# These are not rules of fantasy



## Steerpike (Feb 6, 2015)

Just throwing this blog post out there for discussion:

Throwback Post: These Are Not Rules of Fantasy | Legends of Windemere

A quick comment on the "a wizard did it" discussion. I think part of the problem people have with "realism" in fantasy is when a fantasy world violates it's own internal logic. Take the example of waterfalls running upside down, for example. You can have a world with fireballs, dragons, and so on, but if every day, mundane gravity always seems to operate according to the real world, and then suddenly you have a waterfall running upside down, I think it needs an explanation.


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## X Equestris (Feb 6, 2015)

Pretty much agreed.  You can't violate the established rules and logic of your world without at least trying to give an explanation.


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## Shreddies (Feb 6, 2015)

I agree wholeheartedly.

One of the reasons why I love fantasy is that, provided it follows the internal logic of the world it's set in, anything goes. You can have pigs flying every second Tuesday. Or a hole in the universe instead of a sun. Or a moon shaped like a crescent with a literal man-in-the-moon. Or have the story set underground with trees growing on the ceiling. Or your dwarves can be giant purple hairless things, and your elves can be two dimensional beings (I mean literally two dimensional).

You can be as surreal, fantastical, or realistic as you want. The possibilities are only limited by your creativity.

I'm curious though, whether or not people view loopholes in internal logic as a 'wizard did it' handwave. Like, if every character (except an omniscient narrator) stated that something was strictly impossible for the whole book, then along comes another person who says it's possible and they were just doing it wrong. Would that be seen as a handwave, or legitimate?


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## stephenspower (Feb 6, 2015)

Thanks for the story prompt: "The Day Water Ran Backwards."


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## Surad (Feb 6, 2015)

Internal logic is paramount. Without it, nothing will make sense. Even supposedly random comedy like youtube poops and Monty Python have some semblance of a thread of internal logic that binds everything together.


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## Terry Greer (Feb 6, 2015)

I do think that an internal logic is absolutely essential. 

If you don't have some rules (that you abide by) then the reader never really knows what threatening or dangerous or which can be reversed at a whim. 

The result is that the reader never feels invested with the ability to think forward and extrapolate what's going to happen - something I feel essential for reader to think the world real and any situation that the characters find themselves in threatening or safe.

You can't imply that things are a particulkar way and then expect the reader to not care about the internal logic they've built up based on what you've told them. If you break that logic then they lose connection - break it to often and they lose interest.

Imagine a heist movie where half way through it turned out that the elaborate plan wasn't necessary because of some suddenly appeared 'magic' solution - not a very satisfying story.


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## Penpilot (Feb 6, 2015)

Yep, on the boat for internal consistency, but other than that, pretty much anything goes. You never have to ask permission to do X. The only stipulation is do it well. 

One thing though, there will always be plot holes. No matter how diligent you are at designing the rules for your world, there will always be something you miss. Sometimes it'll be something small, and all you'll need to do is wink at the reader to have it be forgiven. Other times, you might have to do major rewrites or hope the rest of the story is good enough to make up for it.


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## Chessie (Feb 6, 2015)

I was involved in a discussion of this subject on another forum and I was shut down by a commenter saying that realism isn't needed in fantasy. Groan. Now, the folks involved are not fantasy writers but merely fans of the genre. I agree with everything said here, but I'm coming to believe that readers don't understand the nitty gritty of creating a fantasy story.

You do need realism. I'm not talking about a world without dragons or fire mages, but a place of consistency. Rules that are followed. Grounding. If something works a certain way in that world, let it be either:

a) something that readers can understand because its similar to our world OR
b) if its something that isn't easy to understand or totally different from our world, then it should be explained in the narrative

It bugs me to NO END when people are like "oh, you don't need realism in fantasy. That's why its fantasy!" Well, last I checked worlds operate under certain rules (like gravity, for example) so if you want to enter a literary world that is fantastical but also makes sense, then realism is needed. Its leading me to the impression that sometimes readers think realism is about no magic, or no dragons, or no elves when this couldn't be further from the truth. 

By all means, write about magic, swords, and ocean worlds. Just make sure things make sense and stay consistent.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 6, 2015)

I think in many ways it boils down to what people mean with the world realism. Is realism, when everything is as it is in the real world, or is it when you can accept the story as it is told?

There's a couple of different words going around for when the story makes sense within its own context. Personally, I prefer 'believable' - but I'm sure others have different opinions.


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## Mythopoet (Feb 6, 2015)

The problem is that you are using the wrong word. "Realism" is an artistic movement that emphasizes depicting everyday, mundane things as they are in the real world rather than exotic or idealized things. I do not believe that is what you intend to convey when you use the word realism, but that is what it means. I think it would be better to try to use more appropriate words than to try to use realism to mean something contrary to its definition. 

Personally, I like using the words "consistency" and "credibility". Consistency obviously is about the importance of maintaining consistent worldbuilding within a story. Credibility is writing so that readers can suspend disbelief and come to have "secondary belief", as Tolkien called it, in the story world.


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## skip.knox (Feb 6, 2015)

Svrtnsse is correct. People are disagreeing over a word while assuming everyone agrees on the word's meaning. That's a formula for circular logic.

Mythopoet improves matters by changing the vocabulary, which causes people to stop and reconsider what they're arguing about. The very same people who will claim realism is not needed in fantasy will readily agree fantasy, like any story, needs to be internally consistent.

The way I deal with folks on this point is to agree with them. I agree, realism isn't needed. What is it you mean by "realism" again? Then we can have a discussion.


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## ThinkerX (Feb 6, 2015)

What the OP is talking about is one of the items of concern cited by this reviewer:

The 5 Most Common Writing Mistakes That Break Reader Immersion | Creativity Hacker



> What is a little more surprising, however, is that, of the 28 problem-types I’ve cataloged, just 5 of them account for fully half of the WTFs logged to date. Those top five gaffes are:
> 
> 1.weak mechanics (spelling, grammar, etc.)
> 
> ...





> This got me thinking about the fact that these issues can be organized at an even more fundamental level. I often think of the process of fiction writing as being arranged into 3 fundamentally distinct skill sets: story building, story telling, and text editing. And it takes mastery of all three of these areas to produce an engaging story that fans will love. So with this in mind, I’ve classified those 28 error codes even further, into those three fundamental categories:
> 
> 1.Story Building Problems: These are weaknesses in the story design itself. Examples include tired old cliche plots, illogical economic systems, illogical or impossible physics, inconsistent or unbelievable characters, etc.
> 
> ...


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## Steerpike (Feb 6, 2015)

I used "realism" because the article I linked talks in terms of what is "unrealistic." The artistic definition of realism isn't the only one. Here is one of multiple Merriam-Webster definitions:

"the quality of being very much like real life : the quality of seeming to be real"

When readers of fantasy novels say something is unrealistic, they generally mean that the world's internal logic has been violated somehow. If it is established that dragons can fly and wizards can hurl fireball, that's fine. Readers will go along with it. If the normal rules of gravity have been demonstrated to hold true throughout the entire story (absent magical or supernatural effects) and suddenly a waterfall is running backwards up a mountain with no explanation, the reader is right to question it. It's just a matter of establishing the boundaries in the mind of the reader and then sticking to them, or else when you depart from or broaden them, providing some explanation for the reader to seize upon.


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 7, 2015)

If I may speak personally, an early draft of _Blood Price_ referred to the main character's weapon as a "lightning gun." Early readers thought this was incredibly silly and made no sense in the context of the world. So I called it a "Culverin Armaments wireless electric stun gun," and added a paragraph about buying it off an Internet auction site, and readers were totally fine with it. It's still pretty silly (in fact, it's a major plot point that it's silly), but it's silly in the same way as the rest of the story.

I think the word that's being danced around here is _style_. The style of a 1960s comic book, the style of a cyberpunk anime, or even the style of gritty "realistic" fantasy all bring their own preconceptions to the table. Die-hard fans of one will never accept any deviations, but most readers are willing to adapt at least a little to the world you establish and the way things function there.


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## wordwalker (Feb 7, 2015)

A logician would call fantasy's realism the difference between "valid" and "sound" logic. "Valid" means that it's logical, even inevitable, that certain premises would lead to the next points; if your magic doesn't work against silver, someone's going to start making silver arrows for hunting wizards. It's not the same as saying that the logic's "sound," that there actually _are_ wizards like that. (Unless of course we remember that the real premise is "In a story worth reading...")

But speaking of waterfalls flowing backward: I think one thing people confuse about fantasy is that it's sometimes about not explaining everything, and letting the heroes sometimes come across a reverse-waterfall just on the grounds that it's awesome. (Part of that's just that you always _could_ explain more layers of how something works, and have to stop somewhere anyway.) Tolkien was a master of "secondary realism," but he's often said to deal in "soft magic" that isn't explained. 

Except that unexplained points still have their pitfalls. A thing may not be "explained," but it still has to have some levels of consistency to hold up. If characters don't _treat_ that waterfall as rare and wonderful (or else you work out just what _kind_ of common experience it is in your world instead), or if the waterfall always flows upward and it suddenly shoots out sideways, or if a plot point turns out to be about it shooting sideways for no reason, you've got to be _very_ good at the story to pull it off.


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## psychotick (Feb 7, 2015)

Hi,

Not completely on board. Mostly I think internal story consistency and logic is important in most fantasy stories. But I also think there are outs.

My first out would be Terry Pratchet's Discworld which seems remarkably inconsistent in so many places, yet works. (Of course the question becomes, is it a fantasy or a comedy where such rules don't apply so much?)

After that of course come techniques like breaking the fourth wall - which I personally hate - but which seem to work for many people.

And last come the deus ex machina endings, which everyone complains about, and yet which often seem to work. Case in point. Siegal or Shuster - don't know which - the creators of Superman were threatened with being fired from their newspaper cartoon and a new cartoonist brought in to replace one or other. The last strip one of them produced had Superman completely trapped and helpless an about to die. The new cartoonist was left with nothing to do - he couldn't get Superman out of his demise. So the paper had to rehire whichever one it was. The first strip back was "With one mighty bound etc ..." Fans loved it.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Devor (Feb 7, 2015)

psychotick said:


> My first out would be Terry Pratchet's Discworld which seems remarkably inconsistent in so many places, yet works. (Of course the question becomes, is it a fantasy or a comedy where such rules don't apply so much?)



I'm also reminded of Alice in Wonderland, and what's been described as "absurdist" literature . . . . I'm all for urging realism in most stories, but even here I have to admit that there's an exception to everything.

My take on realism - after many of these discussions - I think comes down to "don't be sloppy."


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## cupiscent (Feb 7, 2015)

So much of speculative fiction, in my opinion, is a bargain between author and reader. "Accept that these non-real things apply," the author says, "and I will tell you a rollicking good story." Either the reader can accept them (they're delivered well, and they don't jar for the reader) or the reader can't. (The best example I can think of for this is actually the movie _Looper_, which sits down from the first moment and says, "Here's the deal. Accept this and everything will be awesome." I accepted it, and everything was awesome. I have a friend who just couldn't swallow the differences, and who hated the movie.)

Therefore my view is that you need to establish at least the broad strokes of your world differences really early on, to allow the reader to get comfortable and settle in. If you suddenly change the rules of the world at the two-third mark of the story, a reader is entitled to be pissed off, because all the assumptions with which she was reading the story have now changed, so she might have missed something because she didn't realise, before now, that this was a world where everyone can fly. (On the other hand, if the rules change _in the story_, that's different. Everyone within the story goes through a mindset change, and the reader can go along with it.)

I will note in passing that this establishment of world differences also means you need to be careful with figurative language in the early chapters of a novel. For instance, I was reading a book once where in an early chapter the main character's housekeeper came into the drawing room "with a tea tray balanced in her plump paws". All of a sudden I was wondering if this was a world with large humanoid rabbit servants, but turns out no, the author just meant she had large hands. Or something. I don't even know. But in general, think about how things might be read by a reader who is just accepting everything you throw out because she's learning your world. Avoid confusion and sudden large rabbits!


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 7, 2015)

cupiscent said:


> I will note in passing that this establishment of world differences also means you need to be careful with figurative language in the early chapters of a novel. For instance, I was reading a book once where in an early chapter the main character's housekeeper came into the drawing room "with a tea tray balanced in her plump paws". All of a sudden I was wondering if this was a world with large humanoid rabbit servants, but turns out no, the author just meant she had large hands. Or something. I don't even know. But in general, think about how things might be read by a reader who is just accepting everything you throw out because she's learning your world. Avoid confusion and sudden large rabbits!



Slightly OT, but this reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin's definition of fantasy--if a character says "I'm just not human until I've had my coffee in the morning," it's fantasy if that might not be a metaphor. (And then _Casey and Andy_ made it literal.)


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## glutton (Feb 9, 2015)

Penpilot said:


> One thing though, there will always be plot holes. No matter how diligent you are at designing the rules for your world, there will always be something you miss. Sometimes it'll be something small, and all you'll need to do is wink at the reader to have it be forgiven. Other times, you might have to do major rewrites or hope the rest of the story is good enough to make up for it.



I don't know about that... in a simple enough plot, you could probably manage not to have plot holes or at least nothing that is definitively a hole.

By 'not definitively a hole' I mean like when some readers might think it would be more appropriate for a character to act a different way, that is not necessarily a hole but personal preference.


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## speculativejester (Feb 9, 2015)

I think Mythopoet hit it right on the head. It doesn't have to be necessarily logical, but it has to be consistent. If your world is a world where anything can happen regardless of what is going on, then what is stopping you from just writing in a magical dragon at the moment your character needs it? The struggle of a character is dependent on the world's actual limitations, which is vital to the story.


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## goldhawk (Feb 9, 2015)

Here is an article which I think says it all: Why The Best Fantasy Stories Include Mundane Everyday Life


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## Jabrosky (Feb 9, 2015)

I agree with the other posters that in-world consistency is the critical key when writing fantasy.

But since I have a penchant for the game of devil's advocate, let me suggest that readers in today's generation will assume realism and accuracy (or their perceptions thereof*) as the default state for any setting, so anything deviating from it will put them off unless they understand it's inherent to your setting. If you have all your arrows getting stuck in human bodies instead of passing through them, a savvy reader will call BS on it unless you've established that your arrows don't work like their real-world equivalents. If you actually didn't intend that difference to exist, you might as revise instead of retorting that "anything can happen in fantasy".

* To be sure, this isn't infallible. I was actually surprised to learn that arrows typically will pass through victims instead of always getting stuck in them, so if anything the realistic scenario might appear "unrealistic" to most readers.


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## glutton (Feb 9, 2015)

Jabrosky said:


> If you have all your arrows getting stuck in human bodies instead of passing through them, a savvy reader will call BS on it unless you've established that your arrows don't work like their real-world equivalents.



Or alternately, the characters getting arrows stuck in them are the same ones getting hit with direct axe blows to the chest etc. and shrugging them off lol.


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## goldhawk (Feb 9, 2015)

Jabrosky said:


> I agree with the other posters that in-world consistency is the critical key when writing fantasy.
> 
> But since I have a penchant for the game of devil's advocate, let me suggest that readers in today's generation will assume realism and accuracy (or their perceptions thereof*) as the default state for any setting, so anything deviating from it will put them off unless they understand it's inherent to your setting. If you have all your arrows getting stuck in human bodies instead of passing through them, a savvy reader will call BS on it unless you've established that your arrows don't work like their real-world equivalents. If you actually didn't intend that difference to exist, you might as revise instead of retorting that "anything can happen in fantasy".
> 
> * To be sure, this isn't infallible. I was actually surprised to learn that arrows typically will pass through victims instead of always getting stuck in them, so if anything the realistic scenario might appear "unrealistic" to most readers.



A lot would depend on the draw weight. And the arrowhead. A board head is design to maximize cutting damage and wouldn't penetrate as deeply as an armour-piercing head.

And the Mongols used to wear loose-fitting silk shirts because arrows won't cut the silk. The silk is pushed into the wound by the arrow and makes removing the arrow easier. I don't think they would take this precaution if arrows always passed through.



glutton said:


> Or alternately, the characters getting arrows stuck in them are the same ones getting hit with direct axe blows to the chest etc. and shrugging them off lol.



There have been duels where one participant's heart was pierced but he kept fighting until he killed his opponent. Then he collapsed and died.


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## glutton (Feb 9, 2015)

goldhawk said:


> There have been duels where one participant's heart was pierced but he kept fighting until he killed his opponent. Then he collapsed and died.



Yep I know, I've also read of a guy who got stabbed in the heart and ran several blocks after and a woman who got her throat slashed repeatedly and lived. Talking more about characters who pull off similar 'feats' consistently along with things like chopping plate armored knights vertically in half and deflecting multiple crossbow bolts with a sword swing etc. though. That would suggest something about the unwritten rules/style of the setting XD


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## goldhawk (Feb 9, 2015)

One of the rules of writing: heroes cannot have good luck but villains can.


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## psychotick (Feb 9, 2015)

Hi,

Actually that's one of the things I hate. Villains who just won't die but keep coming back like the energiser bunny. I think it started with Moriarty, but it just keeps getting reused everywhere. I mean how many never ending enemies does the Doctor have? The darleks, the Master, Davros. I mean I can sort of forgive the darleks since they're a race. But the others? Come on - kill them already!

Cheers, Greg.


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## Penpilot (Feb 10, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi,
> I mean how many never ending enemies does the Doctor have? The darleks, the Master, Davros. I mean I can sort of forgive the darleks since they're a race. But the others? Come on - kill them already!



Well, here's the thing. The Doctor can regenerate. He dies and then comes back too. He's pretty much immortal, so why not have villains that are his equal, like the Master. The Master is a timelord, too, and the Doctors evil opposite, so it seems fair that he's also immortal.

This also speaks to the style of the show. The show is about a singular character that is constantly evolving into something different. So, the Doctor has a rogue's gallery of villains that constantly evolve too. Sometimes those changes are small, sometimes they're huge.

It's also an example of what story telling is. Giving the audience the same thing but with a different spin. For example, give me Romeo and Juliet but set it in the '50s and have the two families be gangs. You get Westside Story. Give me Jaws but set it in space. You get Alien.

Doctor Who is a prime example of a show that doesn't worry about the rules. Honestly if you think about the core concept of the show, time travel, it really doesn't make sense because of the butterfly effect. For the most part the show works because they have great characters having fun--stress FUN---adventures full of whimsy and cool stuff. That's what show promises and that's what the audience shows up for.

Which brings me to this point. When you write a story, you make promises to the audience about what type of story you're delivering, serious, light, fanciful, etc. If you're up front with the audience about the story world, and what's possible and what's not--for example fully armored knights being able to do back flips with a back shot full of arrows--then as long as it matches up with the promises made to the audience and remains internally consistent, you should be fine.

Obviously some will reject the story because they can't buy into certain things, but those that do accept those things will enjoy the story for what it is.


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## wordwalker (Feb 10, 2015)

goldhawk said:


> One of the rules of writing: heroes cannot have good luck but villains can.



Goldhawk's point isn't so much about "unkillability"; a lot of stories (especially ongoing shows) bend probability to keep both heroes and villains alive because they're great characters.

It's about bits of luck that make it easier to _win_--for everything short of surviving. If a hero has a lucky moment, it reduces the tension and the amount of the victory he has to earn the hard way; a lucky villain increases the tension. All things being equal, you can see which makes a better story.

It's a great rule.


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## Devor (Feb 10, 2015)

Penpilot said:


> Doctor Who is a prime example of a show that doesn't worry about the rules.



I would say that Dr. Who follows the "rules" of a superhero series, which tend to be consistent _within_ a given story arc, but that consistency often falls apart when you look at it through the long view across multiple arcs.  Buffy is another example, as even Whedon admits the characters' strength levels are inconsistent.


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## Penpilot (Feb 10, 2015)

Devor said:


> I would say that Dr. Who follows the "rules" of a superhero series, which tend to be consistent _within_ a given story arc, but that consistency often falls apart when you look at it through the long view across multiple arcs.  Buffy is another example, as even Whedon admits the characters' strength levels are inconsistent.



Some of what I was talking about was Deux Ex Machina.


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## spectre (Feb 13, 2015)

I think that surreal worlds are fun to read about so long as they are consistent, explanations only become important as we age.


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 13, 2015)

avm31982 said:


> I think that surreal worlds are fun to read about so long as they are consistent, explanations only become important as we age.



I dunno. I read some book once where the setting was totally dreamlike, in a way I was more accustomed to from kids' books than something clearly intended for grownups. I was totally on board with a good 90% of it. But the kid sidekick was named Pepsi, and that was just too random for me. (Also, he was the ghost of the fetus the main character aborted, but that's an entirely different can of worms.)


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