Opening to Fantasy Novel, Blog Post, and Commentary

Opening to a fantasy novel

Your eyes may deceive you when you first travel to a city north of reality. Your vision becomes red and you cannot help thinking that you’ve been driven to insanity, or your eye sight is no longer functioning properly. Eyes bleed when they see the tall redwoods that circle the city of non-reality. The roads wind in and out, shaping an eye that holds the centre of town. The sky, filled with candyfloss, is hard not to look up at. The weight of it stands upon the shoulders of travellers that enter the city, causing symptoms of nausea and sudden death.

Rosy could not remember the exact time or day when she first saw red in her vision but she knew she was getting closer to the city that many, but not enough to make it glamourous, have died trying to get to. Her feet drove her further in as she witnessed the silence of the sleepy city. As she passed a sign, she began noticing the houses growing and changing from shacks into skyscrapers and office buildings. However, not a soul stood in the streets to watch her navigate her way in despite the city housing over sixty billion residents.

A sudden chime, that had journeyed through the air to reach her, interrupted her thoughts. Her bones rattled, almost splitting into shards in her body, as the chime progressed into a thrumming noise. In the distance was a clock tower that had taken her eyes mere seconds to find. The clock tower made eye contact, grimaced at her, and told her exactly why she had no place in the city of blood.

Blog post about place

Hello all! I am back to complain about something. Again. As I know you are all familiar with.

A fantasy crafted in my mind, Paris was envisioned in my mind as the ‘City of Love’. Love of people, or love of croissants as it was for me. However, the reality was a little different.

If someone asked me what I remember seeing in Paris, the first thing that would come to mind would be two men peeing on a tree and waving at us as we drove past them in the coach.

The outskirts of Paris are urban: gratified and slightly bleak. Some may see an area that is influenced by a different culture altogether but all I saw was the image of a Parisian Hooverville: homeless folk sleeping rough in bag and blankets, huddled round a pretty campfire.

I am aware there are homeless people in every corner of the world, and I am also aware of the naivety I display, and that any further comment I make gives you the impression that I am a sheltered person who expects the world to cater to them but the point is that I did not experience the city of love. I did not experience love in this city.

The moment Paris lived up to its expectation, I felt more sheltered than ever. Whilst I was queueing up to see the prized Mona Lisa, something I had wanted to see since birth, I was not experiencing the reality of a multi-faceted city. I was allowing myself to be, once again, absorbed into the unrealistic romanticising of a city that could and should not be merely reduced to three words. Because of this, Paris is a city I felt I loved but I could not be in love with. 

Commentary on blog post and fantasy novel opening

The opening of my fantasy novel starts gruesomely with the use of the abstract noun ‘insanity’ which connotes emotional unrest, giving the impression of a place that will make people feel bleak. The blog post also creates the imagery of deprivation, using the adjective ‘bleak’ and using the metaphor of ‘Hooverville’, which is a historical and cultural reference to an area of poverty. The fantasy novel does not use cultural references as such but it does make references to cliché lines that are known by many people. Both the blog post and the fantasy opening use the pronoun ‘you’, which suggests a personal relationship with the reader. However, the blog post is directly addressing the readers with the pronoun whereas the opening is ambiguous as to who it is addressing.

As well as that, I use descriptions of physical unrest with the use of the verbs ‘rattled’ and ‘splitting’ which connote a breaking apart of the protagonist’s ‘bones’. The adjective ‘shards’ also connotes this, giving the image that the protagonist’s bones are glass. This creates tension and fear as the audience may feel worried as to what is happening to the main character, who is the person the audience is meant to identify with. ‘Bones’ and ‘eyesight’ also focuses on the anatomical attributes of the character, which is important to note as it is a motif that is repeated throughout. I also use the medical lexical field in the description of ‘symptoms of nausea and death’. The usage of the dysphemism, and juxtaposition of an extreme and a less extreme term, creates suspense in a soft way as the tone of the phrase is casual. It can be said that it is a form of Gallows’ Humour, which further softens the harsh themes and allows the audience to take in the meaning without being exposed to graphic imagery. The medical lexis continues further with the use of the phrase ‘no longer functioning’. ‘Functioning’ is a verb that suggests something is working in synergy but the determiner ‘not’ and the adverb of time ‘longer’ tells the reader that there is dysfunctionality, the synonym of functionality, instead of perfect harmony. This creates tension by playing with the audience’s emotions, as it creates the imagery of disarray and the human body not functioning properly.

The use of juxtaposition to soften more aggressive adjectives continues.  I used personification, ‘holds the centre of town’, to describe the way the roads curve around the town centre. It creates the image of hands curving up to hold the city, as if the city is being nurtured. This gentle imagery delays the suspense of the gruesome content that is described later, creating a balance between dramatic imagery and less dramatic imagery which creates an anti-climax that grips an audience into reading more into the novel. The pleasant lexical field continues with the use of the metaphor of the sky being ‘filled with candyfloss’. The metaphor being used here connotes the clouds as being soft and airy, which creates a relaxing atmosphere. It is juxtaposed with the mathematical, or medical, noun ‘weight’ which connotes a burden on those who the sky ‘stands upon the shoulders of’. This suggests an emotional burden as it plays with the cliché of carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, which is familiar to audiences so it allows them to understand the synaesthesia of feeling your emotions in a physical way. In comparison, the blog post uses emotional language more than physical language. For example, the motif of the abstract noun ‘love’ is used throughout to create a full circle narrative.