Transforming the World






Youthwrite camp, day 3: Transforming the World
In fantasy writing you’re probably going to be making up impossible stuff, like talking groundhogs and accountants with wings. Readers aren’t going to accept these wonders if they stay “unreal” (that is, if they remain only an idea unconnected to anything in their own experience). You have to make the unreal thing come to life in the reader’s mind. How? By grounding the impossible in believable details of the physical world. The world where we stub our toes and get pimples and have to go to the bathroom. It’s a safe bet this is the world your readers live in.
EXERCISE: write a short descriptive piece of a place you know very well. It can be a room, a building, an outdoor setting, as long as it’s somewhere other than where you are right now. Imagine yourself in that place and move around in it. Describe what you see. Pick up objects. Look in drawers, under rocks, behind furniture. Use all your senses in the description.


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