Fall into Fiction Writing Prompt: Fantasy
Or, "What's in your world"?
Since the 1980’s, the advent of the game “Dungeons and Dragons” created an interest in the fantasy genre. Since then, with the phenomenal success of the “Lord of the Rings” movies, “Game of Thrones” and many others, fantasy has become a mainstay that continues to dominate popular culture and is only getting stronger. The very first chapter book I read on my own (at the age of six) was “the Wizard of Oz” and in the years that followed I devoured the 18 books that came after that. From there I absorbed Narnia, and the interest in imaginary worlds and places has never left me.
And why wouldn’t it? To battle dragons, sabotage dystopian regimes, win the love of your life in a duel, gather magic treasure and talk with fantastic beings is all in a day’s work where fantasy is concerned. The possibilities are endless. To adapt a quote from Michael Chabon’s “Wonder Boys”, there is no such thing as writer’s block--there is only the glory of finding the next plot twist to hook in the reader.
So for this week’s writing prompt: If you were to build an alternate world, what would it look like? Can animals talk? What manner of beings inhabit it? How does magic work? What evil villain threatens the world (because if you’re going to create a world, you need to create someone who wants to destroy it)? What makes your world unique and interesting, and how do you show it in your writing? How do you draw the reader into your vision? Reading about alternate worlds can be very entertaining, but challenging to create and write. But when done right, it can be very rewarding as well.
Here are a few of my favorite alternate world fantasies to enjoy:
Books that deal with fantasy and alternate worlds.
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