Portals vs Going There

[Azul-din]

A concept I realize I often use is the portal. Think Alice through the rabbit hole. You are one place ( or your character is) and you or they go through a doorway, cave entrance, path in the woods you never knew was there, get chased by wolves; and Bingo! you are in another dimension, mythical country, in front of Baba Yaga's chicken legged cottage, etc. In this category I would also put dreams which transport a character into another reality. In one story I did, a timid and quite conventional office worker became in her nightly dreams a giant raptor in a world where humans, or proto humans, were tiny scavengers tolerated because they kept the nests free from vermin.

Against that, of course, are Journeys, quests, sea voyages- where a character or group of characters has to physically journey from one location to another.

Query- which do you think superior: where the story is in the destination, or where the story basically is the journey.?

 

[Foxkeyes]

One good story to get there. Then infinite number of stories available when you're there.

 

[Ned Marcus]

They can both work. Portal stories are one of the (perhaps 4) major types of fantasy stories. Using a portal is just a technique; you still have to tell the story after using it. If you want that to be a journey or not is up to you.

 

[Finchbearer]

Hmm, I’ve never actually thought about this. In my stories there are portals of sorts, gateways, but they are not the actually story, they are just part of the story. Sometimes it is getting from one destination to another really quickly, but you’re in the same time zone, or thereabouts, and then I have one story where there is a kind of path to another realm entirely. So, to summarise, I don’t think either one is superior. I’m not sure that is a point of argument, but more rather that it needs to be relevant to the story you’re trying to tell, as in what purpose does is serve.

 

[pmmg]

Yeah....it will never be a case of which is better, just which serves the story better.

I dont think I have done a story where a portal played a major role. Some stories were a wizard type may have created one to summon some thing.

Stories contain journeys, whether they are actual travel or not, the journey should be there. Taking time to travel gives a lot of room for growth and makes a lot of sense for stories where the MC does not have access to a lot of power. I think, for me, if I was to tell a portal story, I would make it something that retaining control of the portal as pat of the major conflict.

But, any story can be good. If yours has a lot of portals, just needs to be a good story with a lot of portals.

 

[Renè Williams]

I think of destinations as pit stops on the journey, unless the goal of the plot is having someone/thing in a particular place/time for X effect. My world has portals as well but they only go certain places (City to City Portals the require approval to use for personal use, also one time use magic that very few people have the ability to use due to how difficult it is to move something so fast across vast distances without being a few millimeters or nanoseconds off in your calculations to horrible consequences) and anyone who is proficient in such magic is highly sought after for the use to society. I think it's great to put barriers in front of the use of portals and explore the outcomes of those, or of portals going wrong. Part of my plot ends up revolving around everyone looking for something they don't know is a portal to a new place or at least, most of them don't, and I'm hoping to use that as a hop off to the second book I want to write.

 

[Aldarion]

Depends on what you want, but both can work.

 

[Prince of Spires]

A portal story is just a travelogue with a portal as starting point. In a way, Lord of the Rings is a portal story. 4 hobbits walk through a gate into a magical forest. They come out a year or so later completely changed and rid the Shire of evil. Yes, in between there's rings and elves and volcano's and eagles and what have you. But in terms of structure it's just leave through a gateway, have adventures, return.

The main thing for me at least is that the journey needs to have a point. The Wizard of Oz works because Dorothy wants to go home and to do so she needs to defeat an evil witch to please a wizard. She has a wonderful journey, but it has a point. If it was just her walking around the same world, experiencing the same adventures, it would feel pointless. Not to mention that few people would willingly put their lives in danger just to have adventures.

Travelogues are very much a classical Fantasy tale (thanks to Tolkien). There are loads of there and back again stories. They work great. There are also loads of other story types. Which are also great. So just figure out the tale you want to tell and go with that.

 

[Renè Williams]

A portal story is just a travelogue with a portal as starting point. In a way, Lord of the Rings is a portal story. 4 hobbits walk through a gate into a magical forest. They come out a year or so later completely changed and rid the Shire of evil. Yes, in between there's rings and elves and volcano's and eagles and what have you. But in terms of structure it's just leave through a gateway, have adventures, return.

The main thing for me at least is that the journey needs to have a point. The Wizard of Oz works because Dorothy wants to go home and to do so she needs to defeat an evil witch to please a wizard. She has a wonderful journey, but it has a point. If it was just her walking around the same world, experiencing the same adventures, it would feel pointless. Not to mention that few people would willingly put their lives in danger just to have adventures.

Travelogues are very much a classical Fantasy tale (thanks to Tolkien). There are loads of there and back again stories. They work great. There are also loads of other story types. Which are also great. So just figure out the tale you want to tell and go with that.

Interestingly, when you put it this way, a Travelogue just becomes the basic Hero's Journey with a portal as the inciting incident. And that's not a bad thing. Just an observation.