Author reflections
Is fantasy writing just escapism?
An emotional understanding is the true heart of the story.
The great fantasy novel “Legend” by David Gemmell was first started when the author had been diagnosed with cancer. He began to write about a fantasy kingdom experiencing a great and existential siege. A threat to its very existence.
In part, this was a distraction — something to take Gemmell’s mind off his condition. But we can see that other factors might well have been at work in the creative process, and that particular choice of story. The siege was in many ways a metaphor for what the author was experiencing in his own life. At the time he believed he had only a few months to live — though happily, the diagnosis proved to have been mistaken.
After that point, Gemmell went on to write dozens of novels in his life. These include several of my personal favorites. Lion of Macedon, for example, was a major inspiration for my own novel, Sparta Online.
It’s moving and also curious how his hunger to write was sparked by that traumatic time in his life.
But the passion to engage with a story even when things are at their hardest is certainly not unique to Gemmell.
I think there is something profound about the way we turn to stories, to fiction, when we are trying to make sense of and cope with the challenges that we face.
That’s why I think that when people assume that fantasy writing is just about escapism and fairy tales, they miss the point. The best fantasy stories connect us with real human experiences, just like other stories can.
After all, aren’t detective stories or spy thrillers also a form of fantasy?
What really matters is that we see something real in the characters and experiences. We connect with them emotionally. Understand what the stakes are. We root for the heroes, and against the people and things that stand in their way.
These factors are true of any story. It’s how the story works.
If we think about some of the most basic stories of all — children’s fairy tales — they have a lot in common with fantasy novels. Dangerous journeys, witchcraft, talking animals… there’s so much there that is quintessential fantasy (the same is true of some of the great epic poems of ancient Greece, and of some religious tales).
What’s more, fairy tales are like fantasy stories in that there is often something deeper going on. It’s not the orcs and the magic spells that make us care about a good fantasy story.
And the same is true of a fairy tale, too.
Think about Little Red Riding Hood. Is it really just about a young girl taking food to her grandmother?
Or could it be that the story is about the dangers of growing up? About the people you can meet who seem harmless at first but are dangerous, even deadly, beneath the surface?
Without getting too deep in the psychoanalysis of stories, the point is that we engage on an emotional level with a good fantasy tale and that doing so can help us to make sense of our real life, too. That is true of both the authors and the readers.
Sure, if you are like me, you enjoy exploring vast and imaginative new kingdoms. It can be a way of putting the everyday stresses of our lives out of mind. That escapism is genuine and valid. But at the same time, there is something very real about well-drawn characters, their fears, aspirations, and relationships.
A good story helps us to think about our own lives and reflect on what really matters.
Perhaps that is why, when David Gemmell thought that he had only a short time to live, he chose to write a fantasy story as a way of coping.
J. F. Danskin is an author of LitRPG and historical fantasy. His series ‘The Tooth and Claw Guild’ is in many ways a classic LitRPG, but with some real twists the further you go. ‘Sparta Online’ is an ebook series based on ancient Greek wars and myths, and it ties into the same overall world. He has also written VR-based fantasy novels and stories set around a game called ‘Shadow Kingdoms’.