Monday 12 December 2011

Fairy Dust in Fiction

It's a hoary old chestnut that truth is stranger than fiction, but it seems to me that creative writing would be a dull prospect if miraculous and extraordinary things didn't happen sometimes in stories. Perhaps that's why the Magic Realism of writers such as Isabel Allende has such a hold on our imaginations.  The ancient classical writers used a device called Deus ex Machina, in which some god or other descended from the heavens and set everything to rights/meted out justice, so the supernatural is not a new idea in fiction.

I'm not a great fan of fantasy writing, because I like a narrative to be anchored in reality -- I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief otherwise.  But if you have well-rounded characters and are writing with authority, an extraordinary or even magical event to can provide an unforgettable moment of literary leger de main, as long as you are not using it to cover up a weakness in your plot.

So here is a little exercise to scatter some fairy dust on a Monday morning. See what happens if you radically break with convention in the story you are writing at the moment, or start a story in which, at some point, your characters enter a new reality.  It's up to you how you interpret this (as with all things) but try taking a deep breath, swiftly followed by a leap of faith, and for the time being don't look back to see if your reader has followed you....

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