Resurrecting The Real In Fantasy Fiction

How Fantasy Can Uniquely Counteract The Murder Of Reality

Edited by Emily Brooks and Kori Frazier Morgan.

Any fantasy writer working today faces a maze of questions that run deeper than the mere trappings of a story.

What is “real” in the mind of my reader?

What purported realities are competing in public consciousness—and how will my story aid or hinder the various combatants?

How bad is it, this landscape of competing realities? Can I write without taking sides—without alienating this group or that?

Well, friends… the hour is growing late. Every story we write can’t help but place its feet on culturally contested ground. So what will you say about reality, implicitly or explicitly, even as you frame your statements in the guise of the unreal?

In the next post, we unpack this idea in the context of storytelling nuts and bolts. But first, let’s explore the idea itself. We’ll begin by considering the claim that reality has been murdered, and that this is the collective consciousness into which we write. We’ll lean on French philosopher Jean Baudrillard for this.

Baudrillard’s concept of murdered reality

“This is the story of a crime – of the murder of reality. And the extermination of an illusion – the vital illusion, the radical illusion of the world… Moreover, in this grim record of the disappearance of the real, it has not been possible to pin down either the motives or the perpetrators, and the corpse of the real itself has never been found.”

So begins Jean Baudrillard’s The Perfect Crime, a book that’s all about the alleged murder of reality. While Baudrillard eventually develops his thesis into rational confusion, we may perhaps seize on this moment of insight. It describes the experience of the modern mind with startling precision.

Simply put, in Baudrillard’s worldview, there is no such thing as reality anymore. There are only purported realities, clues that lead nowhere while still implying the existence of the real.

One can’t help but ask what Baudrillard means when he says, first, that reality has been murdered—and then, that it never existed anyway. Perhaps he means that the existence of such a thing as reality was always an illusion, and it’s this illusion which has been murdered.

That’s a charitable reading, but I think I land there.

And having experienced reality and deep meaning myself, I know it’s not dead. ;)

But let’s consider the idea of a murdered illusion formerly known as reality. Let’s imagine for a moment that this is the collective consciousness into which we write.

What will our stories present once they’ve penetrated the mind and heart? When we open our Trojan Horse within the city gates, will we invade the mind with reality? Or will we present merely purported realities that are, in fact, illusions?

Considering “deep reality”

Fantasy is the freest genre. You can do anything (seemingly). Magic, other dimensions, superpowers—the canvas is wide open.

However, this is a surface appearance, and such things are really just trappings on an underlying structure. When a fantasy story satisfies deeply, it isn’t because of window-dressing—though that’s fun. It’s because the story means something—and means something deep.

There are only so many strings within the psyche that can resonate with deep meaning, and those strings don’t change. Every story that succeeds can work against nothing but the unchanging characteristics of human nature.

If that feels too prescriptive, consider that our experience as readers and viewers bears out this assumption. When we toss a book or stop watching something, it’s because no strings were plucked. We’re just not getting anything out of it.

Or, worse, the story is trying to pluck a string that doesn’t exist. More on that in a moment.

At this point, you might object. “He’s saying fantasy can only tell the truth? What nonsense! Fantasy can do whatever it wants!”

Sure. I feel that. Allow me to unpack this a little further.

Where fantasy fits as a truth-telling form

The job of fiction is to present the deeply real in the guise of the factually unreal.

Yet too often, we find modern fiction brazenly attempting to give deep reality to the deeply unreal by presenting it in the guise of the factually unreal—in accordance with effective techniques of fiction that have great power over the reader. (I’ll share some very generalized examples below.)

This type of story seizes on our imaginative capacity, presents a deeply unreal lie, and uses the power of imagined reality to make it seem good, true, and beautiful. It’s nothing less than the invasion of the imaginary world by images and principles that have no deep reality within the psyche—things that don’t pluck a string—yet which purport to have such deep reality due to how they are presented through powerful narrative techniques.

These stories lead astray the reader who searches desperately to understand the deeply real through the triangulated perspective of the factually unreal.  

What’s it like to read a story that tries to give being to that which is deeply unreal?

It feels like I’ve been promised an incredible view through coin-operated binoculars. I put a coin in, but no matter where I turn the instrument, no matter how I adjust the focus, the binoculars show me nothing at all. There is simply nothing in view. The author of the book has, indeed, murdered reality.

But what does this look like in terms of real books?

Two examples of the deeply unreal

Portrayal of power-grabbing as good, beautiful, and life-giving

I recently read a newish novel that presented a family relationship that the reader was intended to experience as close and loving. The characters were actually cold and disconnected from the start, though the author of the book kept telling me they were best buds. Ultimately, the relationship fragmented as each party indulged their own will to power. The story ended in brutality and murder, yet the reader was supposed to appreciate the arc of the character who “won.”

I would actually be okay with this—I love a dark story and I don’t mind a brutal ending. The problem was that the author’s characterization of the “winner” included no acknowledgment of the trauma the character had inflicted on themselves. This character wasn’t damaged at the end of the book. They were just in charge, and they “deserved it.” We were supposed to cheer for them. The book presented the implicit message that taking power is satisfying—that doing so gives meaning to the one who takes it, never mind who gets destroyed along the way.

Lest we should miss the intent here, all the blurbs on the back cover called out this character arc as satisfying and excellent. This was, indeed, central to the book’s positioning in the literary marketplace. I’d even say this was the spiritual purpose of the book, whether the author knew it or not.

Portrayal of one skin color as inherently good, another as inherently bad

I recently read a newish novel in which all the good guys had one skin color, while all the bad guys had another skin color. It was just as infantile as it sounds. Sadly, I can’t say much more about this one without clearly identifying it. Also, I couldn’t finish it. But I got far enough to feel spiritually sick.

Maybe this one ends with the “winners” experiencing devastating guilt over their partiality, and maybe no amount of power-grabbing or mea culpas can assuage that guilt. That would be great, but getting me to finish the book is the author’s job, not mine as a reader.

Anyway, nothing in the first half of the book (or in the author’s other work) suggested it might end as it should. In the portion of the book that I read, the reader was expected to empathize with the people of one skin color while agreeing that the people of the other skin color were bad.

All right. Enough negativity. On to the positive! :)

Two books that portray the “deeply real” quite well

I’ll turn to Lois McMaster Bujold here—and I don’t feel bad that both my examples come from her. She’s phenomenal!

Her novels Shards of Honor and The Sharing Knife are great examples of authentic representations of deep reality. I won’t give too many spoilers, but Shards of Honor plays really well with questions of romance, power, and gender roles, while The Sharing Knife handles tensions between traditions and individuality without indicting either combatant. Neither book forces an ideology on the reader. Rather, each one presents real people dealing with complex struggles. Because Bujold’s craftsmanship is so good—and because of that lack of propagandizing—we slip effortlessly into the deep reality space in which the characters play. Consequently, we’re free to reach our own conclusions about the narrative material. That’s such a great feeling.

What, then, is “deeply real?”

I could write a whole post on this. Broadly speaking, authentic representations of deep reality fall into two major categories.

• Representations that DEscribe. These aspects of a story show us things that accord with lived experience. They leave us saying, “Yep, that’s how it is.”

• Representations that PREscribe. These aspects of a story cast a vision for how things ought to be—whether or not we’ve ever experienced things that way. They leave us saying, “Wow. Whatever that was, it was so true, good, and beautiful, I wish it was real.”

Few writers will encounter hostility for descriptive representations of deep reality. After all, our first task is to establish verisimilitude and suspend disbelief. We get there with authentic depictions of evil, relatable character motivation, and compelling character responses to evil. No biggie.

However, it’s the prescriptive representations of deep reality that can rouse hostility against us. Has the nuclear family formed your identity in ways you wouldn’t give up? Remember that modern Marxists want to abolish the thing that made you who you are. They don’t want you to exist—or they want your history to be different than it is. If your story holds up the nuclear family as a positive thing, even just an aspirational thing, you may come under fire.

The nuclear family isn’t the only example. I could give many more, and doubtless you’re already thinking of some. The main thing is to consider how your story reflects deep reality in both descriptive and prescriptive ways. This is closely related to the questions a storyteller must engage when portraying evil—which I tackled in this post: How Should A Storyteller Handle Despicableness?

Resurrecting the real

In the midst of this insanity, what is our purpose as fantasy writers?

Our job is to resurrect the real.

Where lost and confused readers may settle for stories that pluck no strings, we should throw open the instrument and give the rustiest strings a great big TWANG. We should show our readers what’s real by making it resonate inside them.

Whatever you’re writing, let’s resurrect the real together. That’s what this Substack is all about.

What does this mean in terms of narrative nuts and bolts? Read on: Resurrecting the Real Through Fiction: A Manifesto.