Writing The Magic - Essays On Crafting Fantasy Fiction edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst
Publisher – Dead Ink Books
Published – Out Now
Price – £10.99 paperback £5.99 ebook
From Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones , over the last hundred years few genres have captured the public imagination as powerfully as fantasy. Whether it's epic quests of dwarves and elves, wizards and paladins, or the influential childhood classics of Alan Garner and C.S. Lewis, the appetite among readers for all things magical seems insatiable. Pulling together a fellowship of some of the best writers of modern fantasy fiction, WRITING THE MAGIC invites you to step through the portal and discover what gives these tales such enduring appeal. Writers such as Jeff Noon, Hannah Kaner, RJ Barker and Jen Williams pull back the curtain on how they write fantasy, demystifying topics such as worldbuilding, sources of magic, creating authenticity, and how best to deploy your dragons. An essential map for anyone wanting to write their own world into being, WRITING THE MAGIC explores the perilous realms of fantasy fiction - and arms novice writers with everything they need to embark on their own adventure. Contributors: Francesco Dimitri, Hannah Kaner, RJ Barker, Kritika H. Rao, Juliet E. McKenna, Jen Williams, Jeff Noon, Alex Pheby, J.L. Worrad, Richard Strachan, Charlotte Bond, Katherine Langrish, and Lucy Holland.
Fantasy is some say one of the oldest genres. Storytelling itself is fantasy in the sense that all stories are to be blunt made up. Stories are how we readers suddenly perceive a different reality through just words on a page but let’s face it gentle readers if you’re reading this, you’re unlikely to be interested in just tales purely based on our reality. But how do authors approach creating these stories? In Writing The Magic – Essays On Crafting Fantasy Fiction edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst a host of authors talk about the process writing the fantasy and it is a fascinating glimpse in the many different ways authors approach the subject.
The ‘Writing The’ series is not designed as a writing guide but more an insight into how authors approach parts of the genre. The first section is entitled ‘Starting the Journey’ and its important to note this explores why and how writers write. We start off with ‘Words of Magic’ by Francesco Dimitri who captivates the reader with how they as a child discovered Lord of the Rings in a bookshop and the path of fantasy started right there. Dimitri talks about the human need for wonder, our belief in magic that goes back as far as we do and now how magic is used to tell stories. It’s a sweeping and elegant introduction that reminds us of the sense of wonder we may all want from a fantasy book.
Then RJ Barker in ‘You Do Not Need To Know How To Write A Book (Or How To Embrace Ignorance And Run With IT) appears to go off the wall talking about they have no idea what they’re doing and once wanted to play the bass guitar. However, it’s actually a loveletter to the power of creation. The thrill of creating something new and it is nice to read something finally challenging the idea of pantser versus plotter and how they’re all just labels on doing the same thing. It’s a skilled and polished introduction a guitar solo if you will weaving in fantastical metaphors, slowly weaving the disparate pieces into one piece and most of all someone is doing something they love and are also skilled at.
The last in this section is Kritika H Rao’s ‘Authenticity And Voice: A Reflection On What Voice Can Tell Us About Ourselves’ this talks about where writing helps an author find themselves that thing we often refer to as an author’s voice, how it develops over time, that it comprises so many things and I really liked how Rao brought in other contemporary authors’ voices and opinions on the subject to give perspective on this as how authors find out how they write and why it is important to stand out in crowded slushpiles. This completes a really interesting section as to what makes people want to write – be it the love of the genre, the love of writing or the love finding out who you are as a writer.
Another feature of the series is the Spotlight where an author talks about another’s work and in ‘What Can Tolkien’s Creative Process Teach A Writer Today?’ by Juliet E McKenna we have a exploration of the many factors that led Tolkien to writing a good piece of work. Be ghat understanding language, research, mythology and even beta readers. It’s a elegant and interesting look at the man behind the BIG BOOK I won’t name and the long road that gets a writer to writing. Its very persuasive and for modern writers may surprise you how many ideas were even then getting done but likely called something else. It’s a neat buttress to the preceding tales by saying as well as passion and intent you ned some support in many different ways.
The we move onto the topic of Worldbuilding. A term so often linked to fantasy and again a myriad of approaches are taken. In Jen William’s ‘Building A World And getting Away With It’ there is an immediate challenge and here Williams explores how a character instead created the world and story. How taking on an old trope and inverting it creates a fresh character and then that requires a fresh world. Here this reverse engineering reminds us more than one way to create a story even with the Winnowing Flame books where the world and its history would appear to be a big example of old school worldbuilding.
In contrast we go completely the other way with ‘Brick By Brick, Word By Word’ where jeff Noon talks about how they went on a huge journey of worldbuilding way before the novel even seemed an idea. This talks about the process that eventually leads to the novel Gogmagog co-written with Steve Beard. We see the ideas morph from tv show to gaming and eventually a novel. The original inspiration of one myth, the copious discussions on the various new myths of the land they created, the factions that lived there and even the dating system of the world. Again, this is not arguing which approach is best but just for this author and this story this approach really clicked with them. A great contrast of approaches.
A further thought comes across in ‘What I Think About When I Think About Reality’ by Alex Phelby. This piece reminds us that worldbuilding is often thought of as building a reality different to our own and Phelby gently reminds us that our world too is artificial, we have our own worldviews based on everything from politics to architecture and so the act of moving away from that is actually worthwhile even just to say fantasy is indeed a way to imagine other worlds than the one we think we need to live in, it comes back to the idea of all stories are fantasy but intriguingly that sometimes so is the world we think we are in and kits more malleable than you’d think to change that. The perhaps reason we need this genre is to remind us we can change the world?
The next spotlight is JL Worrad talking about Michael Moorcock in ‘How Beautiful They Are: Elric of Melnibone And the Amoral Elf Motif’ here Worrad both explores their own discovery of the writer but also how Moorcock was using the British Empire and its place in the 20th century to inspire his own world. It a lovely piece of writing and argument and really makes we want to try Elric again now I’m a bit older. The feeling of a story designed to challenge what history and fantasy of the period was doing is well handled.
The last section explores Mythmaking And Tradition. Going in a slightly different direction but a welcome one was ‘The Domestic And the Divine’ by Hannah Kremer here Kremer talks about for them it was less the big epic myths that inspired their writing approach but the power of the Hearth and we go on a roadtrip into myths and how choosing a different approach to most stories can inspire your own work. An interesting essay to consider.
Then in ‘On The Nature of Dragons’ Charlotte Bond talks about how when writing a story using dragons the vast mix of legends, myths and existing fantasy books helps an author choose what they may use, invert, argue with and sometimes pay tribute to. As well as a lovely walkthrough dragon lore it’s the creative process of using an existing series of myths to create your own story that I found a really fascinating look on how research as well as a love of stories can guide an author.
Then taking this approach in a different direction Richard Strachan in ‘Vicarious Dreams: Fantasy And Tie-in Fiction’ explores how their writing got into the world of working with other companies’ Intellectual Property. While tie-In fiction often gets looked down upon it is here explored as an area of creativity covering Star Trek and Doctor Who but also how it provides its own challenges as a writer, meeting deadlines, publisher criteria and let’s face it getting paid for writing a contracted book. The mix of business, creative challenges and how its also shaped Strachan’s own writing outside of tie-in is a reminder many authors go on many journeys and again its using and inverting myths within parameters to create work people like. It’s a reminder authors ned payment too!
A further direction is really well explored in ‘The Door In The Mound’ by Katherine Langrish talks about writing fantasy for children. As well as a walkthrough of great books it’s a reminder that this area too requires great writing, deals with difficult subjects and also again uses the genre’s history to create new books in new and surprising directions. A reminder to understand the genre you’re writing in even if you want to argue with it.
Finally, and fittingly the last spotlight in Lucy Holland with ‘Between My And My Shadow: Magic In Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea’ now I’m only just discovering the series this year but here Holland discovers the impact Le Guin had from an early age and how the stories actually work. How an author explores the magic nature of truth, self-discovery and creation all neatly circling back to the essays we have read so far. Holand explores how Le Guin returns in the series, explores and in some ways argues with earlier books – the magic of an author finding new stories in their work and creating wonders. This is an essay explaining why we need the magic of fantasy in our lives and how authors tell that to us.
I’m not and never been interested in becoming a writer, but I am as my not-quite-a-hobby of reviewing suggests fascinated by stories and how they come about. Writing The Magic is a superb exploration of how different authors work, how there are many paths to the creation of story that you can take and its also just a feast of good essay writing that I think writers, reviewers and dedicated readers of fantasy will find much to enjoy and think about afterwards. Strongly recommended!
