Thanks to the west side half-price bookstore I am now the owner of the writer's Digest series called Write Great Fiction. One of the books is Description & Setting. To quote from the section called science fiction and fantasy: "in your fiction, let your description of futuristic fantastic places be as fanciful as you want them to be, but remember this; they must be, first and foremost, a stage upon which your characters do something that your earthbound readers can relate to."
To this bit of wisdom, I add the wisdom that you must also lay out the rules that the magic in your fantasy must follow. In short, the rules are quite different in Harry Potter's Hogwarts than they are in the Dragon world of the Game of Thrones.
Last spring Anthony and Kristin downloaded the draft first chapter of a novel I had written before 1994. They marked it up and told me everything that they found confusing or flat out wrong. When I came home and took another look at what I had posted I discovered I had forgotten to include the header that explained the setting and rules of magic. Here it is:
From a History Invocation used by Spell-Weather Watchers:
"And The Mother tasted smog in her clean air and acid in her sweet water and cried out at the murder of her great beasts and her beloved rain-forests. In her rage, she ordered the Instant of Change. At her will, the Demons Ohm, Volt and Ampere were vanquished and their foul electricity ceased to pollute her world. And we, her children, trembled before her wrath.
"And she unfettered the Demons of War and Famine and Pestilence to punish us, her children, for our heinous crimes. And in the Time of Chaos many offered their blood to re-nourish her Good Earth. And she ordered the Time of Metamorphosis, and some of her children became Elf, and some Dwarf, and some Fairy, and some Troll, and some remained Original Man. And fierce are the endless wars between the Five Peoples.
"Thus did The Mother replace the Stench of Foul Science with the Perfume of her Magic."
My question at the meeting will be, “Given the setting what sort of magical writing would you expect me to create?”
****** when you come to the string of ****** that marks the under 2000 words that everyone should read before the meeting. Everything that you will find afterward will range from an afterthought expanding on what I wish to discuss to the self-published chapters of my 1994 novel.
