career fantasy essay

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February 29, 2024

• Writing Your Career Goals Essay

Check out all the blog posts in this series:

• Identifying the Ingredients of a Winning Essay
• Finding a Theme for Your Statement of Purpose
• Revise and Polish Your Application Essays

Your career goals essay demands a laser-like focus. A personal statement, by contrast, allows for some flexibility in its content, though you can – and often should – discuss your career goals. But a career goals essay has a particular and packed agenda. In fact, the prompt for a career goals essay could actually include multiple questions, and in such cases, you want to make sure you address each of them.

For example, in 2022, Kellogg asked applicants to its one-year program to respond to the following prompt: “Please discuss your post-MBA career goal, the current experience you will leverage to support the transition, and the Kellogg 1Y opportunities that will help you reach this goal.” 

This prompt has three parts: (1) What do you want to do post-MBA ? (2) Why is the 1Y program appropriate for you? And (3) what experience has so far prepared you to succeed in your target role? 

So, always pay close attention to your target school’s prompt to ensure that you answer all the questions within its “single” question. 

Three elements of a successful career goals essay

In addition to having a distinct theme , your career goals essay should achieve the following:

• Highlight specific career achievements. Choose from your most notable or defining experiences. These could be related to your work, community involvement, or extracurricular activities. The experiences you select should showcase your leadership skills , creative thinking, collaborative abilities, and personal reflections about what you learned or gained.
• Explain why your experiences and influences make your career goal a logical and wise choice.
• Demonstrate why you are suited to a particular field as a result of your education, experience, abilities, and enthusiasm. Ideally, the material you choose to include will also allow you to prove your knowledge about industry trends and suggest how your abilities and strengths can help you contribute to that field.

It’s a very tall order to achieve all this.

Putting these elements together to create your goals essay

Let’s take a look at a sample MBA Goals Essay and see how these three key elements are incorporated.  

You should be able to easily recognize why the writer’s opening is attention-getting for all the right reasons. The writer introduces herself as the supremely busy executive she visualizes becoming in the future. She trades large amounts of stock, rushes off to a Zoom conference, hurries downstairs, flags down a taxi, then hops on a plane. As she describes this whirlwind of activity, we can practically feel her heart pumping.

After establishing her voice and personality in this opening, she offers context for her MBA goal. Notice that in writing about her work as an accountant for a major firm, she provides relevant details, including how many years she has been in the field, her bilingualism, and her specialty area as an auditor. This information is her springboard to explain why she is pursuing an MBA: she’s bursting out of her limited role as an accountant. Her eyes and ambition are set on a larger playing field as an international investment manager.

Write an essay, not a list or CV

Outstanding career goals essays are not lists of an applicant’s roles and achievements. Instead, they have a narrative flow and arc that convey the candidate’s palpable excitement about their career choice. This writer’s enthusiastic, dreamy first paragraph achieves this, and she returns to that image at the end, where she paints her idealized (if frantically busy) future. She also proves her seriousness by noting that she registered for the CFA exam.

Connect your career goals to your reasons for choosing a particular program

Many essay questions, especially those for MBA programs , will ask why you have chosen the school you’re applying to. Be prepared to respond knowledgeably and enthusiastically. And the only way to become knowledgeable – and enthusiastic – is by visiting campus in-person or virtually, attending student recruitment meetings, participating in forums, reading student blogs, watching videos of students speaking about their experiences, communicating directly with students and/or recent alumni, and otherwise doing your homework. As part of your research, make sure you have familiarized yourself with the courses and specializations that are relevant to your goals.

Summary Tips

• Focus on answering each and every question asked in a career goals essay prompt. Often, there is more than one.
• Highlight specific achievements vividly and in a way that shows that your career choice is logical for you.
• Do the research so you can write about why the school is a good fit for you and do so with genuine enthusiasm.

In the next post in this series , we’ll explain how to take all this advice and apply it to create an exemplary first draft.

Work one-on-one with an expert who will walk you through the process of creating a slam-dunk application. Check out our full catalog of application services . Our admissions consultants have read thousands of essays and know the exact ingredients of an outstanding essay.

By Judy Gruen, former Accepted admissions consultant. Judy holds a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. She is also the co-author of Accepted’s first full-length book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools . Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related resources:

• The Winning Ingredients of a Dynamic MBA Goals Essay , a free guide
• Grad School Personal Statement Examples
• Focus on Fit , podcast Episode 162

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Career Fantasy – A Future Job or a Serious Distraction to Your Success Right Now?

Most people have a career fantasy. What do I mean? Well, think about it right now; do you want to start a business that involves a cozy bed and breakfast in your favorite holiday spot? Or a cupcake business or a dog groomers? You get the picture and feel free to insert your own fantasy here as most of us have them.

You are not on your own as many folks day dream their way through their current job with a future fantasy of how the future might be.

It is real? Is it a fantasy? Does it matter? I think it matters for two reasons.

Firstly, if it is real, then what is stopping you from doing it on the sooner side? When pushed, my clients often realize that they have gotten no further than the headline and a surefire way to test your own assumptions is to start researching the feasibility and competition of the future industry you are considering entering. if you get this far, then maybe it is not a fantasy, maybe you are on the way to being an entrepreneur? Next step then is to perhaps apply SMART goals? Deep dive into real possibilities as it might be the ride of your life.

However, if you really do not want to own a B&B to the north, south, east or west of where you are now, you might find that out by truly not wanting to do any research or upon investigation find it not to be a viable job. If that is the case, then what role does it serve in terms of your mental involvement at work- is it keeping you engaged at work or distracted and disengaged?

Arguably, having a little dream can be a lovely way to keep you working so that you can save up for it, at least in your mind’s eye and this is a motivator (retirement is a different thing to being a business owner unless you can afford a working hobby).

But, what you do not want to do is to mistake this future perfect state as a “grass is greener” option instead of actually understanding why you do not like your job today. Examine with a coach what is really going on to see how to work out how to stay successfully or leave successfully but not to live in a dream your life away state so that you cannot engage in the present. Talk to a professional coach about real options for your future career and take a vacation to recharge if you feel like a rut is forming so that you can enjoy the present.

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Mar 20, 2024

How to Write a Fantasy Novel (+ Worldbuilding Template)

For writers who long to create epic stories, unforgettable characters, and sprawling imaginary lands, there’s no better genre choice than fantasy. Particularly for those who have always loved reading fantasy , writing your own novel could be the culmination of all those magical adventures!

And who better to guide you through the process than some of the best fantasy writers and editors in the industry? For this post, we’ve consulted masters of the realm (so to speak) who have worked with George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, James Dashner, and more.

How to write a fantasy novel from start to finish:

1. Read all the fantasy you can

2. build your book’s fantasy world, 3. create series-worthy characters, 4. plot a story that comments on the real world, 5. write a draft full of compelling detail, 6. get feedback from fantasy experts, 7. publish your fantasy masterpiece.

FREE COURSE

How to Write Fantasy Fiction

Learn to combine worldbuilding, plot, and character to create literary magic.

If you’re looking to write in this genre, you’ve likely read quite a bit of it already. But in order to succeed in your quest, you’ll have to read (or reread) even more!

Chersti Nieveen , an editor who has worked with bestselling authors like Brandon Sanderson, suggests picking 5 to 10 of your favorite fantasy books and tackling them with an eye for their strongest elements. This will help you absorb ideas not only for plot and character, but also for structure, descriptive techniques, dialogue, and more.

“Read the books that are classics. They are classics for a reason,” Chersti advises. “But also read the books that are bestsellers and the books that are award winners. Read and read and read, and you'll start to see your own writing improve.”

Start by reading your favorite tales of wizards, dragons, and more. Art by  Veronica O’Neill .

Focus on your niche

Need help narrowing down your reading list? Try reading only within your own subgenre of fantasy for a spell (no pun intended)!

For example, if you’re writing a “sword and sorcery” fantasy, you might study Michael Moorcock’s Elric sequence, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane series, and Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro . Or if you want to write a “portal” fantasy in which characters are transported to another world, you might revisit classics such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Chronicles of Narnia to mull over how that magic works.

For even more subgenre-specific recommendations, check out these posts:

• 26 Grimdark Books to Make You Shiver
• 20 Highly Addictive Urban Fantasy Books
• 25 Steampunk Titles That Define the Genre
• 30 Best YA Fantasy Books for Teens

A strong setting is crucial to any good work of fiction, and perhaps in fantasy most of all. It must be distinctive enough to draw readers into the story, but not so elaborate as to confuse them.

The first thing to consider is whether your novel will take place in our world (often referred to as “low fantasy”) or in a different world (“high fantasy”). The Harry Potter series, for example, takes place in a version of our world: witches, wizards, and magical creatures exist alongside Muggles like ourselves. The Lord of the Rings , meanwhile, is set in an entirely separate world with its own made-up lands, languages, and more.

Next up, build out the landscape of your fantasy world. Art by Paolo P .

Figure out what sets your world apart

After all that reading, you should have plenty of worldbuilding inspiration — but you also don’t want your book to read like a copy of someone else’s.

“You want to be original, so ask yourself: what sets my world apart?” says Alex Foster , a Reedsy ghostwriter who’s penned eight bestsellers.

To get you started, think about the following aspects of your world:

• How did this world come to be, both historically and in its current form?
• What are the limitations of its magic — physical, moral, or otherwise?
• Purely in terms of aesthetics, what do its various settings look like?

For even more thought-provoking prompts to help flesh out your fantasy world, download our ultimate worldbuilding template below!

FREE RESOURCE

The Ultimate Worldbuilding Template

130 questions to help create a world readers want to visit again and again.

Write down your rules

With the creation of a new world also comes the creation of all its internal logic and magic systems. True, fantasy should serve as an escape from dreary bureaucracy — but you still need to lay down the law about your world, otherwise people won’t take it seriously.

“I often see first-time fantasy writers breaking their own rules, and it really takes the reader out of the story,” says Jenny Bowman , a Reedsy editor who worked on Robert Beatty’s MG fantasy novel Serafina and the Black Cloak .

To combat this, she suggests writing down a reference list of rules so you don’t forget them: “When do the suns come up? Can only children under the age of 10 fly? When casting a spell, does it transform the object or create an object from nothing?”

“Know the rules of your world (what we call physics in the real world) when you're writing fantasy and don’t break them — unless you’ve thought a great deal and it’s intentional.”

Now that your world is established, it’s time to populate it with sparkling characters (perhaps literally, depending on your lore). No matter how great your world is, don’t just throw in some  stock characters and call it a day!

Dynamic characters with clear goals

“The best characters are complex and original,” notes ghostwriter Alex Foster. “They possess realistic motives and weaknesses, and they change over time due to events and supporting characters in the story.”

In other words, great characters — and certainly great protagonists — should be dynamic , meaning they undergo internal change as the story progresses. This is typically an evolution in their beliefs and values, often to the extent that their whole perspective shifts.

What sets them on this journey? A clear set of character motivations : whether related to their personal growth, resolving external conflicts, or saving the world. In fantasy, “big” character motivations tend to fall into that last category — but make sure to give your characters “small” motivations as well to keep them well-rounded and move the story along!

Your characters should be vivid, complex, and motivated in their actions. Art by  Anna Arkhipova .

The character development process

As with worldbuilding, the more deeply you contemplate your character(s) at the outset, the stronger they will be in your novel.

Alex suggests “interviewing” your main character as a useful tactic. “What do they fear most? What are their goals? What are they willing to do to achieve these goals? Do this with all your characters when you're writing fantasy: craft a questionnaire and get your answers from them.”

Editor Jenny Bowman actually encourages writers to develop characters through short stories first. This process of working out the details, she says, “gives you the freedom to create a new universe with no boundaries.”

Reedsy’s Character Profile Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

Regardless of your methods, you should have a good amount of material for your world and characters before moving on to the next step: the plot.

As you outline the beats of your novel, remember that great fantasy plots don’t just deliver dramatic twists, but also draw compelling parallels to the real world. Take an epic political fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire , or even a short story like “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin — at the core of these plots is some kind of real-world issue.

Think about issues that are important to you

According to Rebecca Heyman , a Reedsy editor who has worked with popular fantasy authors such as Elise Kova, writing fantasy can be a great outlet. “Your concerns about politics, culture, the environment, technology, violence, racism, misogyny — these issues can be explored in inventive, eye-opening ways while writing fantasy.” 

“ Carry On by Rainbow Rowell does this brilliantly. There are undercurrents of identity politics explored there, with deep characterization that merges meaningfully with the fantastical elements of the text.”

Indeed, the next step of the plotting process is to…

Intertwine key plot points with fantasy

Each major plot point of your story should have a healthy dose of magic. Art by JC Pouzols .

Next, you’ll determine exactly how magic will play into your book’s plot — then use it to build out those crucial parallels.

For example, in The Lord of the Rings , the One Ring symbolizes the hypnotic, destructive influence of power. While Tolkien denied that the story was an allegory for anything specific, the plot speaks for itself as a metaphor for power, showing how absolute power can corrupt absolutely.

To sample a few plot points from The Fellowship of the Ring :

• Frodo inherits the magical One Ring. Gandalf, who has been around long enough to understand its danger, tells him to remove it from the Shire.
• On their journey, Frodo and his friends are pursued by the wraithlike Black Riders. These riders are later revealed to be men who used the other Rings of Power to gain immortality but now find themselves helplessly enslaved.
• After Frodo falls under the Ring’s spell, he uses it to turn invisible and flee. Sam, who remains pure of heart and intention, follows him… in part to ensure that the Ring does not overtake Frodo entirely.

These key beats — and the One Ring’s role within them — demonstrate how you might connect fantasy and reality in your own story.

Fantasy Novel Outline Template

Craft an out-of-this-world novel with our step-by-step template.

Another classic Tolkien move is to spare no detail in your writing. But don’t forget that vibrant, in-the-moment details are just as important (if not more so) as backstory!

Ground readers with sensory details

Reedsy editor Erin Young , who worked on James Riley’s Story Thieves series and James Dashner’s Maze Runner series, reminds authors that they should show, not tell in a fantasy draft. “Don't just tell your reader the basics of your world. Instead, give them scenery when it relates to the story by getting your characters to interact with their surroundings.”

Michelle Hope , an editor who has worked with George R. R. Martin and Blake Crouch, couldn’t agree more — and notes that Martin is particularly skilled at this tactic.

“Crisp air, hooves clattering on ironwood planks, a warm tongue, women’s perfume, summerwine, soft fur. [Martin’s] writing is full of these concrete, real-life details… and when a reader can viscerally inhabit your world, they won’t question it when you introduce the fantastical into your story. They’ll just take your word for it.”

Sensory details like the gnarled bark of a tree, a dreamy pink sky at twilight, and newly cast spells shimmering in the air will help immerse readers in your story. Art by Josh Tufts .

Don’t info-dump

Some of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th century were occasionally guilty of info-dumping. As editor Chersti Nieveen notes, with readers’ attention spans getting shorter and shorter, it’s best to avoid expositional overload if possible.

“Fantasy writers often try to introduce too many characters on one page, or there’s an info dump to reveal how the magic system works. Pages and pages before they even introduce the story… and you end up dropping readers that way.”

If you’ve completed a draft full of brilliant worldbuilding, dynamic characters, and insightful commentary, well done! However, seeking a second opinion at this point can also be very helpful.

Seek casual test readers first

Sometimes the best beta readers are the people you already know — family, friends, and acquaintances who enjoy fantasy and are willing to give your novel a look.

If you’re not sure whom to ask, you could always check out a fantasy-friendly writing community or critique circle , like the online SFF Chronicles forums or the Critters workshop run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

Work with an experienced fantasy editor

That said, if you’re serious about improving your novel, you should really be working with a professional fantasy editor . An editor can offer incisive, experience-based feedback that will bolster not only your writing, but potentially your book sales as well.

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Having edited your book into its best possible form, there’s only one thing left to do: get it traditionally published , or publish it yourself on a platform like Amazon KDP.

The wonderful thing about fantasy is that its readers have a nearly infinite appetite for the genre, so you can’t really go wrong either way. The previously linked posts are detailed, step-by-step guides on traditional publishing and self-publishing, but here are a few more resources to help:

• 100+ Literary Agents Seeking Fantasy Submissions
• The Ultimate Fantasy Book Title Generator
• Fantasy Name Generator for Elves, Dragons & More
• The Best Fantasy Book Publishing Companies

Best of luck on your hero’s journey — and remember to avoid cursed jewelry at all costs! 💍

16 responses

T.L. Branson says:

01/09/2017 – 05:36

I'm doing #2 right now. I totally get it. Writing short stories has helped me tremendously in understanding some fuzzy characters who have been more in the background in my main novel. Writing their story out helps me mold them a little better and write a real person instead of just a cardboard cutout.

↪️ jennyb_writes replied:

05/09/2017 – 23:29

Awesome!! I have worked with authors who have taken this step and those who haven't - I can always tell the difference. Way to go!

Lady Adellandra Dratianos says:

03/09/2017 – 23:48

I started my series "Chronicles of the Dragon Nations" by introducing a lot of people at once in the very first drafts years ago. Now, I introduce wherever they show up, but once. If it's been twenty or so pages since the introduction, I summarize who they were, either by dialogue between two characters or by reiterating who they were. Another rule from above that I use is the "Don't break your own rules." i.e. In my books, those in the Mortal Realm cannot shift or fly, due to gravity and the laws of nature. I had to remind myself this when I had three characters from another land, shapeshifters from the Dragon Nations are able to shift. Once reading it over for edits, I remembered my Mortal Realm rule and changed it. Lady Adellandra www.amazon.com/author/ladyadellandra

05/09/2017 – 23:32

Don't break your own rules is a tricky one...way to go catching your mistake in rewrites! Sometimes those laws of nature are so subtle and it always pays to pay attention in rewrites and edits. Happy writing!

Omnipleuvre says:

16/01/2018 – 20:53

One thing I've seen a lot, even in published books, is the description featuring waaaaay too many names at once. I should be able to grasp the premise of your story without needing to know that Adriana, heir to the Kingdom of Tallyrand is about to cross the Wall of Gishegrunurman to search for the amulet of Kinscaer. Too many names all at once is almost as bad as an infodump I feel.

Jenna Hunter says:

27/03/2018 – 20:53

It was interesting to read that the environment can be a plot point in a fantasy book. I think that making a lot of detail in a book is really important. I love reading books that create an entire universe, especially full of dragons, dwarves and all kinds of mythical creatures. http://crimsonthedragon.com/

Rishabh Chaturvedi says:

31/05/2018 – 18:49

How do I make my world different from the ones that influenced me to write a fantasy novel??

Janice Swanson says:

28/11/2018 – 12:59

What a wonderful article! Once I dream about how to create its fantasy the world, write a large number of books about this world, and I hope that once on my books based the film. All of the above items are really important to know the novice writer. Point # 13 is especially important for me, because the idea to write a book came to me after I was inspired by the works of Tolkien and George Orwell. These writers have their own inimitable style, and each of their stories makes me think about a lot. I would really like to write a novel, and to get it in a new genre, it will be something between fantasy and anti-utopia novel. Thank you for sharing such interesting and useful articles.

25/02/2019 – 11:17

A very interesting article, I learned a lot of new things for myself, which I hadn’t thought about before, but unfortunately not all the tips are applicable at the moment to modern works. The market is overcrowded with a variety of short-growing love stories, psychology and other tinsel. Now there is not enough quality fiction, but what appears is read immediately and very quickly. I strongly advise you to read a series of books about the Witcher, insanely interesting books, I just could not tear myself away for several months. If you want to know more about fiction, then examine this link.

Someguy says:

31/05/2019 – 13:35

"...and no-one would instinctively group Harry Potter and Stephen King's The Dark Tower in the same category." FYI. A relic from Harry Potter's world actually appears in the Dark Tower. While not in the same category, it easily can convince a reader of Harry Potter to read The Dark Tower or vice versa. It's a bit of a unique relationship.

↪️ Nick replied:

17/06/2019 – 12:00

Also, bogarts are based on It/The Spider/whatever species it is. And while she(Pennywise is just one form and a female spider is its true form) only kind of appears in TDT, there's a character in the series that's the same species I do believe

17/06/2019 – 12:02

I absolutely hate short stories. I can't write that little!

Elijah says:

25/06/2019 – 21:24

I’ve been working on a 5 book story for about 15 years now. I took several writing classes and have become so self critical of my writing that it has been hard to progress. I also lost a lot of my original papers due to mice (I found it easier to write by hand). These tips definitely make me feel like I’m on the right path lately.

Joseph Smith says:

07/11/2019 – 07:30

I'm currently on the third chapter of a book that I hopefully will actually complete, and so far I have stuck to most of these rules (high fantasy, sword and sorcery/heroic fantasy with a touch of dark fantasy), with the only two I haven't done as of yet is re reading lotr and creating a character interview (I have made a DnD character sheet of him if that counts). The kind of story I'm going with (not going to go too far into it) is a paladin raised from the dead only to have magic that he doesn't understand return some form of life to him finds a new purpose in hunting down undead and returning them to the afterlife. Any advice I can get?

William Anthony Pitzer says:

07/11/2019 – 22:01

The issue I have with number 2 is that I generally hate short stories, so obviously I'll find it difficult to write them. If a story is too short, then it's impossible to flesh out characters and a world tremendously, which is the whole reason that I read fantasy to begin with.

Matthew R Bishop says:

14/02/2020 – 18:39

Thank you! Rewriting like eight books because of this article, ugh. But thank you ;)

Comments are currently closed.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Literary Genres — Fantasy

Essays on Fantasy

Writing an essay about this topic can be an exciting and creative way to explore the power of imagination and its impact on our lives. Whether you're a student looking for an engaging essay topic or a writer seeking to delve into the realm of Fantasy, this genre offers endless possibilities for exploration and analysis.

When it comes to choosing a topic for your Fantasy essay, the possibilities are endless. You can explore the themes of magic, adventure, and mythical creatures, or you can delve into the psychological aspects of Fantasy and its effects on the human mind. Consider what aspects of Fantasy intrigue you the most and how you can develop a unique and compelling topic that will captivate your audience.

For an argumentative essay on Fantasy, you can explore topics such as the impact of Fantasy literature on society, the portrayal of gender roles in Fantasy, or the ethical implications of magical powers in Fantasy stories. For a cause and effect essay, you can investigate how Fantasy influences creativity, empathy, and problem-solving skills. An opinion essay can delve into your personal experiences with Fantasy and how it has shaped your worldview. Lastly, an informative essay can explore the history of Fantasy literature, the works of influential Fantasy authors, or the cultural significance of Fantasy in different societies.

In an essay about Fantasy, your thesis statement should clearly convey the main idea or argument you will be discussing. For example, "The portrayal of magic in Fantasy literature reflects society's desire for escapism and wonder," or "The exploration of mythical creatures in Fantasy stories serves as a reflection of human fears and desires."

When crafting an for your Fantasy essay, you can set the stage by discussing the allure of Fantasy and its impact on culture, literature, and the human imagination. For example, you can begin with a captivating anecdote about a memorable Fantasy story or delve into the historical origins of Fantasy literature.

In the of your Fantasy essay, you can reflect on the broader implications of your topic and how it relates to the human experience. You can also leave your readers with a thought-provoking question or a call to action to further explore the world of Fantasy.

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Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore.

Most fantasy uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic, magic practitioners (sorcerers, witches and so on) and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's use of narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. In writing fantasy the author uses worldbuilding to create characters, situations, and settings that may not be possible in reality.

There are over 50 fantasy subgenres and the list keeps on growing as brilliant writers experiment, fusing genres and subgenres together. However, the most essential are: high or epic fantasy, low fantasy, magical realism, sword and sorcery, dark fantasy, fables, fairy tales, superhero fiction.

Examples of fantasy include William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, George R.R. Martin

1. Young, H. (2015). Race and popular fantasy literature: Habits of whiteness. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315724843/race-popular-fantasy-literature-helen-young) 2. Sullivan III, C. W. (1992). Fantasy. In Stories and Society: Children’s Literature in its Social Context (pp. 97-111). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-22111-0_7) 3. Nikolajeva, M. (2003). Fairy tale and fantasy: From archaic to postmodern. Marvels & Tales, 17(1), 138-156. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/27/article/42224/summary) 4. Petzold, D. (1986). Fantasy fiction and related genres. Modern Fiction Studies, 32(1), 11-20. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26281846) 5. Stephan, M. (2016). Do you believe in magic? The Potency of the Fantasy Genre. Coolabah, (18), 3-15. (https://www.raco.cat/index.php/coolabah/article/view/327572) 6. Feldt, L. (2016). Harry Potter and contemporary magic: Fantasy literature, popular culture, and the representation of religion. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 31(1), 101-114. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537903.2016.1109877) 7. Angelskår, S. (2005). Policing Fantasy: problems of genre in fantasy literature (Master's thesis). (https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/25415) 8. Ekman, S. (2016). Urban Fantasy: A Literature of the unseen. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 27(3), 452. (https://www.proquest.com/docview/1933853280?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true)

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101 Ways to Find Work...And Keep Finding Work for the Rest of Your Career! by Dr. Charles Michael Austin

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Career Fantasies

When you were a kid, you likely fantasized about what you wanted to do when you grew up. Odds are, you imagined things like being a firefighter, a ballet dancer, a cowboy, a cowgirl, an astronaut, a doctor, etc.

Remember your first “career fantasy.” Starting there, move forward in time and recall every career fantasy you ever had—lawyer, corporate executive, explorer, whatever. Picture yourself doing each one of them. Create a list of the names of these fantasy occupations.

Finally, review your list, paying special attention to the following:

• Patterns you detected: Leading people, creating something new, building things, overcoming physical challenges, etc.
• Desirable features: Working independently during the hours of your ...

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Your Guide to Becoming a Fantasy Writer with an Online Creative Writing Degree

Written by Scott Wilson

Many people read to take their minds away from the banality or concerns of everyday living. There is no genre that goes further than the magical, fantastical realm of fantasy.

From The Lord of the Rings to A Song of Ice and Fire , fantasy is a genre that can embrace every tone of human emotion and stretch imaginations in incredible directions.

Fantasy writers must have incredible imaginations themselves, alongside the story-telling skills to unveil them. Many fantasy worlds are extraordinary places, detailed down to the last thread—and invented entirely in the mind of the author.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Fantasy is also a genre with high expectations. Readers want to be amazed, but they also want to understand the story, develop attachments to characters, and feel that the world you are showing them is every bit as real as their own. To achieve the willing suspension of disbelief necessary in a successful work of fantasy, authors have to go well beyond just marking out an incredible vision. They also have to make it indelible.

While many of the prototypical works of fantasy incorporate strong and clear distinctions between good and evil, modern fantasy writing has become more realistic and more nuanced. Work by Joe Abercrombie and Patrick Rothfuss in the genre has kept many of the trappings of fantasy, but introduced characters and situations with more complexity and depth.

This is an exciting era for fantasy writers, and degrees in creative writing can help them master the form and take it to new heights at the same time.

What Defines the Fantasy Writing Genre?

Works of fantasy are distinguished by their incorporation of the impossible, along with an acceptance of implausibility. A fantasy character may fly through the air on a broomstick with no explanation given other than magic; a character in science fiction may do the same, only the broomstick would be called a speeder bike and its levitating abilities ascribed to repulsorlift technology designed to push against gravitational forces.

Magic is a common characteristic of fantasy, but not a required one . Other fantasy works exist in mythical versions of historical reality, embracing swords more than sorcery without the limitations of actual human history.

Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. ~ Walt Disney

Fantasy is ancient, a primal example of the stories that humans have woven for one another for as long as tales have been told. Myths and legends are the progenitors of modern fantasy works. Writers in the genre both re-tell the classic stories of gods and monsters and build on them with new visions of the fantastic.

The wide range of sub-genres in the field of fantasy makes it easy to find a niche that will connect your skills with the demands of readers.

That depth of history allows for extensive use of symbolism and allusion in fantasy today. And the enduring appeal of fantasy tales points to some deep connection to such stories in the human psyche.

It’s likely that fantasy taps into some deep narrative need in people. That makes it a genre that’s going to be a home for creative writers for generations to come.

How To Become a Fantasy Fiction Writer

There’s no better example of this than the man who re-defined and re-invigorated the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien. While The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were the works that were published to wide acclaim and enduring popularity, they in many ways represented only small windows into the larger world that Tolkien spent much of his life inventing. Middle Earth grew out of languages that he started inventing as a child. The Elvish tongue of Quenya was an exercise of pure imagination. Only as he felt the need to develop a history to explain the development of the language did the tales and myths of the One Ring come about.

Imagination is just the start. It took Tolkien most of the rest of his life to take even a fragment of his vision and put it to paper… and he was a professor of old English!

Developing the writing skills to take your fantastic visions and make them both relatable and compelling takes hard work… maybe harder than anything faced by writers of more conventional genres.

Like those other creative writers, to become a fantasy author you’ll need to crack the rudiments of grammar and vocabulary. You’ll need to understand characterization and tone. And you’ll have to master the conventions of the genre.

But those are just the basics that any responsible writer has to learn along the way. There are definitely some types of creative writing skills that are more necessary for fantasy authors than those in other genres.

The Intricate Vision of a World Builder

In some cases, the universes created for fantasy works take on their own lives quite apart from the literature that inhabits them. Geographers study maps of Middle Earth; bestiaries have been compiled for the exotic fauna of Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age setting. To come up with such a detailed and coherent setting requires not just imagination, but discipline as well.

A Command of Language and Voice

A part of fantasy milieus is set through the use of language. Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell perfectly captures the 19 th -century voice of English novelists like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, lending verisimilitude to her setting and a reality to her English magic that would otherwise fall flat. In other fantasy works, like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire , entirely new languages are invented and used to establish exotic fantasy worlds.

All of this requires both a love of language and a strong command of the grammar and rhythm. Whether portraying a formal medieval banquet or a conclave of elves in the depths of the forest, the voice of the work and of the characters in it helps set the tone for fantasy readers.

Familiarity With the Fantasy Canon

It’s also valuable to read widely in the field of history and historical fiction. Many apparently fantastic elements in some fantasy works are in fact all too real… ripped from the pages of obscure history books, repurposed into new worlds.

Plotting Fantastic Stories Like a Pro

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. ~ Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess)

Fantasy works don’t have to be long, but they often are. In fact, it’s tough to find fantasy novels today that aren’t multi-part series, with sequels and prequels with long story arcs planned from the very start.

That kind of long-term thinking requires highly developed plotting skills. Bringing together the threads of large casts of characters and kingdoms across generations, as many fantasy authors do, requires excellent planning and documentary skills.

Basic Writing and Editing Skills

Long written works take a lot of basic, old-fashioned, key-clacking writing. Novels of five-hundred to a thousand pages, like A Dance with Dragons , don’t write themselves. The basic skill of putting 300,000 words together coherently takes practice.

The discipline of sitting down and cranking out a couple of thousand words a day is just the start, however. Fantasy authors are as prone as any other to going down blind alleys, laying down incomprehensible sentences, and making basic mistakes of grammar and form. So those high word counts also mean a lot of long hours in self-editing.

It’s possible to develop all the key traits for becoming a fantasy writer on your own, but an education dedicated to creative writing is a more certain route to the lands of fairy and dragon.

How You Can Build Your Skills as a Fantasy Author Through Online Creative Writing Degrees

Formal training in creative writing through a degree program offers a well-lit path to the skills needed as a fantasy writer. Although most creative writing degrees don’t offer specific concentrations in fantasy or other such genres, they do support fantasy writing.

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it. ~ Lloyd Alexander

More importantly, however, they encourage the exploration and understanding of a broad range of writing formats, genres, and techniques. Although not focused on fantasy, that kind of broad exposure to literary styles, techniques, and ideas will benefit your writing in any genre. The cross-pollination of gritty, realistic historical fiction with fantasy is part of the magic behind Game of Thrones ; the wit and narrative style of Jane Austen helped make Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell the groundbreaking sensation it was.

The Inklings

Charter members and their most notable works of fantasy include:

• C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
• Owen Barfield, The Silver Trumpet
• R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
• Charles Williams, All Hallows Eve
• R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros
• Christopher Tolkien, editor of the Middle-earth legendarium

Although the group was informal, it incorporated some of the same kinds of experiences that you will encounter in any good creative writing program today. A group of knowledgeable, insightful, interested readers and writers gathering together to discuss their work and encourage one another in their pursuits.

Many of the members, including Lewis and the Tolkiens, credit others of the Inklings for heavily influencing their own writing and providing the support and encouragement needed to finish and publish their works.

How do creative writing programs develop your own knowledge and skills to give you a shot at similar fantasy success?

Wide-ranging Reading Requirements Expose You to Every Narrative and Literary Technique

High-volume Writing Assignments Develop Your Technical and Practical Skills

Every writer of every stripe will tell you that the only way to really learn how to write is by writing. In a good creative writing program, you won’t have any other option. Whether it’s work on your required final project or any of the myriad of smaller, directed writing assignments, or even writing up feedback on the work of others, you’ll find your fingers constantly flying to keep up. That helps build the kind of discipline you’ll need in writing long works of fantasy as well as a high level of practical experience in putting sentences, paragraphs, and full pages of words together.

Discussion and Feedback Help You Find the Lines Where Disbelief Is Suspended

Fantasy writers in particular have a tough path to walk in determining what the typical reader will accept as a part of the tale and what may be rejected as a fantasy too far. The regular review, feedback, and discussion of a creative writing program from both professors and fellow students will help you develop the feel for that line. By putting your imaginary tales in front of a wide range of readers to face scrutiny, you’ll get a good sense of how the typical reader will respond to your stories.

The Time and Space To Explore Your Imagination

Networking and Professional Development To Get a Foothold in Publishing

Creative writing degrees are good about exposing students to the practical side of becoming published writers. Both by featuring guest lecturers and instructors who are published authors that have gone through the grinder, and by cultivating long-term relationships with industry professionals and organizations, creative writing programs give you the inside view of how fantasy sausage is made.

By the same token, you’ll also meet the right people and develop the right relationships to get your fantasy manuscripts in front of decision-makers who can turn them into real books.

Online Creative Writing Programs Are a Perfect Fit for Reclusive Fantasy Writers

Although many college degrees are available online today, creative writing programs are particularly well-suited to the format. While getting together with professors and fellow students, participating in workshops, and engaging in seminars are all valuable parts of a creative writing program, the reality is that you spend a lot of time on your own no matter what. While you are ploughing through a stack of reading assignments or polishing up your own writing work, whether or not you are physically on campus doesn’t matter a lot.

Many online creative writing programs do still involve at least a handful of meetings, sometimes on campus or sometimes in more pastoral surroundings at writer’s retreats or conferences.

Low-residency or entirely online creative writing programs let you focus on your work in the comfort of your own home, and connect with your classmates through the magic of the internet any time you like. Turning in your magnum opus at 3am by e-mail won’t cause anyone to blink an eye. Online video seminars allow you to kick your ideas around and comment on works just as if you were one of the Inklings sitting in the back of The Eagle and Child… but without the commute to Oxford.

Considering the Right Creative Writing Degree Level to Become a Fantasy Fiction Writer

There’s no single right answer to finding the best degree for a fantasy writing career. Much depends on your own goals, your finances, and your availability. But that also means that there are good educational options no matter what your position or path.

Certificate Programs in Creative Writing

Certificates offer a concentrated dose of college coursework in writing without a big time commitment and for a relatively affordable price. These courses often focus on particular genres or techniques, which can make them a good option for writers who need to focus on a particular area of improvement to up their fantasy writing game.

Associate Degrees in Creative Writing

Two-year degrees deliver the basics in grammar, writing, and editing together with a general liberal arts education that gives you a background for future studies. Sometimes called transfer degrees, these will often be accepted at four-year colleges as partial progress toward earning a full bachelor’s degree.

Bachelor’s Degrees in Creative Writing

The four-year bachelor’s degree is considered the standard entry-level degree in most American professions. It comes with the right combination of general knowledge and critical-thinking skills and specific professional training to make you a competent writer in all kinds of different writing jobs. With more opportunity to specialize in certain creative writing areas, this also gives you more chance to focus developing your expertise in fantasy.

Master’s Degrees in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts, or MFA, in creative writing offers an elite education in everything that goes into great works of literary art. But any sort of master’s in creative writing offers two or three years of intensive, focused study on the arts of weaving a story and polishing it to the highest level.

Doctoral Degrees in Creative Writing

Doctoral programs in creative writing are less aimed at writing than at teaching writing. Although a master’s degree has long been the standard for creative writing teachers, new PhD programs are delivering a more intensive academic focus for future professors that can take five or more years to complete.

Of course, the longer the program, the more expensive the education. Admissions committees also get more and more selective the further you go. But the level of training and the personalized attention you get will also become more intense the more advanced your level of study.

No matter which route you choose, you’ll come out the other side with better writing skills than you started with. You’ll also have a better idea what it takes to succeed as a fantasy author, and you’ll have the network of support and assistance you need to dance with your own dragons in the publishing wars to come.

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N. K. Jemisin’s Dream Worlds

By Raffi Khatchadourian

Several years ago, N. K. Jemisin, the fantasy and science-fiction author, had a dream that shook her. In her sleep, she found herself standing in a surreal tableau with a massif floating in the distance. “It was a chunk of rock shaped like a volcanic cone—a cone-shaped smoking mountain,” she recalled. Standing before the formation was a black woman in her mid-forties, with dreadlocks, who appeared to be holding the volcano aloft with her mind. She was glaring down at Jemisin and radiating anger. Jemisin did not know how she had triggered the woman’s fury, but she believed that, if she did not ameliorate it quickly, the woman would hurl the smoldering massif at her.

Jemisin awoke in a sweat and jotted down what she had seen. “I need to know how that person became who she is—a woman so angry that she was willing to move mountains,” she told me. “She was angry in a slow burn, with the kind of anger that is righteous, enough to change a planet. That’s a person who has been through so much shit that she has been pushed into becoming a leader. That’s an M.L.K. I needed to build a world that would explain her.”

Jemisin’s writing process often begins with dreams: imagery vivid enough to hang on into wakefulness. She does not so much mine them for insight as treat them as portals to hidden worlds. Her tendency is to interrogate what she sees with if/then questions, until her field of vision widens enough for her to glimpse a landscape that can hold a narrative. The inspiration for her début novel, “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms” (2010), was a dream vision of two gods. One had dark-as-night hair that contained a starry cosmos of infinite depth; the other, in a child’s body, manipulated planets like toys. From these images, Jemisin spun out a four-hundred-page story about an empire that enslaves its deities. The book established her as a prominent new voice.

Jemisin is black, in her mid-forties, and wears her hair in dreadlocks. In her author photo, she gazes sternly at the camera, as if ready for literary combat. In person, she is much warmer, but she likes the picture. Typically, at the center of her fiction, there is a character with coiled strength. Jemisin, who has a degree in psychology, is interested in power and in systems of subjugation. In her books, the oppressed often possess an enormous capacity for agency—a supernatural ability, even, that their oppressors lack—but they exist in a society that has been engineered to hold them down. Eventually, the world is reordered, often with a cataclysm.

The notes that Jemisin jotted down after her dream went into a folder on her computer where she stores “snippets, ideas, random thoughts.” Some are drawn from her reading of nonfiction: Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” Charles Mann’s “1491,” Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” Eventually, she told me, “this fragment pairs up with that fragment, and they form a Voltron, and become a story.” (Voltron is an anime “super robot” that emerges when other machines combine—an artifact of eighties television that Jemisin enjoyed as a girl.)

Another file in the folder was from 2009, when Jemisin attended a NASA -funded workshop, called Launchpad, where participants discussed what Earth might be like if it lost its moon. Some speculated that our planet’s axis would tilt wildly, triggering haphazard ice ages, and that its core might lose its stability, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The fragments in Jemisin’s folder began to pair up. She imagined a planet that had lost its moon and become seismically hyperactive. Such a place, she reasoned, could sustain life, but just barely; mass extinctions would be common. If the woman in her dream inhabited that planet, she wondered, then what would her civilization look like?

J. R. R. Tolkien once argued that the creation of an imaginary world was the highest form of artistic expression, but that it was also easily undervalued. If it is done well, much of the labor remains off the page. Before Tolkien wrote “The Lord of the Rings,” he invented a mythology, a history, and even languages for Middle-earth; he explained to a friend, “I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances). The other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities.” It annoyed him that people “stupidly and even maliciously confound Fantasy with Dreaming, in which there is no Art.” He wrote about elves. He wanted to be taken seriously, too.

Jemisin has no interest in pseudo-medieval Europe, but Tolkien would have recognized her rigor. To get a firsthand feel for volcanoes, she flew to Hawaii to smell sulfur and ash. To learn how people prepared for environmental stress, she researched end-of-days survivalists, though she stopped short of going into the wilderness to meet them. (“I wasn’t stupid,” she told me.)

As the idea of an ever-shattering planet developed in her imagination, Jemisin drew a map of a Pangaea-like supercontinent, which she wryly called the Stillness. She reasoned that its wealth would be concentrated in an urban center near the equator, at a geological spot that seemed stable, based on fault lines that she had sketched out. She decided arbitrarily that the woman in her dream lived in the volatile hinterlands—and then began to treat that decision like a discovered fact. “I’m, like, O.K., why isn’t she working to stabilize this powerful, wealthy part of society?” Jemisin told me. “Well, she must have at one point been part of that life, but somehow got away.” Gradually, the contours of a story emerged. “You let intuition do whatever it is going to do,” she said. “I had a sentence in mind: ‘Let’s start with the end of the world.’ That can mean the literal end of the world, it can mean the end of a civilization, or it can mean grief. That was the point where I decided that her son had died.” The grief she understood. Jemisin’s mother had become ill, and would not survive the decade.

After immersing herself in the Stillness for four years, Jemisin finished “The Fifth Season.” The story defied easy literary categorization. It was sweeping but intimate, multilayered but simply told. It could be read as an environmental parable, or as a study of repression, or as a meditation on race, or as a mother’s post-apocalyptic quest. Jemisin wove in magical elements, but she systematized them so thoroughly that they felt like scientific principles—laws of an alternative nature. She evoked advanced technology, but made it so esoteric that it seemed like magic. (Most of her imagined machines were made of crystal. At some point, the inhabitants of the Stillness eschewed metallurgy; the word “rust” even became an expletive.)

She took stylistic chances, too. “The Fifth Season” at first appears to weave together the stories of three people, but late in the book Jemisin reveals that she has merely shattered her protagonist’s story into three narratives, a formal echo of her broken world. The protagonist is an “orogene”—a term that Jemisin derived from scientific nomenclature for a mountain-forming process—who can channel energies that quell or create earthquakes, with varying degrees of control. For the dominant civilization, which enslaves the orogenes—for use as weaponry or as geological instruments—they are a reviled but necessary underclass. The protagonist’s primary narrative blisters with rage and trauma. Jemisin wrote it in the second person, the voice belonging to a narrator who is not revealed until a later book. “I tried her voice in different forms,” she told me. “I couldn’t get too close to her—she was angry with me in the dream, she’s not going to talk to me. That doesn’t make sense, I know.”

In a different writer’s hands, the use of the second person might have registered as a gimmick, but Jemisin made the device integral to the plot, and deployed it with personality—a voice with quirks and, occasionally, a sense of immediacy. (“Look, the ash clouds are spreading already.”) “The Fifth Season” attracted wide acclaim for its inventiveness, world-building, and intricate assembly. In 2016, it won a Hugo Award for Best Novel—a first for a black writer. The following year, a sequel, “The Obelisk Gate,” won again. In 2018, the final book in what became the “Broken Earth” trilogy, “The Stone Sky,” won, too. No author in the history of the genre had achieved that recognition. The three books sold more than two million copies worldwide. The Times called them “extraordinary.” John Scalzi, the former president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, heralded Jemisin as “arguably the most important speculative writer of her generation.”

Jemisin lives in a duplex apartment in Brooklyn, with an office that looks out onto a garden, which she cares for meticulously. For years, she was an urban literary nomad, working wherever she could park herself with a laptop. “I don’t go to coffee shops anymore,” she told me in her office, late last year. “The best-seller life has made it possible to have this.” She sat at a long desk against the wall; at one end was a cluster of awards. The room also contained a plush Darth Vader and a doll of Commander Uhura, from “Star Trek.” Beside a chair was a chrome lamp resembling a flying saucer; Jemisin flipped a switch, and a band of tiny red lights on the saucer glowed. She had bought it on a trip upstate. “I saw that lamp, I needed that lamp,” she said. “It’s corny as hell, and it doesn’t light up shit. It’s just for the mood, but sometimes when I am writing I want to be in that mood and summon the energies.”

Jemisin immediately followed the “Broken Earth” trilogy with two other books. In 2018, she released “How Long ’til Black Future Month?,” a collection of short stories. She also completed her next novel, “The City We Became,” the first installment of another trilogy, which is due out this March. Submitting the novel to her editor, a few hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, she felt depleted; for more than a decade, she had been writing nearly a book a year. She resolved to take 2019 off, but she couldn’t stay idle. She sketched out the new trilogy’s second installment, while also navigating calls from Hollywood, speaking engagements, side gigs. Marvel Comics invited her to guest-write a series—an offer she declined, because she had already agreed with DC Comics to create a “Green Lantern” spinoff. As we sat in her office, the first issue of her comic was slated for release in a few weeks. “This is an unusual year for me,” she said. “Usually, I have only one thing to concentrate on.”

Above her desk she had hung family photos: glimpses of a truncated generational story. “Like most black Americans descended from slaves, it basically stops,” she told me. She once wrote about this loss—not merely the erasure of a backstory but also the absence of all that a person builds upon it; as she put it, the “strange emptiness to life without myths.” She had considered pursuing genealogy, “the search for the traces of myself in moldering old sale documents and scanned images on microfiche.” But ultimately she decided that she had no interest in what the records might say. “They’ll tell me where I came from, but not what I really want to know: where I’m going. To figure that out, I make shit up.”

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Jemisin pointed to a photo of her father, Noah, as a young man—thin, confident, smiling—and spoke about his grandmother, a woman people called Muh Dear: “She basically made her living doing fortunes—magic, for lack of a better term.” In a story that Jemisin included in “How Long ’til Black Future Month?,” she envisioned Muh Dear as a shaman named Emmaline, facing down a malevolent fairy, the White Lady, who wants to take away her daughter. (“The White Lady was nearly all surface; that was the nature of her kind. That was how this meeting would go, then: an appearance of grace and gentility, covering the substance of battle.”) As the two spar, the White Lady draws Emmaline into a roiling dreamscape, in which it is possible to glimpse America’s future: the upheavals of the civil-rights movement; the progress and the tensions that followed. Amid the whorl of imagery, Emmaline offers to sacrifice herself in place of her child if her family is protected. The fairy accepts the gesture: “The White Lady closed the dream around Emmaline, and whisked her away.”

For Muh Dear’s real grandchildren, growing up in mid-century Alabama, there was no shortage of dangers. Jemisin’s father was born in Birmingham, where the commissioner of public safety allowed the Ku Klux Klan to attack the Freedom Riders when their Greyhound buses arrived, in 1961. As Jemisin once recalled, her father spent part of his youth “dodging dogs and fire hoses, turned on him and other Civil Rights protestors.”

Jemisin’s parents met as students at Alabama State University, and married shortly after graduating. Noah wanted to devote his life to painting, so he applied to a graduate program at the University of Iowa, and the two moved to Iowa City. Jemisin’s mother, Janice, pursued a degree in psychology, specializing in psychometrics; she later administered I.Q. tests.

When Jemisin was born, in Iowa, her parents named her Nora Keita. After her first birthday, the family moved to Brooklyn, where Noah strove to establish himself. For income, he taught art, and Janice taught grade-school science. (He now has a painting in the Met, an abstract called “Black Valhalla.”) “We were in a beautiful little brownstone,” Jemisin recalled. “We had the ground floor and the floor above. There was a gorgeous old mahogany bannister. There were grapevines in the back yard, and a squirrel named Greedy who would come seeking pecans that my grandmother would send me from her tree in Alabama.”

When Jemisin was five, her parents divorced, and her mother moved to Mobile. Jemisin went with her, and hated it: the regimentation of Southern society, the quasi-suburban alienation, the racism. While she was in the fourth grade, the Klan burned a cross on the Mobile courthouse lawn, then murdered a black teen-ager named Michael Donald as he walked home from the store. They hanged his body from a tree in a mixed-race neighborhood: a lynching, in the nineteen-eighties. “Not too far from my grandmother’s place, actually,” Jemisin told me. In a speech in 2013, she recalled its impact on her family: “I remember my grandmother sitting in her den with a shotgun across her knees while I cracked pecans at her feet. I was maybe nine years old, had no idea what was going on. She told me the gun was just an old replica—she’d brought it out to clean it. I said, ‘O.K., Grandma,’ and asked whether she’d make me a pie when I was done.”

Jemisin mastered an outsider’s art of adaptation. Shifting between Alabama and New York, where she spent summers with her father, she adjusted to the jarring differences across the Mason-Dixon Line, both social and personal—living in one home shaped by an artist and another by a standardized-test giver. Childhood, she told me, was “a schizoid experience.” In Mobile, she shifted across racial divisions, too, attending a predominantly white school that had been forced to desegregate. “I had to get up at o-dark-thirty to ride the bus for an hour,” she recalled. To exchange comic books with her white friends, she met them clandestinely behind a building.

Science fiction appealed to her at a young age. Little about her real life was cohesive, but imagined worlds could be complete, self-contained, and bound by logic. “I saw ‘Star Wars’ when it came out, because I was a creepy, obsessed space child,” she told me. Later, she mined her local library for science-fiction novels; she covered the books in paper so that she could read them in class. Jemisin also began to write, constantly. Her cousin, W. Kamau Bell, who is now a comedian with a show on CNN, told me, “I wanted to be a comic-book artist, so we would spend our days in the front of my grandmother’s house, laying in the sun, writing, drawing, and talking. We bonded over the fact that we felt like aliens in Mobile.”

Jemisin’s mother did not understand her daughter’s interest in otherworldly fantasies, or her non-stop writing. But her father did. In Brooklyn, she stayed up late with him to watch “Star Trek” and “The Twilight Zone.” Noah Jemisin encouraged his daughter to explore the city, and also to create. “Dad and I would pass time, whole afternoons, not speaking to each other,” she told me. “He would be working on a painting in his studio. I would be sitting on the couch, writing.” In the evenings, they went on walks. “He was my first real editor,” she said. “One of my favorite memories is us walking across the Williamsburg Bridge. This was before it got renovated. It had fucking holes in it. You had to be careful or you would lose a foot! I would talk over story ideas and plotlines. He would listen to all of that.”

One of her first childhood stories was a fable about a fantastical prehuman era in which animals built an advanced civilization, but then destroyed it—along with their ability to speak—in a war. She told me, “I actually published that, by putting two pieces of cardboard around it, wrapping them in paper, and binding it with yarn.”

On its surface, all science fiction is about change—technological, scientific, social—that brings human beings into contact with the unknown or forces a reassessment of the familiar. Nonetheless, the genre remains inextricably tied to the everyday—the biases and limitations of the writer’s time. Jules Verne may have imagined the Nautilus as a futuristic steampunk submarine, but his book expresses a nineteenth-century vision, in which the natural world existed to be dominated by men.

“How Long ’til Black Future Month?” takes its name from an essay that Jemisin wrote in 2013. It begins with two memories of watching “The Jetsons”: first as a girl, excitedly taking it all in, and then as an adult. “I notice something: there’s nobody even slightly brown in the Jetsons’ world,” she wrote. “This is supposed to be the real world’s future, right? Albeit in silly, humorous form. Thing is, not-white people make up most of the world’s population, now as well as back in the Sixties when the show was created. So what happened to all those people, in the minds of this show’s creators? Are they down beneath the clouds, where the Jetsons never go? Was there an apocalypse, or maybe a pogrom? Was there a memo?”

“The Jetsons” was far from the worst example of racial exclusion. Until 2015, despite years of protest, the World Fantasy Award was a bust of H. P. Lovecraft, a white supremacist who believed that blacks were subhuman and who openly supported Hitler. Even Tolkien’s masterwork, “The Lord of the Rings,” was complicated by race. He had written his orcs to be revolting, devolved, violent agents of evil. In a letter, he explained his thinking: “They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”

In Mobile’s public library, Jemisin read voraciously, but she almost never encountered characters who credibly represented someone like her. Black writers have been engaged in speculative fiction since at least the nineteenth century, but when Jemisin first immersed herself in the genre their work was either difficult to locate or difficult to recognize. In early pulp science fiction, it was common for writers to sell their stories using pseudonyms, making their true identities almost impossible to discern. Those few novelists who were openly recognized as black—in the early eighties, there were only four of any prominence—were often encouraged to avoid race in their work.

In 1967, a few months after the notable African-American writer Samuel Delany won a Nebula Award, he wrote to Analog magazine, seeking to serialize a daring, experimental space opera he had written, called “Nova.” Analog passed. As an editor explained, Delany’s protagonist was half Senegalese, and white sci-fi readers would be unable to relate. “It was all handled as though I’d happened to have dressed my main character in a purple brocade dinner jacket,” Delany later recalled, in an essay on racism in science fiction. To be a black author in the genre, he noted, meant navigating paradoxical demands: editors expected his work to carry no trace of his identity, but, no matter what he put on the page, they would inevitably view it as “African-American science fiction.”

“Nova,” later published as a book, proved to be highly influential—a progenitor of the cyberpunk movement. Delany recalled that he was frequently invited to speak on panels with Octavia Butler, the only other black author who had achieved his kind of visibility, even though their work was very different. She, too, had to navigate the paradox. “When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read,” she told the Times before her death, in 2006. “I wrote myself in.”

This simple goal was surprisingly hard to communicate. Just before winning a Nebula for her tenth novel, Butler sat for an interview with Charlie Rose, who asked, “Are you trying to create a new black mythology?”

“No,” she said. “I am telling stories that interest me.” She spoke a little about what that meant, but Rose persisted: “What, then, is central to what you want to say about race?”

She replied, with a dismissive sting, “Do I want to say something central about race aside from ‘Hey, we’re here’?” She recalled a panel she had been on, in 1979, with another writer. “He thought that it wasn’t really necessary to have black characters in science fiction because you could always make any racial statement you needed to make by way of extraterrestrials,” she told Rose. “If he was trying to start trouble he certainly succeeded.” Butler later wrote a withering response to the writer’s comment, in Transmission magazine: “Science fiction reaches into the future, the past, the human mind. It reaches out to other worlds and into other dimensions. Is it really so limited, then, that it cannot reach into the lives of ordinary everyday humans who happen not to be white?”

The essay was powerful, its impact negligible. My own copy of Butler’s novel “Dawn”—a brilliant, eerie, thought-provoking book—is a paperback from 1988. The cover depicts a woman resembling Sigourney Weaver in “Alien,” even though the text clearly (but lightly) indicates that the protagonist is not white. It contains no author photo, no bio. Jemisin’s childhood encounter with “Dawn” was the same edition. Reading it, she had no idea that Butler was black.

Hudson Yards was crawling with superheroes and villains and oddballs: people dressed like Storm Troopers, like Batman, like Godzilla, like Care Bears. It was the weekend of New York Comic Con, the Mecca of nerd culture that, every year, seems to grow bigger, more commercial, more theatrical in its costume pageantry. One attendee wore a white dress supporting feathered Pegasus wings the size of a small hang glider.

I met Jemisin outside the Javits Center. She was wearing a leather jacket, a black blouse, and jeans, with her hair pulled back. She is often invited to speak about her books at Comic Con, but, as a novelist, she is generally spared the titanic promotional machinery that surrounds the main attractions: the stars hyping Hollywood films, the pavilions hyping triple-A video games, the m.c.s hyping comic-book celebrities. Jemisin, who describes herself as “a supercharged introvert,” is just fine with that.

This year, though, there was no avoiding one of the largest hype machines. Her “Green Lantern” spinoff, “Far Sector,” was scheduled for release just after the convention. “All right,” she said. “I’ve got to get to the DC publicity area. Where the hell is that?” We passed through metal detectors and into a huge atrium. Surveying the hordes, she said, “I am imagining there is a black hole under Javits sucking all the energy out of the people here.” To get through the day, she promised herself an evening of recovery: first relaxing with a Lush bath bomb, then slaughtering some digital foes in Mass Effect 3.

“Far Sector” is set at the edge of the known universe, in a multispecies city-state built on a Dyson sphere—a speculative megastructure, named after Freeman Dyson, who once postulated that hyper-advanced alien civilizations would seek to harness the energy of stars by encasing them in technological shells. The story centers on Sojourner Mullein, an N.Y.P.D. cop turned Lantern, who looks as if she has been cloned from the Afrofuturist pop star Janelle Monáe. Although it is a comic book, the writing carries Jemisin’s wry tone, interest in power, and unapologetic use of allegory. The series opens with Mullein surveying a murder scene, while considering an aphorism from “Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe’s novel of colonialism: “A man who makes trouble for others is also making it for himself.” It lingers in her mind, but Mullein dismisses it, noting, “I’m the one causing the trouble. Just by existing.”

When Jemisin was in her twenties, she believed that a career in writing fantasy was closed to her, because of who she was. Instead, she pursued a graduate degree in psychology, and later took a job as a career counsellor at a college in Springfield, Massachusetts. “God help me,” she told me. “Isolated. Also cold as fuck! Nobody told me that, like, lake-effect snows happen in western Massachusetts.” To keep herself sane, she kept writing, often anonymous online fan fiction. (She still writes fan fiction, using secret identities that she guards aggressively.) A few years later, she landed a position at Northeastern University, in Boston, but felt no less lost there. In 2002, when she turned thirty, she had a moment of crisis. “I was, like, Oh, God, I am in debt up to my eyeballs, I hate this town, I don’t like my boyfriend,” she said. “I have got to reorder this. What do I need to do to be happy? O.K., get out of debt, get out of Boston, get into writing—maybe make some money from it, maybe that can help.”

Jemisin considered applying to the Clarion writers’ workshop, which specializes in science fiction and fantasy; luminaries in the genre teach there. But the workshop lasted six weeks—longer than she could take off from work. Instead, she attended a one-week workshop on Martha’s Vineyard. One instructor urged her to write some short stories. Jemisin at first chafed at the idea, but then relented, recognizing that the form’s constraints could sharpen her sense of pacing and character. She subscribed to genre magazines to study some examples, then tried her hand.

“How Long ’til Black Future Month?” includes one of her earliest published stories, “Cloud Dragon Skies” (2005), in which an ecological disaster has caused most of humanity to abandon Earth for a ring-shaped space colony, built from crushed asteroids, beyond Mars. “Old foolishness lay at the root of it,” notes the narrator, a young woman named Nahautu, one of the few who stay. The planet has rebounded, except for the atmosphere. The toxic chemicals it has absorbed combine to form a new kind of life:

One morning we awoke and the sky was a pale, blushing rose. We began to see intention in the slow, ceaseless movements of the clouds. Instead of floating, they swam spirals in the sky. They gathered in knots, trailing wisps like feet and tails. We felt them watching us.

In just a few pages, Jemisin sketched a scenario filled with ambiguities and philosophical questions. (How is nature defined? What represents progress?) The people on Earth decide to treat the animate clouds as natural—believing that, in a redemptive future, humanity must adapt to its ecosystem, not shape it. But scientists from the space colony try to neutralize the effect, and the sky reacts violently, tearing up the planet. Fleeing Earth in a coffinlike pod, Nahautu travels to the colony, an engineered world that is both better and lesser than the poisoned Earth. She is not fully at home in either place. In her new life, she becomes a storyteller.

DC Comics had a greenroom overlooking the Javits exhibition floor; after Jemisin spoke on a panel at the Comic Con main stage, a publicist ushered her there. Relaxed, she was in a joking mood. “My Twitter is full of bitch,” she warned the publicist. Online, Jemisin is an active, quick-witted commentator, lacing her posts—about politics or about the writing life—with zingers and tart observations. In 2015, the Times invited her to write a column about science fiction, called “Otherworldly”; she did so for two years, proving to be a perceptive and at times unsparing critic. In 2017, she described Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” a surprise hit that inspired a blockbuster film, as “Robinson Crusoe in space,” and his next novel, “Artemis,” as “a 300-page film pitch that, like its predecessor, will probably be more appealing after it goes to Hollywood.” That year, TNT announced that it was going to develop Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” into a series—an ambitious or perhaps foolhardy bid, given the book’s narrative complexity and experimental style.

The DC publicist asked Jemisin, “Do you prefer to be called Nora or N.K.?” She laughed and said, “Nora is fine. Mom called me N.K. when I was in trouble as a child, so every time someone says it, I’m, like, ‘What? I didn’t do it!’ ”

Jemisin began to abbreviate her name at the start of her writing career, fearing that an association with sci-fi would interfere with her professional work. While she was at Northeastern, she imposed a strict deadline: to produce a novel within a year. Because she had a full-time job, most of the writing had to happen at night, but, she told me, “after work, my brain just couldn’t make that shift.” Mostly, she found herself mapping out ideas while doing the dishes or playing video games. She wrote every evening before bed, even if she knew most of it would not survive a self-edit the next day.

The novel that resulted was set in a kingdom inspired by ancient Egypt, with a belief system that drew on Eastern and Western religious ideas, as well as the Hippocratic notion of bodily humors. One of Jemisin’s invented humors is a form of healing magic tied to dreams. A priestly caste, called Gatherers, harvests it from people whom a goddess judges to be corrupt; the extractive process is deadly, but the system keeps the society in balance. At the book’s opening, a skilled Gatherer botches an extraction. In trying to figure out why, he learns that an assassin has been using the process to murder. “I was trying to appeal to traditional fantasy readers,” Jemisin said. “It is a bog-standard fantasy quest story.”

The book landed her an agent, Lucienne Diver, but no contract. Diver told me, “We got a lot of people saying, ‘She’s amazing, but I don’t know how to fit her into the market.’ ” She thought that the setting, the story’s complexity, the alchemy of Jemisin’s various source materials—the very attributes that made her stand out—also made the book hard to position for a first-time author. Devi Pillai, then an editor at Orbit, told me that she had loved the book but thought that it had no clear sales hook. She told Diver, “If she has anything else, I want to be the first to see it.”

Jemisin was convinced that the rejections, however politely stated, were code for the same editorial bigotry that Delany had faced in the sixties. (In 2012, after Jemisin had established herself, the book was published, as “The Killing Moon,” and nominated for a Nebula.) “I came very close to quitting,” she told me. “I had a long dark tea-time of the soul, and basically somewhere in there I realized, People are just that racist. If the only problem is that the book is full of black people—O.K., I got you. I am going to write something full of white people, but it is going to be all about how evil those white people are. ‘The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms’ was that book. It was me getting mad at science-fiction publishing.”

Whatever Jemisin’s anger with the industry, she produced a shrewd, philosophically playful page-turner that both reflected and transcended her feelings. She decided to write it in the first person—unusual for epic fantasy, which often leans on the third person to accommodate expositional detours about the imagined world. The story was no less original: it was about a warrior baroness summoned to an insular palace balanced on a pedestal, like an Eero Saarinen tabletop. The baroness is drawn into court intrigues and must solve a family mystery; eventually, she upends the society’s power structure, and along the way has interstellar sex with a god. (Jemisin told me that the book could have been marketed as a romance.)

Diver shopped the manuscript, and it inspired an immediate bidding war. Devi Pillai told me, “I was, like, ‘Mine!’ ” By then, Jemisin was working unhappily at a for-profit college in New York. “I was at some stupid-assed retreat, and I kept ducking out to take calls from my agent,” she told me. Pillai won the auction, with a six-figure bid that included a commitment for two more books. “I started screaming,” Jemisin told me. “People at the retreat were, like, ‘Should we call somebody?’ ”

For the first time, Jemisin could devote herself fully to writing. When Orbit began promoting the book—comparing it to the work of Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin—she created a Web site for herself. “Do big kids squee?” she wrote. “ ’Cos I think a squee is appropriate right about now. I can’t see how a little squee would hurt. Are we all agreed? ’Kay? Then here goes. ::SQUEE::”

In December, I caught up with Jemisin on the steps of City Hall, where she had come to research the second installment of her new trilogy. Rather than build a fantastical world for it, she decided to use New York, a city that has always seemed a little unreal. As she told me, “Sometimes, when I am walking, the air feels a particular way, or the light comes in at a particular angle, and the moment makes me feel like the city is alive and breathing.”

For the new trilogy, she had chosen to make these feelings literal, positing that any city, upon reaching the necessary urban development, could achieve sentience. New York is about to transition when it is invaded by interdimensional aliens seeking to destroy it. The story is part “Ghostbusters,” part “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.” Jemisin told me that the project was a chance to relax, “an emotional palate cleanser,” but it was also a coded critique of the sci-fi and fantasy genre. The aliens take on Lovecraftian form (“The tendril mass looms, ethereal and pale”) and are fought off by a multi-ethnic, multi-gendered posse of underdogs—people Lovecraft would have hated.

More than a decade earlier, Octavia Butler had asserted, “Hey, we’re here.” But, Jemisin told me, “we have to keep saying it.” Recent history, she said, had made this evident. In 2009, after a white novelist posted a formula for “writing the other,” many people of color in the genre erupted in frustration, triggering a contentious series of online debates, known collectively as RaceFail, that unfolded for more than a year. At a conference, Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican-Canadian writer, delivered a speech titled “A Reluctant Ambassador from the Planet of Midnight,” in which she tried to explain the explosion of anger to her white colleagues—making clear that Butler’s sense of invisibility was still sorely felt. Jemisin told me, “One blog was, like, ‘If you’re a person of color who is into science fiction, speak up. We’re doing a head count of how many of us exist.’ And it was a huge number. I had thought we were unicorns. In fact, the post was titled ‘The Wild Unicorn Herd Check-in.’ ”

Amid a reactionary backlash, Jemisin became a target. In 2013, she gave an impassioned speech about race in the genre, noting that a white supremacist had just run for president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Though he lost, he had secured ten per cent of the vote, prompting her to criticize the “great unmeasured mass of enablers” who had been silent. The former candidate, in turn, called her an “ignorant half-savage” in a racist screed. Jemisin told me, “That touched off a whole big foofaraw.” Threats of violence poured in. She scrubbed her online presence and began to vary her commute.

Jemisin’s successes were caught up in the foofaraw, too. As the cultural divide sharpened, two blocs of conservative writers began interfering with the Hugos, using a loophole to shape the list of nominees; until it was closed, two years later, people protested by selecting “No award” on ballots. “The Fifth Season” won its award just after the loophole was closed. Accepting her third Hugo, Jemisin stood at the lectern, with the rocket-shaped award beside her, and declared, “This is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers, every single mediocre, insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me could not possibly have earned such an honor, and that when they win it’s ‘meritocracy,’ but when we win it’s ‘identity politics.’ ” Holding up the award, she added, “I get to smile at those people, and lift a massive, shining rocket-shaped finger in their direction.”

In Jemisin’s forthcoming New York novel, “The City We Became,” she borrows from some of her experiences: the aliens induce alt-right trolls to assist them, and the protagonists gird against cyber-harassment. “Places like New York are inherently free-form,” Jemisin told me. “If a bunch of fascists try to take over, New York could die.” She said that she was curious to explore “the ways in which the city, and the energy of a place like this, would resist that.”

In the City Council chambers, where she hoped to place a scene in her next book, Jemisin sat in a balcony and observed the rituals and the moods of Gotham politics. There was a tribute to Pakistan’s founding father, and a bill to force real-estate developers to set aside apartments for the homeless. She was especially keen on the way members conferred in side chats—a narrative opportunity. “I see that they are using a modified version of Robert’s Rules of Order,” she noted.

After three hours, her stamina waned. “This is putting me to sleep,” she whispered, and we stepped out into the cold, under a darkening sky. The night before, a snow squall had enveloped the city and then quickly receded, as if on supernatural command. To the north was the Williamsburg Bridge, which in Jemisin’s new book is destroyed by an alien creature, “like some haunting, bioluminescent deep-sea organism.”

The promotional material for “The City We Became” describes it as her most accessible book. “What seems to be happening, and I don’t know if I want to resist this, is an effort to push me into the mainstream,” Jemisin said. “I am wrestling with, Do I want to let people call me the next Atwood, or whatever? They always want you to be the next such-and-such. But I am still going to write what I am going to write.” Crossing Broadway, she mentioned an idea that was unrelentingly sci-fi: people who mutate into spacecraft. “Like werewolves, but spaceships,” she said, giggling. “I know, it’s corny. I admit that it’s corny! But it is an idea that persists in my head, and I keep wanting to explore it.” ♦

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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Literary Genres / Fantasy

Fantasy Essay Examples

Fantasy: iconic conventions of this genre.

The origins of the fantasy genre can be traced back all the way to the days of Greek literacy, and Roman novels. They helped establish what we call fantasy today and shaped the genre for millenniums on end. Not only in early fantasy, but even...

Justice in Fantasy World

Fantasy World is a setting in which fictional characters also have to face so many challenges in their day to day lives. People say nothing is easy to get and for that one must do so much hard-work and has to face criticism among their...

The Concept of Zombies, and the Apocalyptic Scenario

The zombie apocalypse can be described as a widespread or universal disaster caused by the reincarnate humans in any work of literature. In other words, it is a specific scenario in the literature that fuse science fantasy, fiction, horror, or dystopian exhibiting the failure of...

We Are Currently Living in a Version of a Zombie Apocalypse

Have we ever wondered what an apocalypse is? According to various resources found on the internet, it is a single event that involves the destruction of everything in its wake at a gigantic level. If this definition is not satisfying enough, then maybe the terminology...

Review of the Book Elemental by Antony John

The book that I read this quarter is Elemental by Antony John. This book is about an unlikely hero rising up and saving his colony. His name is Thomas, he is 16 years old and he doesn’t have an element, or so he thinks. In...

Review of Becoming the Dragon by Alex Sapegin

Becoming the Dragon is the first instalment in the fantasy epic The Dragon Inside by Alex Sapegin. Becoming the Dragon follows the story of Andy, a teenage boy growing up in small town modern Russia. Andy’s life started to change when he was struck by...

The Influence of Rowling and Tolkien on Fantasy Genre

To classify under what genre a literary work fits means to state exactly the formal and thematic features of the work and to choose a relevant genre label. It seems to be easy. Probably, it is so because the definition supposes there is acertain set...

Literary Canons on the Genre of Fantasy Novel

Imagination is a unique form of human ability that could create ideas not currently in any physical sense. It is a writers’ essence in creating a fictional world. A world where ideas are created as a medium for fantasy novels to emerge from an imaginative...

Reality Vs Fantasy in James Joyce’s Araby

James Joyce was one of the most controversial writers of his time. He was often thought of as perverse through his writings, leading to one of his most well-known books “Ulysses” to be banned in some countries. While he may very well be a bit...

Review of the Crystilleries of Echoland by Dew Pellucid

Author Dew Pellucid weaves a teen fantasy with a murder mystery twist in The Crystilleries of Echoland. Will Cleary has not seen his twin sister Emmy in ten years. Both children were kidnapped at the age of two, but only Will was recovered by two...

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About Fantasy

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.

Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll. The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien.

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