How to create a surreal/fantasy - feeling in a real world?
I know the question seems pretty unclear, so let me try to explain it.
So I'm writing my first book and already have big plans. I don't aim to publish. It's just for me.
I want the book to be philosophical. I want it to contain all the ideas and experiences I made in life. For that matter, I chose to have a young man coming from an oasis in a desert going out on different adventures. Every adventure is like a short-story, but it's all linked together and at the end of each experience he made there will be something like a moral. At the book's end, he will be a wise person (maybe an old man by that time).
So to the central question: I want so set the story in the Arab world like it was about 1500 years ago. I already did much research on that. But on the other hand, I want it to have a surreal/fantasy feel, which allows me to let him meet a jinn for example, but still everything should feel realistic. I don't want it to be a fantasy book.
The Bible or the Qur'an could be good examples. (No I don't wish to be the next big prophet.) For someone who believes in it, everything seems real and indeed many of its Information contains real historic events, but for other people who don't believe in the respective religion, it's just a nice story with some real facts. Also Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" is a excellent example of the feeling I'm talking about. I'm sure most of you read it.
So I want to draw a close line between reality and fantasy. I thought to let the story take place in form of a dream, but in the end I thought that's too simple. That takes the complexity and the sense of all the experiences of the protagonist away.
I think I explained enough since I don't want to bother you with unnecessary details. Maybe one of you creative writers out there has made experiences with that or can suggest some stylistic devices on how to handle that "problem".
I'm sure there isn't a definite answer and the question still seems very vague, but I'm grateful for every advice from you!
Thanks!
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1 answer
The term you are looking for is magical realism. This is when supernatural elements (magic, djinns, wishes, fae, dragons, elves, talking gargoyles, people with wings, meddling gods, spells, demons, and so forth) exist alongside what we consider the "real world," and everyone considers it normal.
If this takes place in a contemporary setting, it's often called urban fantasy, although this is not how you are describing your story.
The difference between magical realism and plain ol' fantasy is primarily the setting: if it's on some other world, a vaguely defined Dark or Middle Age Europe, pre-Saxon Britain, Ancient Greece/Rome, or any other culture from so long ago that historical records are scarce, that's generally just fantasy. If you research your time and place thoroughly, however, and write it so that it is accurate and realistic, it would be magical realism.
There is a difference between "fantasy" and "surreal," however. Fantasy, urban or classical, can be extremely straightforward and clear (see the works of CE Murphy and Mercedes Lackey respectively for examples). Surreal is when things are just slightly off, or everything is a bit weird and dreamlike. Narration tends to consist of a lot of run-on sentences, and events sound like a Dali painting. (The man walked by me, his face melting into feathers, blue to gold to orange to white to blue again in a ceaseless stream, the wind whipping them into flames, which fluttered off and became dancing leaves, glowing and gleaming and tumbling end-over-end like glittering fish in a rippling river of time unending. He tipped his smoldering hat to me as he passed.)
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