Why Read Fantasy?
Made-up stories teach you essential lessons about generating new ideas
I recently read a friends’ recently published fantasy books, Crux (in English) and The Season of Daggers (in Romanian), and it reminded me why this is the genre closest to my heart.
But first, a bit of background: I am a copywriter, most of my friends work in advertising, press, publishing and other domains that require us, some more often than others, to come up with ideas.
Be it a new way of getting results, a smart twist on a tried-and-true industry practice or just a plain, old “catchy headline”, we need to come up with ideas seemingly out of nowhere. And that’s what we’re paid for so we do it, but how do we find them?
I can’t say where other people get their ideas from, but I, for one, acquire my inspiration from every bit of information I stumble upon. I happen to end up reading about what calligraphy says about your personality, what a navigation rutter is and how cats drink water explained by scientists in the span of 10–15 minutes. Lots of random information, the only red line being a sheer curiosity and wish to know more, doubled by a sometimes foolish feeling of confidence that “someday this’ll be useful”.
And you know what? It actually is or will be. I stopped counting after the 10th campaign idea I had that I could trace back to a random piece of trivia from io9.com or World of Warcraft (that’s where I heard the term “navigation rutter” for the first time, a few days ago).
It just seemed to work for me. But I wasn’t devouring online information in such a random pattern when I first started in the advertising industry. Where did all my random ideas come from back then?
Fantasy.
Yep. As a child, I was an avid fantasy and sci-fi reader, devouring a book every 2 days or so. Somehow that got lost along the way and I found other interesting things (such as real life friends, a girlfriend, TV shows and a job) that kept me occupied all the time.
And now, we circle back to the initial statement of this article. I read a friends’ books and dozens of what-ifs and bits of ideas flooded my head for days to come. I’d walk to work and daydream about possible worlds, possible character development arcs from the books I read, possible or impossible personal projects and, yes, possible campaign ideas for the brands I was currently working on.
So my job was around 10% done by the time I arrived to work due to the way I spent my free time. That’s an interesting way of reframing things.
But why is fantasy the genre that opens the creative mind and not police novels or war dramas?
#1. Reading fantasy leads to you fantasizing which, in turn, leads to completely new thought patterns that allow you to tackle the same thing in a different, creative manner.
And, most of the times, that’s what required of the people who have a creative job: gain the same or better results, for the same product/brand, using the same medium where everyone else is doing it already, but this time do it differently.
Even if it’s not job related, a different way of doing the same thing can be a refreshing change of pace to keep you happy with your daily life: a new morning ritual can give you a better energy boost or a new way of approaching daily chores could turn some of them into a fun activity (cooking is the best example of this).
My point: fantasize more and then try to find the closest real point where you could apply your new outlandish ideas.
#2. Suspension of disbelief is an essential skill for anyone that creates for a living.
A powerful idea often requires listeners to say “I’ll bite, let’s see where this goes” before they’re fully convinced it’s really good. And the easiest way to convince them to take that leap of faith is to see how others do it on a regular basis.
Really now, most fantasy stories based on the “unexpected chosen one” trope require the main character to buy into some fantastic premise that seemed completely unbelievable a minute ago. And he always ends up being glad he did so.
Fantasy helps you sell an idea at first as being “impossible but it sounds so good that I want to believe in it” and then, little by little, you convince them of how possible it really is, without losing any of the “sounds so good” part.
My point: learn how to suspend disbelief so more and more of your ideas are bought on their merits, not their limitations.
You could sum up this entire trail of thought in a simple sentence, a motto if you will: Allowing yourself to believe incredible things is the first step towards creating something new.
