Purposely using the minimal amount of fantasy elements vs all out fantasy

[Miskatonic]

Do you prefer to try and keep the fantasy elements (magic, mythical creatures, fantasy type settings, etc.) to a minimum or do you prefer to go all out?

To use myself as an example, the story I'm working on bases most of the culture around different areas of Europe, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The place names, architecture, clothing, etc., are based loosely on those aforementioned cultures. It isn't an alternate history of our world, I just wanted people to be able to relate to this fantasy world much more easily. I also really am not interested in going full blown fantasy with all the bells and whistles. The fantasy elements are used when necessary but not just because I can put them in their.

It's a bit ironic to say that the approach is to make fantasy more "realistic" but I just always preferred the LOTR approach to say something like Dragonlance, or the D&D type universe.

 

[X Equestris]

Personally, I tend towards the lower end of the fantasy scale.

 

[Devor]

I like to cover my settings with magic everywhere. But for me it's also important to get away from a "spell system" and find ways to make the magic more ingrained into the setting.

For instance, in one of my settings, there's magic in the soil, which gets into the food people eat, and that plays out throughout the story and the setting's details.

 

[Gurkhal]

I also tend to try and avoid fantastic features in my stories. In if I can help it, it will only be the world which isn't our own that isn't reasonably unrealistic in my stories. For example I think that A Song of Ice and Fire has to much magic in it as it is, it would in my opinion have been better to have the magic be dead, and stay dead.

 

[Mythopoet]

Tolkien's world has minimal magic in the overt, mechanical "magic system" sense, but his setting is steeped from top to bottom in the magic of "Faerie".

Very, very, very few fantasy novels published in recent decades have that kind of "faerie" magic and I think that is a terrible shame. It's the kind that I love best and the kind I am trying to instill in my fantasy world. I am sick to death of fantasy books with settings that are so low magic that they might as well be historical fiction in a made up setting. That's one reason I stopped reading ASoIaF. Too much mundane war and politics that might as well come out of medieval Europe, not nearly enough of the fantastic. I just don't understand how such pseudo-fantasy becomes so popular. Do today's fantasy readers not actually want the fantastic? Well, I'm writing my stories for any readers out there who are like me and miss "faerie".

 

[Russ]

Tolkien's world has minimal magic in the overt, mechanical "magic system" sense, but his setting is steeped from top to bottom in the magic of "Faerie".

Very, very, very few fantasy novels published in recent decades have that kind of "faerie" magic and I think that is a terrible shame. It's the kind that I love best and the kind I am trying to instill in my fantasy world. I am sick to death of fantasy books with settings that are so low magic that they might as well be historical fiction in a made up setting. That's one reason I stopped reading ASoIaF. Too much mundane war and politics that might as well come out of medieval Europe, not nearly enough of the fantastic. I just don't understand how such pseudo-fantasy becomes so popular. Do today's fantasy readers not actually want the fantastic? Well, I'm writing my stories for any readers out there who are like me and miss "faerie".

While I enjoy both styles of fantasy (and write both) I have to heartily agree that there is a distinct shortage of the worlds steeped in "the fantastic" on the market these days and I too miss it.

And "the new weird" is no substitute.

 

[Steerpike]

I like the minimal end of the scale. If you're going on the high end, you have to be careful or the logic of the world falls apart completely. It's one reason I always hated played D&D in Faerun - the world doesn't make a lick of sense.

 

[Svrtnsse]

My setting has the potential for mind-blowing, spectacular, fantasticality, but for the most part I'm opting not to include it in my stories.
Instead, I'm trying to fill the story with little details wondrous and magical. I don't go full blast with flaming ice-dragons breathing black fire across the Tannhauser gates or whatever. That's not the kind of story I enjoy telling.
I've got a blue squirrel with a flashing tail showing up at some point, and my MC has to repair a roof because some kids got drunk and shot off a fireball to impress a girl. The fantasy aspects aren't a major part of the story in any significant way at all, they're just the backdrop against which the story plays out.

My thinking is that if I pull this off, I'll give the reader a trip as far away from reality as any high-fantasy setting - only not on as wild a ride.

 

[Amanita]

Writing fantasy without fantastical elements? Interesting.

I don't really care for stories which are merely called "fantasy" rather than historical fiction because the author doesn't want to bother with historical accuracy too much. If I wanted to read stories about medieval kings and nobitliy fighting over power, I'd prefer something about real nations I might actually care about and places I know or could visit.
There could be stories with alternate societies, political systems of course and there would be plenty of interesting potential there but I don't know if "fantasy" really is the right term for something like this if there are no fantastical elements. Rather sounds like a different genre.

To me, it's sort of sad to see that even fantasy writers reject stories with magic, magical beings and so on. I'm a person who prefers the rational approach in real life but I don't think this is a reason not to let your mind wander freely when reading or creating fictional stories.
I do like a clear line though and thus want a rational explanations for mysteries in a story not labelled as fantasy or supernatural.

 

[Saigonnus]

I tend to agree with both sides of the discussion. Sometimes, the world and story that needs to be told requires a more vigorous magic system and sometimes keeping it minimal tells the story better because it doesn't distract the reader with stuff of relative unimportance.

I have stories set two different worlds thus far, one magic rich, the other not so much.

I guess I can appreciate both types of stories, having read Tolkien, dragonlance, forgotten realm and anything else I could find as a child.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ryan_Crown]

The big element of fantasy I like to draw on is the different races/creatures that I can use. Because that way my stories do have that sense of the fantastical even if there's not a lot of actual "magic" at use. My current story world, for example, features no spellcasters of any kind (at least not at this point), but it does have dwarves and goblyns and lizardmen.

As far as stories I read goes, I'd much rather read something like Dragonlance than A Song of Ice and Fire, because it does have that stronger feel of being truly a fantasy world.

 

[ScipioSmith]

Like Ryan Crown, I tend to use more creatures than magic. Magically empowered people are rare in my setting (although the story is all about a girl who has all kinds of magical powers) but the world is full of lizard people, undersea knights and winged humanoids.

 

[Steerpike]

There could be stories with alternate societies, political systems of course and there would be plenty of interesting potential there but I don't know if "fantasy" really is the right term for something like this if there are no fantastical elements. Rather sounds like a different genre.

There are books like this, and I think they still fall within the definition of fantasy. If you look at the Gormenghast books, for example, the stories take place in an enormous castle, so large people can and do live their entire lives within it. There are no magic elements and other such characteristics associated with a lot of fantasy, but certainly no such place has ever existed. K.J. Parker has also written some fantasy works that, if I recall, have no magic or supernatural elements, but take place in wholly-invented worlds - places that have never existed. Same with Guy Gavriel Kay. They get shelved in fantasy, and I don't think one gains much by trying to create a separate genre just for those types of works.

 

[Mythopoet]

There are books like this, and I think they still fall within the definition of fantasy. If you look at the Gormenghast books, for example, the stories take place in an enormous castle, so large people can and do live their entire lives within it. There are no magic elements and other such characteristics associated with a lot of fantasy, but certainly no such place has ever existed. K.J. Parker has also written some fantasy works that, if I recall, have no magic or supernatural elements, but take place in wholly-invented worlds - places that have never existed. Same with Guy Gavriel Kay. They get shelved in fantasy, and I don't think one gains much by trying to create a separate genre just for those types of works.

I don't think I agree that a made up place makes a book fantasy. Those kinds of books tend to annoy me, as a fantasy reader. They don't provide me with the experience I'm looking for... a fantastic experience. If there are really no preternatural elements at all, I don't think it should be called fantasy.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't think you need preternatural elements to have a 'fantastic' experience. The idea of a massive, sprawling castle that encompasses the birth, life, and death of a whole society of inhabitants sounds pretty 'fantastic.' Not every fantasy novel is going to appeal to everyone, but I don't see a reason to create another genre because of that. In any event, as it currently stands those works are shelved in fantasy, and I doubt that'll change because there's no incentive for either publishers or bookstores to change it and try to come up with some separate genre for made-up world without magic.

 

[ThinkerX]

I remember being awesomely impressed by 'Gormenghast' and Titus Groan.

As to magic...too much magic, you either end up with a muddle lacking internal consistency, or...

...you've basically come up with an alternate form of technology. (magical taxi cabs, flying carpet airlines, security spells for sale at the corner store...uh...why not just go with technology?)

GRRM, in 'Game of Thrones,' spent a lot of time at the outset going back and forth between two models for his world - one without magic, the other with a small amount of magic. The second version won out - when something magical happens in Westeros, it's a wondrous event - but the characters that have magical talent (precognitive dreams and skinwalking being the obvious ones) often have no idea magic is involved.

With me...

...my main world was pretty much terraformed and 'stocked' by aliens many millennia ago. For these aliens, PSI ability was part of their very nature, and when they brought other races to this world, they chose to imbue certain of them with PSI ability of their own. The aliens went away and the descendants of these altered people are now 'magicians.' But, for the most part, their abilities are wimpy compared to most other systems. Magic isn't unknown, but mages are rare, and their abilities are so weak they cannot be a true substitute for technology.

My world also has goblins (another alien race), elves (humans altered through experimentation with the arcane realm), and other races.

 

[Philip Overby]

I think in some ways my stories are an over-the-top answer to not having enough magic in my life. I like to play with idea of worlds where magic can be either an everyday thing or never seen depending where you are in the world. I do have lots of monsters in my stories and those certainly play into more fantastical elements. I tend to play with cliched creatures and twist them in some way if I can.

This is just my Splatter Elf stuff though. It tends to take most elements of fantasy stories and crank it up to 11. But even in my more "straightforward" fantasy, I tend to want to focus on some element of the fantastical. I may have a story with no magic in it whatsoever, but it has a dragon. Or I may have a story with a wizard that can't use magic anymore and doesn't know what ot do with himself. Stuff like tat.

 

[Steerpike]

I remember being awesomely impressed by 'Gormenghast' and Titus Groan.

They're pretty amazing books. When it comes to sheer writing ability, I don't think anyone in the genre has done better.

 

[Miskatonic]

Great replies and input everyone!

If I went into more detail about my story it would seem that I am definitely in the much more fantastical approach camp. To me it's more of the mindset that if I have a choice of making a part fantastical but I also can make it more mundane then I tend to go with mundane. I like the idea that most humans are unaware of a lot of the fantastical elements that exist in the world, some being completely ignorant of them and considering them all tall tales. This way when a fantasy element is introduced it makes a bigger impact.

My story has dragons, demons, gods, magic and all the rest but only as much as is needed. The cities are similar to medieval type cities, not a Harry Potter-esque place where it's almost a complete fantasy base. Magic is used but it's not a type of power that can be used with impunity without any type of consequences. Nobody is leveling entire cities with some massive spells.

 

[Miskatonic]

Like Ryan Crown, I tend to use more creatures than magic. Magically empowered people are rare in my setting (although the story is all about a girl who has all kinds of magical powers) but the world is full of lizard people, undersea knights and winged humanoids.

Supernatural creatures in and of themselves can be plenty when telling a fantasy tale. Reminds me of the Robert E. Howard Conan books. There is magic every once and awhile but it's pretty basic and the creatures Conan has to battle are the much more entertaining parts.