Create A Low Fantasy Story Following The Guidelines Listed In The Link Due Feb 9 2015 7pm Eastern Standard Time

Fantasy Story Outline – Template

Instruction Manual: read the document, and then make a copy of it. After that, erase everything but the entry titles (Dramatic Premise, Setting, etc.) and write your own plans for the story. Each of the seven entries should be about as long as they are in this template. Be economical and don’t waste words, because you will also need to be exhaustive.

1. Dramatic Premise: what is your basic story idea? [Example : for this story, I’m postulating that there are “soft places” in our world, areas of overlap where the walls of reality are thinner than normal. When someone visits those places, if he/she is under the influence of a powerful enough desire, this desire can trigger the opening of a rift between realities, and there are… things… on the other side that very much want to cross over, for reasons of their own. They may grant our wish, or they may not, but either way, those creatures from another place would flood the real.]

2. Setting: where does your story take place? Is it

1. 100% in a secondary world? [The Lord of the Rings]

2. Partly in a secondary world, partly in our zero world? [Harry Potter]

3. 100% in our world, invaded by supernatural agents/realities? [Ghostbusters]

Why this choice? How does it serve the dramatic premise? [Example : I’ve always liked the idea of our world being changed by the impossible or the magical, so I’m thinking I’ll go with option 3. This way, I’ll have all the space I want to show the effects of this invasion, good or bad as they may be. Another example : I’d like us to venture into this impossible land to find a cure (if the intrusion is damaging the world) or a treasure/friend/lover (if the intrusion is either benign or neutral), so I’ll go with option 2. I’ll start in our zero world, increasingly contaminated by stuff from the other place, and then walk into that other place so I can describe it in all its weirdness. Also, I want to show how creatures from one reality survive (or don’t) in the other.]

3. Protagonist/Protagonists: basically, the knights on a quest. They are somehow, in some way, tied to what’s happening, and they’re often the only people who can do anything about it. So who are they? What’s their background, and how do their desires connect to the intrusion or to life in the secondary world (if you choose option 1 for the setting)? [Example : I’ve always liked redemption quests – the ones where someone who’s made a mistake confronts the fantastic to solve the problem they created or get another chance at doing things right (like Jennifer Connelly’s character in Labyrinth). So, I’m thinking that my character is a 16-year-old boy – we’ll call him Danny – who, bullied at school and ignored by the girl he really likes, unwittingly unleashes the things from the other reality into the world when he walks, purely by chance, into one of those soft places. He’s upset, maybe even crying, and as sadness turn to anger, the soft place feeds on those feelings, using them to open the threshold. The creatures come through and, taking pity on the young boy, decide to fulfill his desire for revenge. Danny’s not a bad person, though. When he realizes what happened, he takes charge and becomes a hero by saving the very people who hurt him – and he’s the only one who can do that. Everyone else is powerless to send the creatures back to the other world, because the desire that opened the threshold belongs exclusively to Danny, and only he can issue a counter-desire.]

4. Antagonist/Antagonists: for every hero who tries to do good, or to repair the damage he/she did to others, there is a Voldemort type who is very, very happy with keeping things the wrong shape. Who is this villain? What does he/she/it want from us in the zero world or from the inhabitants of the secondary world? [Example : Most of the creatures flowing through the threshold into our world are basically benign (this is fantasy, not horror, so I’ll keep the scary stuff on a tight leash), but some of them aren’t, and the problem is that they’re very, very powerful. Chief among those evil entities are the Flayers (this is what the good creatures from the secondary world call them, so imagine how bad they are), whose only reason for existing is to hurt others. They are led by the nastiest, ugliest mother we’ve ever seen – his name is Void. Now, with the threshold open, Void has found an entire new world to play with, and he’s not letting it go. As soon as he realizes that Danny is the only one who can send them back, he orders him killed, so Danny has to fight back to A) save his friends from harm, and B) save himself from a really awful death. One of the reasons why I like this premise is that Void and the Flayers are a fantastic equivalent to the schoolyard bully and his gang here on Earth (“I’m hurting you because I can”), so there is a certain resonance in the story that makes the whole premise more meaningful.]

5. Secondary Characters: every hero has a number of allies, and so does every villain. Who are they, and why are they helping one or the other – or why are they staying neutral, if they choose that position? [Example : in the secondary world, Void and his army are a huge problem, yes, but they’re not exactly unstoppable. A police force of sorts, the Redemptors, has been waging a millennia-long war against the Flayers, and now that the war has spilled onto our reality, they have ranged themselves against their long-time enemy and alongside Danny. Also, Danny has his family and friends on his side, while the girl, whose name is Bethan, will help him through many difficult spots (it turns out that she’s really nice, and that Danny was just too chicken to talk to her – he’s a hero, but he’s a moron too). On the other hand, the Flayers find help from all evil people on this side of the threshold, because each camp believes it’ll eventually rule both worlds after destroying the other.]

6. Plot Development: given the choices you made in items 1 through 5, how would you like things to go? What do you think should happen to make your story work as a fantasy narrative? [Example : the first time Danny realizes what he has unwittingly unleashed is at school, when one of his friends, along with a couple of the bullies, are slain by the creatures from the other side. At the end, one of those creatures walks (crawls, flies, whatever) up to Danny and says: “Your wish is granted.” Thus, he goes back to the soft place, where he sees the threshold and puts two and two together. So he goes home, narrowly escaping with his parents from a Flayer attack, and he meets up with the Redemptors, and then…]

7. Resolution: who wins at the end, and why? If the good guys win (in fantasy, they almost invariably do), what price did they pay? And what about the world – have we returned to normality, or is the threshold still open? If the story is entirely set in the secondary world, what happens in the wake of the war (or whatever other event you have postulated for your story)? [Example : I’d like to leave the threshold open and let carnival reign around the soft place. As for the villains, they’d be beaten – not gone – while the good guys would be back home, mourning their losses and enjoying each other’s presence (Danny is now with Bethan, who, in the course of the story, goes from someone pretty as seen from afar to a fully-fledged heroine – Danny’s co-star, essentially.]