It's All About People, Not Things
Yesterday I talked about a bad example of Christian Fantasy. Today I want to talk about a problem that Fantasy and Science Fiction writers face. I hope to also address how to correct this problem. When writer chooses to write speculative fiction, it is because he wants to place elements in his novel that you won’t find in our concept of the world. In speculative fiction you can have elves and fairies, wizards and dragons, spaceships that move faster than light and pretty much anything you might want to dream up. As fascinating as these things are, they are just things. A novel isn’t about things. A novel is about people and how far they are willing to go to accomplish their goals. In a fantasy novel, a person may be a troll, but the troll has something he wants, even if it is eat the human princess . That is the story that we must tell, even though it is so easy to get caught up in talking about the odd characters, the scenery, the political climate and everything else except the story...