I am writing a novel with the basic Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland or the Matrix if you want structure. The novel begins in perfect modern day, and at some point in a very sharp way takes a turn for fantasy.
Right now Kansas currently takes up about 4000 words and aside from an end paragraph is the entire first chapter. There are virtually no magical elements in it. We meet the characters and find out what are their mundane daily lives before everything is subverted. By mundane I try to not mean boring. One is tied up with a crime family, and the other one is struggling with drug addiction.
The feedback I am seeing from my test readers is that because the book is in the fantasy genre they expect fantasy. They want foreshadowing to the fact that there is magic in this world.
My question is, is this something that the modern reader needs? Do we have to put early fantasy elements to keep readers interested? How long can a standard length novel spend in the modern day world before it has to show magic? I am assuming that the normal world action is interesting if the reader just did not know the book was in the fantasy section.
Answer
The purpose of the Kansas section is to establish the Real World before embarking on the Quest (to use the terms from the Hero's Journey).
The Real World is the place which the Hero (gender/age/number neutral) must leave behind. You can use it to establish character traits, and the Quest could potentially begin there, but generally I think your beta readers are right: either leave the Real World quickly or establish the existence of magic quickly. If it's a fantasy book, get to the fantasy. If it's an urban fantasy book, you still need to get to some element of fantasy promptly.
This can be something the hero doesn't understand, by the way. The White Rabbit can hop by without the hero chasing him; the reader knows what it is even if the hero doesn't. You can drop hints about Weird Things going on and not explain them for a few thousand words. So if you have a mob boss, one of the goons can be making a report about the night's activities and mention "this crazy thing that happened/that Fast Eddie told me about, you wouldn't believe it," and we don't have to get any more detail than to confirm that something unusual is going on.
ETA The Hero's Journey is a classic literary structure, popularly explained by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and broken down into writing terms by Christopher Volger in The Writer's Journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment