Fantasy writing: what led you to pursue it?

[Black Dragon]

Hey gang,

We've amassed a pretty remarkable cast of characters here in only a short while. We come from a variety of different backgrounds, age groups and even continents. Yet we all share a common love for fantasy writing.

I recently shared my own story of how I began writing fantasy fiction:

Fantasy Writing and the Spiritual Quest

I would love to hear about your journeys. What led you to start writing fantasy?

 

[Philip Overby]

My love of fantasy came from the common places: video games and Dungeons and Dragons. When I was younger I was obsessed with the Final Fantasy series and when I got a bit older I started playing Dungeons and Dragons. I read slews of Dragonlance books and later R.A. Salvatore. My first book was Legend of Huma, which in retrospect was a pretty generic book, but had some memorable characters. Later, I started to like darker fantasy, mostly by watching the Conan movies and later reading some of the stories.

I didn't start writing fantasy fiction until I was maybe 18 or 19. But mostly I wrote surreal or absurd stuff. I wrote primarily horror stories in college with a lot of poetry. Finally, I decided to start writing fantasy novels maybe in 2002 or 2003. I just really liked the idea of creating worlds and characters.

I never read Tolkien for some reason. It isn't until now that I am finally reading him. I know, shame on me!

 

[Amanita]

Why am I writing Fantasy?
I’ve been inventing stories since I can think not very different from other children I assume. Unlike many of the others I’ve never stopped doing though however. At first, my stories were close books I’ve read, set in those other authors’ worlds or at least very much like them. This isn’t completely over either, I’m still writing fanfiction for fun and practise.
Towards the end of puberty, something has sparked the desire to create a fantasy world that is really my own. I’ve already had my own world’s and stories before but they’ve always been extremely unrealistic and not suitable for any stories that should be read by anyone else.
So, one morning the world of Silaris was born and I’m still calling it that even though I’m not sure if I’m perfectly happy with the name.
Eight years are gone since this time and Silaris has undergone many, many changes and still does even though they aren’t so fundamental anymore. I’ve already written some stories set there, but nothing that could satisfy me yet.

But, why am I doing this?
It’s not really easy for me to answer this question actually.

Fantasy often features fundamental conflicts with great courage, fear, sacrifices and also great cruelty. Writing about something like that in a real-world setting would pose many problems, one of them is the fact that you don’t know everything or even much about the motivations of the people involved and might not do them much justice. A Fantasy-setting offers the possibility to delve into that kind of thing without offending anyone and maybe also from a safe distance. It’s much less disturbing to others (and myself) when I put my writing self into the mind of the evil witch from Harry Potter than when I do the same thing with a comparable person in a real-life setting.
Besides that I love the creative potential offered by Fantasy. You can create worlds, countries, cultures, magical creatures, family lines and so on and are completely free doing it, as long as it’s internally consistent.
The third reason is magic. I’m really intrigued by the idea that people can make things happen with the power of their mind alone and which effects this has on them. It’s an interesting way to deal with various psychological themes as well.

Orcs, Vampires and other creatures determined by their species rather than their free will don’t interest me at all however and neither do the Fantasies were magic users are possessed by demons or anything of the sort.
Even though my own system that has characters being “possessed” by chemical elements isn’t that far from this. Weird.
But they’re still able to keep in control of their actions if they want to so maybe it doesn’t really fall under this category.

Oh, and by the way. I've never done any role-playing games or anything of the sort but always did "my own role-playing games" in my head. I'm a strange person indeed I think.

 

[Chilari]

My parents used to take us to castles and stuff, and we'd pretend to be knights with swords fighting dragons. Also, when I was about 7 or 8, the headmaster of my primary school used to read to my class one afternoon a week, and the book he read was a fantasy about some kids who went into another world through a castle. I still have a copy at my parents' house, but I can't remember what it's called. Then I read Harry Potter when I was 10, and soon after, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones followed soon by Terry Pratchett's Colour of Magic. By then I was hooked. Add to that certain Disney films, including my favourite, Aladdin, plus Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV, and I've never looked back. I was 12 when I started reading LOTR, about a month before I heard they were making the films, which, at the ages of 13, 14 and 15 (respectively), totally blew me away. That was about when I started writing fantasy (I'd written before then, but not fantasy).

 

[Kelise]

I have utterly no idea. I've been writing since my last year of primary school in 1999... and... it's just always been... fantasy?

I read all kinds of books, I don't stick to just sci fi/fantasy. I watch all kinds of TV.

Uhm. I guess I just like it because it can be about anything. It can have crime, politics, history, geography... you need it all in some/most fantasy books. It feels more rounded, and you get... a lot more out of it, in my humble opinion. More things can be said and done in fantasy and found acceptable, than in a fiction novel.

 

[Ravana]

I write fantasy (and SF, and horror/supernatural… and engage in gaming and historical recreation) mostly due to what might be regarded as a character flaw (or a psychological one): I'm a devoted escapist. I simply do not want to "live" in the real world—not when I can imagine so much cool stuff. I use it for source material, but otherwise prefer to avoid it to the extent possible.

I do not endorse this as a positive approach to writing, by the way. And, yes, I am medicated for it.

I think starconstant has the gist of it, for me: "it can be about anything."

 

[Ophiucha]

I'm rather sure I just started roleplaying Teen Titans back on Neopets, made an OC the protagonist of a dreadful project when I was ten or eleven, and never really deviated from magic since.

 

[Donny Bruso]

I originally started writing Sci-Fi, not fantasy. I remember reading fantasy as young as perhaps eight or nine, but I didn't try my hand at it until I got stuck with the sci-fi piece I was working on, and I turned to fantasy as a change of pace. I have a very deep-seated need to create things, whether by writing, building them out of spare pieces of junk, drawing, whatever medium I feel like using that day.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

Hmmm.. what led me to pursue Fantast writing.... That's hard and yet not so much so. The idea for the novel I'm writing began in 88 when I was 7. that's when I created the three main characters in my novel, as well as their home land, at 8 I had a rough draft. I chose it because well it chose me. I've always had a love for the "unbelievable". I'm one of those people who will gladly tell you that unicorns and dragons are real and just hiding from the corruption of the world LOL. Though I've always been told I have a very active imagination, which when you write any kind of fiction is good, and almost a necessity when writing fantasy. But I've had a love for all things fantasy ever since I say the movies "The Last Unicorn" and "Flight of the Dragons" >^.^<