and life. They delve into the inner struggles of morality, of love, and hate, and temptation, of selflessness and selfishness, of grief and pain and sorrow and joy and hope. Yes, there might be magic (or there might not). There might be dragons, or impossible creatures, or talking animals, but this is only a setting, and one that through imagination and deviation from the rigid rules of our world can shed even greater light on the issues with which it deals.

2. No Rules!

Ok, so there are rules, but they are not the same rules as the world we are accustomed to, and you get to make them up! This can be a blessing and curse, because any rules you make up have to make sense within the world you create. They must be consistent, logical, and free of holes, but that still frees so much space for imagination to run wild.

As Tolkien said, “How powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective… when we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power.”  And so was made fantasy…

When I learned Latin grammar (all of which is now entirely lost from my brain), I gained so much insight into English grammar that I had never bothered to think about before. When I created the rules of my fantasy world, I gained a deeper understanding of the ‘rules’ of our world – of governments, economics, and society. Making your own rules is fun, it’s an exercise of imagination, it gives incredible freedom to your story, and it develops the writer as a person.

3. Imagination

Ah, imagination. Is anyone else thinking of Spongebob and rainbows? I have already mentioned this word four times (ok, one was ‘imagining’). It is the root of the dictionary definition of fantasy, and so must obviously be discussed.

Writing any fiction involves imagination – imagining the life of another person, imagining events, relationships, plot lines… but fantasy undoubtedly calls for a different kind of imagination – a different level, if you will. Not only do you imagine all of the things I previously mentioned, plus the new rules from No. 2, you also have to imagine an entire world, complete with geography, society, ethnic groups, politics – the list goes on and on.

Why is imagination important? I suggest reading Very Good Lives by J.K. Rowling. The ability to imagine lives, problems, griefs, and joys other than our own enables us to feel that incredible human privilege and sorrow that is empathy. Writing (or reading) the life of another person on a page enables us to better empathize with the lives of other people in the real world, and that is arguably the most important virtue there is. All politicians should be forced to read fiction – and better yet, fantasy.

4. Reinvent the wheel: genre

Fantasy is a world of clichés. The Hero’s Journey, dragons, horses, elves, medieval societies, magic, mentors, THE CHOSEN ONE. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that any story including any or all of these components should be written off as cliché and bad. I love elves. I am only saying that a world of clichés gives incredible opportunity for those clichés to be broken.

What other genre of books has more opportunity to break the mold, to be unique? Style your setting off Victorian England, or the ancient Babylonians, or 2020 (ok, maybe not 2020, go with 2019 or something). Or, style your setting off nothing that has existed! Make your mentor figure a middle-aged woman, your hero a nobody or a successful King, use flying hippos instead of dragons – use your IMAGINATION. 

5. Reinvent the wheel: life

If fantasy is a world of clichés, life is a world of stereotypes and social structure. This is where creating your own rules can not only be incredibly fun, but make profound statements on our own world. Fantasy gives the freedom to break the norms of our society, to upend the stereotypes that govern our world. You can make a society in which women are powerful and men oppressed, farmers revered and scholars enslaved.

A great example of this is Black Panther, in which a race that faces racism and oppression is portrayed as the most intelligent and powerful race in the world. In your story, you can portray a world with no racism, or portray a world in which racism is rampant, and condemn it. You can flip stereotypes, or take their constraints to an extreme that shows their true nature. The possibilities are endless.

6. Inspire to do greater things

And now for my favorite part of fantasy – the thing that keeps me coming back again and again. For this, I am going to draw once again from Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories – an incredible essay that I highly recommend.

I am talking about the happy ending. Now, ‘happy’ is a very loose term here, and this is where I must borrow from Tolkien, as he describes the “Eucatastrophe” – the sudden, joyous “turn’” which “in its fairy-tale setting, is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.”

The ending of fantasy stories are often bitter-sweet, with as much grief as joy deriving from the seemingly insurmountable obstacles the characters had to weather through to get there. The Eucatastrophe acknowledges this pain, but also denies the “universal final defeat… giving a fleeting glimpse of joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

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This is why I love fantasy so much – why I think it is so important. The stories in fantasy can have such a bigger scale than stories set in the constraints of our own world. They force us to think beyond the purpose of our own life to the purpose of life as a whole. They reset our perspective to something larger, and inspire us to set our goals higher and our influence greater.

I will quote Tolkien one last time here. He says that the moment of joy at the end of a well-written story gives a glimpse to the underlying reality and truth to the story. In the eucatastrophe, “we see in a brief vision that the answer [to ‘is it real?’] may be greater – it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.”

Fantasy is so much more than fanciful stories about magic and castles. It opens the world to us to break stereotypes, delve deeper into the questions of this world, and inspire others to make their lives meaningful and keep hope despite the grief that surrounds them.

I said I was done quoting Tolkien, but I just can’t resist this last point that spoke to me so deeply from “On Fairy Stories.” It is this: To write fantasy is to be a sub-creator. Humans are drawn to fantasy because they were made, and “not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” We were made to make, to sub-create. It is an innate desire, and one that can be manifested to incredible results by writing fantasy.

Why do you write fantasy? How will you reinvent the wheel and inspires your readers to greater things? Write your thoughts in the comments below!

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