Eight Kinds of Fun (Part 3)
Discovery, Expression, and Submission (PLUS a SPFBO9 Book Promo!)
First, a huge book promo that I’m participating in: SPFBO9 “Collect Them All” running from now until July 31, 2023.
SPFBO stands for Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, where 300 indie authors compete to be named the ultimate winner by a collection of different fantasy bloggers. It was started by author Mark Lawrence as a way to bring attention to self-published fantasy novels, and this year, my book, Gates to Illvelion, is one of the 300 entries. It’s in the group with reviewer Becky M, whose YouTube channel is HERE. If you want to follow along with the competition, I suggest going to the SPFBO homepage and checking out all the bloggers who are judging this year.
And if you want to read some of the SPFBO9 books in this year’s competition, click THIS LINK to see the promo and find your next great read!
Moving on from promos and such…
In the second installment of my series on the Eight Kinds of Fun as they apply to fantasy literature, I looked at Narrative, Challenge, and Fellowship. For this last installment, I’m turning my attention to Discovery, Expression, and Submission.
6. Discovery
As a fantasy reader (and fantasy gamer, in fact), probably my two biggest kinds of fun are Fantasy (from Part One), and the first one in today’s installment, Discovery.
Discovery is all about exploring and learning new things. Part of the fun in reading fantasy instead of more realistic fiction is that we get to discover a new world, one that is different from the mundane world we live in everyday. I think this is the secret sauce of a series like Harry Potter, where we journey along with Harry as we discover this magical world operating parallel to our own ordinary world. The wonderful discovery of places like Diagon Alley and Hogwarts (and even just the Hogwart’s Express with its delightful candies) is what draws us into the narrative. Yes, Harry’s plight in the house of the horrid Dursley’s, his status as orphan and Boy Who Lived, his magical abilities—these all add up to an enticing entry-point into the story.
But it is the world itself and our discovery of it that makes the Harry Potter universe really stick. This is why the world lives on even after we finish reading the books. We want to know more about the world, we want to discovery what other secrets have yet to be revealed. Many a plot of children’s fantasy, in fact, involves the viewpoint character(s) discovering a new world outside the bounds of their “normal world,” and going on a journey/quest to explore this new world. Turning the page is like turning the corner in a ruined keep to see what lurks beyond.
How many of us who have been reading fantasy for years feel a bit burned out and bored by the same old elves/dwarves/humans/pseudo-medieval world that populates so much of the genre? When something new comes along—whether a new magic system, a new race/kin, a new setting, a new monster—we sit up and take notice. We want to discover this new place or this new people or this new power as we read. Speculative fiction is often at its best when it’s introducing readers to a new world and allowing the fun of discovery to take the fore. Not that we can’t make discoveries when we read realistic fiction. Mysteries and historical fiction can also satisfy the need to explore and find out the secrets of an unfamiliar world. Any work of fiction that puts us into a place we’re not familiar with can achieve the fun of discovery.
But I do think SFF is more amenable to this type of fun simply because the fantasist is making up a secondary world and by definition that world will be different from our own. Un-peeling the layers of the onion to find out those differences is one of the primary reasons I read fantasy more than most other genres.
Because discovery is a huge part of the fun for me, I’m often surprised when I meet readers who don’t need this type of fun in order to enjoy a fantasy story. For them, narrative is paramount, or submission (which I’ll get to in a moment). The world can be as familiar as their front yard, but still, they enjoy the story and the familiar setting. What’s interesting about the “Eight Kinds of Fun” analysis is that it sheds light on how different readers experience the genre, and that there’s no wrong way to be a fantasy reader. While discovery is a huge part of the fun for me, it doesn’t have to be a huge part of the fun for everybody.
7. Expression
This one makes total sense in a gaming analysis, but in terms of expression as a kind of fun for fantasy readers, we have to move out of the reading experience itself and into the activities that can surround the reading experience. This is what Fellowship is all about when we’re looking at it in terms of fan communities, and expression is related to this aspect.
In some ways, expression is fellowship taken to another level. For fantasy fans who enjoy expression, they might have fun writing fanfic, or cosplaying, or even role-playing in a game world from the story. Expression is making fan art, composing and performing music related to the book or series, and starting podcasts or websites devoted to the fantasy world. It’s all the ways we extend the reading experience by creating our own expressions of it, whether through writing, art, music, or whatever we can think up.
Many of us enjoy the fellowship aspects of a fandom but have no interest in creative expression within that fandom, but for some fans, expression is even more rewarding and fun than the reading itself.
I don’t normally write fanfic, but when I first read GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I was inspired to write my own Catelyn/Ned fanfic where I imagined Cat meeting Ned and his older brother, Brandon, for the first time. I don’t think I ever finished the story, but I was so obsessed with ASOIAF and the characters that I felt compelled to write my own story within that world. And even though it went unfinished, writing that story was fun.
Something about fantasy/sci-fi inspires us to create our own works of art. Maybe it’s the world-building, maybe it’s the feeling that the stories we read are only one small part of a larger world, and that world is available for us to explore (discovery, yo!), but whatever the reason, SFF is where fans often let their creativity find expression. Not that there aren’t Jane Austen fanfics or other fan communities from other genres expressing themselves through art, but SFF has to be the biggest genre for this sort of thing. Maybe we like to play around in these worlds and imagine more stories for these characters precisely because they are often so different from ourselves. Even in a seven-book series or a thousand-page tome, an author simply can’t explore every facet of the world and characters. That expansiveness (even if it’s just suggested) invites expression.
8. Submission
Where expression is related or even spurred on by discovery, submission is, in some ways, the opposite of discovery (and other types of fun like challenge). Submission is “turning off your brain” (to use the Angry GM’s phrase) and just letting the story wash over you. It’s similar to the “escapism” impulse that often gets a bad rap from critics. Don’t think too hard. Just enjoy the ride. Whereas those who like discovery and challenge want to be in unfamiliar worlds and faced with byzantine plot lines of complicated intrigue, those who enjoy submission simply want a relaxing good time with familiar elements and character types that are similar to things they’ve read and enjoyed before.
I’ll admit, I’m often in a mood to “turn off my brain” and just go along for the ride of a classic fantasy, like an old Dragonlance novel or what I’m currently reading, Raymond Feist’s Magician: Apprentice. This is a legitimate type of fun and not anything lesser than other types. The familiarity is comforting, and finding comfort in our reading experiences is an important function of leisure.
I’m not sure if submission is particular to fantasy literature; it applies to any kind of reading for pleasure no matter the genre. But often submission gets treated like a kind of “bad fun,” especially in relation to fantasy. There’s the concept of “beach reads” or “guilty pleasures” in all genres, but when we read fantasy, there’s sometimes a snobbish tendency of critics to equate all fantasy literature with pure escapism or easy pleasure. They see fantasy as a retreat from reality, as an abdication of one’s responsibility to be a “serious” adult who cares about “real” concerns. If only we could all read the latest literary fiction and “grow up” already! Fantasy is seen as kids’ stuff, as not worthy of an adult’s time or energy.
Thankfully, this type of attitude toward fantasy is falling by the wayside, but we still sometimes see it crop up in the way certain authors and books are treated as being less “literary” than others and therefore deserving of scorn. If it’s not already clear, I reject this kind of snobbishness.
Whether one reads for submission or for discovery or for challenge or for fantasy or whatever kind of fun, fantasy is not a lesser genre simply because it is different from realistic or literary fiction. Fantasy is often doing something different than what other genres are doing, and that’s okay. I say, vive la différence!
Speaking of escapism and beach reads, if you’re looking for your next book this summer, pick up a copy of my two newest novels, Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion.
Links to purchase are HERE. Let’s read like it’s 1992!
That’s it for now! Thank you for reading! And please consider buying my books HERE, or my short stories HERE.
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I started reading your entry today. Really enjoyed the first two chapters!
Fantastic read. Truly enjoyed it. I also have an entry in SPFBO9. :)