Why do you write fantasy?

[Pythagoras]

To me, fantasy is like the next step in the evolution of mythology. Mythology, across time and space, speaks certain truths that everyone experiences, and sets these truths in surreal dimensions that spark the imagination. The difference is, while mythology is the result of a long tradition of storytelling, each building off the last, fantasy is an individualized creative force, the likes of which have not existed before it.

I like to think that there are two realms of existence: the one in which we live our every day lives, where what is concrete is what is true; and the one in which everything that exists in our collective imagination is consigned. Everyone can reach the second realm in their sleep. It is the fantasy storyteller who can make the leap into that realm in his or her waking hours. And what we see there certainly deserves to be written about. It is not unreal just because it does not exist in the realm of the concrete.

 

[skip.knox]

I write fantasy because it was too difficult to sell dwarves and elves in literary fiction.

I had a good idea, which involved replacing the barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire with goblins and orcs. Once I had that fundamentally good idea, everything else followed naturally. So it was fantasy from the first and all the way to the end.

I find literary fiction boring. I've read great literature in that genre, and it can delight me as a reader (I love Conrad, Greene, Dos Passos, Chandler and Hammett, Chesterton, Tolstoy, and as they say on TV, many more), but the genre bores me as a writer. What gets me excited is trying to think my way through how non-humans would behave, and trying to find convincing ways to write about that.

 

[OzonE]

fantasy is the greatest way to feed my inner child.
I used to fantasize about many things since my childhood, and i somehow got dragged into it.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

I fell in love with the game Pool of Radiance and the fire has only grown since then.

 

[Xitra_Blud]

I can go anywhere I want with it. I can be as creative as I want to be. My options are limitless; it's whatever my imagination will allow.

 

[Scalvi]

I'd have to agree with CupofJoe. I don't write in genres per se. I just have an idea I think is cool. Like a world without a walkable surface and "mana" being integrated into spaceships. They become fantasy because that's how people choose to describe them.

 

[Tom]

Possibilities. There's a whole universe out there in fantasy, and even more yet to be explored and discovered. I love that about fantasy--the feeling of wonder and the realization that you're only limited in what you can do by the boundaries of your own imagination.