Fantasy as mutually agreed ficiton

[Dragonrider]

I was doing some study in Cambridge University's ICE program and one of the readings, about categorising fantasy, made the suggestion that fantasy, as opposed to mythology/reliigon requires both the reader and author to know the story is entirely made up. Seems entirely reasonable, but it's one of those things you don't really think about until someone brings it up.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

Fascinating. So it is a consciously agreed upon common, unreal consciousness. I'd love a link to the ICE program.

 

[Hannah F]

What? Narnia isn't real?

 

[Sedayne]

I was doing some study in Cambridge University's ICE program and one of the readings, about categorising fantasy, made the suggestion that fantasy, as opposed to mythology/reliigon requires both the reader and author to know the story is entirely made up. Seems entirely reasonable, but it's one of those things you don't really think about until someone brings it up.

I think I had always taken this as a given for all fiction, but as you say, it's not something I've consciously thought about. Interesting.

P.S. I was wondering what the Institute of Civil Engineering knew about fantasy writing when in my ignorance I had to Google ICE program

 

[Dragonrider]

It's the Institute of Continuing Education by Cambridge Univeristy. All sorts of online courses of varying length.

Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) |

www.ice.cam.ac.uk

 

[Jake E]

'fantasy requires both the reader and author to know the story is entirely made up. '
No shit Sherlock.

 

[Pamela Jo]

In film It's called, "Willing suspension of disbelief." The establishing shot is the sequence introducing how that is to be suspended, with whom, and where.

I think everyone loves "Back to the Future's" establishing shot with Michael J Fox and his skateboard. Every bit of that is "Kids don't try this at home", but it draws us into a make believe world where problems are solvable with the right people on your side. We want to escape to that world and come away feeling that maybe our problems are not so bad after all.

At Rome airport I was struck with how advertising works by mainlining story right into that willing disbelief cortex of our brains.

WhIle I couldn't find an aspirin at any shop past security the corridors were full of VERY expensive designer shite "boutiques."

When we lived in HK, 1994-97, there were open markets where you could buy "knock-off" designer shite. I still have a collection of Chanel and Armani from there. The only thing that separated the 500.00 price tag from the 50.00 was a tiny squiggle in the logo.

As a reporter I found the truth fascinating. The factories that produced the designer shite simply ran another thousand or so bags, shoes, suits whatever and then sewed on a slightly different logo. Everything else was EXACTLY the same. Why would you set up a factory to make copies when it's so much easier to do a secret overrun under the Gwailo overlord's big, hairy noses?

But it was a story I could never sell to a publication. Not only because advertisers, "EEEK!" but because the rich people who'd paid the $500.00 didn't want to know. They'd bought the story that every stitch was made on the naked, silken thighs of highly skilled virgins. The designers were geniuses and anyone who purchased their shite became a genius by proxy.

So I suppose you could describe that opening 750 words of your WIP as the ad for YOUR designer bag.

 

[Hannah F]

In film It's called, "Willing suspension of disbelief." The establishing shot is the sequence introducing how that is to be suspended, with whom, and where.

I think everyone loves "Back to the Future's" establishing shot with Michael J Fox and his skateboard. Every bit of that is "Kids don't try this at home", but it draws us into a make believe world where problems are solvable with the right people on your side. We want to escape to that world and come away feeling that maybe our problems are not so bad after all.

At Rome airport I was struck with how advertising works by mainlining story right into that willing disbelief cortex of our brains.

WhIle I couldn't find an aspirin at any shop past security the corridors were full of VERY expensive designer shite "boutiques."

When we lived in HK, 1994-97, there were open markets where you could buy "knock-off" designer shite. I still have a collection of Chanel and Armani from there. The thing is the only thing that separated the 500.00 price tag from the 50.00 was a tiny squiggle in the logo.

As a reporter I found the truth fascinating. The factories that produced the designer shite simply ran another thousand or so bags, shoes, suits whatever and then sewed on a slightly different logo. Everything else was EXACTLY the same. Why would you set up a factory to make copies when it's so much easier to do a secret overrun under the Gwailo overlord's big, hairy noses?

But it was a story I could never sell to a publication. Not only because advertisers, "EEEK!" but because the rich people who'd paid the $500.00 didn't want to know. They'd bought the story that every stitch was made on the naked, silken thighs of highly skilled virgins. The designers were geniuses and anyone who purchased their shite became a genius by proxy.

So I suppose you could describe that opening 750 words of your WIP as the ad for YOUR designer bag.

Willing suspension of disbelief first coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge with reference to adding the fantastical to poetry. Tolkien called it "secondary belief": rather than suspending a disbelief, when the reader becomes immersed in the secondary world of your novel, while they are in it they believe it to be true.