On to the discussion at hand, first of all, thanks for coming back. Second of all, I myself am tilting into Poller for this one. The earth is mapped, but I also get Ark's point.
Just because it's mapped does that mean that it doesn't yet have secrets? I feel that to reopen the world into wonder we'd have to have another Enlightenment Period, and god knows that isn't going to happen any time soon.
Fantasy, at least according to my own humble opinion, isn't about changing the world, making up a whole new one, creating new creatures, it's about taking the world, focusing on something people don't usually take for much use, say, a sock, and venturing into a story about a boy with a special sock.
That might sound drab, but what I've realized after reading a long while is that the most popular books in this generation that appeal to the teen age group and lower, not to say adults can't be avid readers of them, are the books that take our world, and give someone something they can look for. Say, Harry Potter(sorry for the cleche'), a series about a magic place called Hogwarts. Rowling could have taken us to Romania, the land with the dragons, which for sure would have been exciting, but she chose to stay at Hogwarts.
Why?
I'll answer this question with a question. For any of us who were alive at the start of the series, when you were ten, after reading some of the books, did you wait for an owl?
On your eleventh birthday were you, even though you didn't truly believe, wait for an owl and a letter that never showed? For Percy Jackson, did you look for a satyr now, in your school, hoping that maybe you're a demigod? The point I'm trying to get across, is that to make a bestseller you don't have to create a new world, just give a new spin to the old world.
Or, reawaken something that hasn't seen the light of day for centuries.
A great fantasy writer sometimes dabbles into making history into magic.
Great fire of London?
So many authors have their own spin to that.
13-Sep-2013 14:50:08
