Settings: constrained, unconstrained, natural, supernatural, celestial, cthonic...

[sunandshadow]

When analyzing myths, one of the places Claude Levi-Strauss and his followers like to look for meaning is in the direction characters travel. Characters may travel upward to a tree mountain, or heavenly plane, they may travel downward into an underground world or a watery one, they may travel from the ocean upstream to a waterfall, lake, or spring, they may travel east or west following the sun, or north or south following the heat or cold. In other fiction characters can be found traveling to the past or the future, traveling to an alternate world where animals talk or magic exists, traveling to elemental realms of fire, ice, etc, or dreamlike realms which are responsive to human desires and memories.

The pattern of the travels is also important - in many stories the character travels to a special land, goes through adventures there, then at last returns to the real world. In a more episodic format the character may have a home location from which they repeatedly venture somewhere new and then return home. In other stories the character goes from one strange land to another, often ending with death or apotheosis, but occasionally with retirement either to their original home or to a newly created home. Then personally I am interested in stories where the character cannot travel: for example they are marooned on an island, held captive, magically bound to a castle, house, or labyrinth, stuck on a spaceship or naval ship, or confined in a boarding school or hospital.


Anyway I just thought this might make for an interesting discussion topic. What sorts of locations and journeys, in your own or others' writing, have struck you as having interesting symbolism? Do you think that one type of character is good for journey stories while a different type is good for non journey stories? How about cases where the same story has 2 endings: in one the character returns where they originally came from, in the other they set up housekeeping in fantasyland. I've met people who rather violently prefer each type to the other, but what is the philosophical significance of this difference? And feel free to share any interesting thoughts you've had about settings. :)

[mscelina]

Wow. Great topic.

I am a classicist, if not by profession then by proficiency. (Teaching Greek and Latin doesn't count for me ;)--I was a HORRIBLE teacher--go figure) A lot--okay, MOST of my work is based upon mythology. I endeavor to bring classical (and in current projects, Eastern, Judeo-Christian, and Egyptian) mythology into my epic and dark fantasies. I thrive on settings and spend an unholy amount of time creating them.

However, my ultimate goal is to eliminate those beautiful, ethereal mythological settings and put the stories into darker, harsher, more realistic worlds. I want my characters to pee. I want my trees to rot. I want my worlds to be overpopulated and horrible--or commonplace and normal.

In other words, I want the mythologies I rework to be relatable to my readers.

Journey myths (which as a devotee of Campbell I prefer) are not restricted to any sort of setting. Some of my journeys take place in medieval settings; others in classical; others in nebulous, sinister alternate realms that weave through reality and screw everything up. Ultimately, the journey myth is not so much about the physical travel, but the personal journey that the MC(s) undergo.

Asphodel, for example, is the archetypal fantasy world. Behind the burgeoning forests and dreamy, sparkling cities are a lot of modern analogies. The characters I placed upon Asphodel, however, are designed to make the transition from fantasy archetypal characters to modern dark literary characters. It's a lot harder than it might sound.

Darkshifters lives in a twisted universe where nothing is as it seems. (my crit group says that should be the slogan of the books) As a matter of fact, the actual physicality of the world is so unimportant that it's rarely mentioned. I know what it is; it's not even secondary to the forwarding of the plot. The alternate worlds however are totally different. Their nebulous and mysterious existence defies the characters' attempts to discover more about them--and they always win.

And Terella? Terella exists in a god's mind, and that god walks the plains of it without even having a clue of who or what she is. *grin* That gives me a lot of leeway.

I know, I know--a wandering response to an excellent question. Great post--it's given me a lot to think about. :)

[HeronW]

In an early work, the MC travels around the continent's main countries, clockwise starting north and going around, ending close to where she started before going through the center of the land as in cutting to the heart of the problem and finding a partial solution.

[Zoombie]

In my tale, the heroes are rushing towards danger, only to find that it was actually right under their homes.

And, funnily enough, so many characters in the book use guns and fire guns and blow things up...but it is the characters who are bad with guns who defeat the enemy. And it's not with a fist fight or a dramatic battle.

Rather, it is achieved by thought and emotion.

[runner4life]

In one of my short stories, it begins at the MC small village and must escape since the village is attacked. The story continues through forests, oceans, and mountains and finishes right back where it started, the village.

[TheIT]

In my fantasy WIP, the locations are several different places within the same city: two inns, a stadium, and a noble estate where most of the action takes place. My MCs also spend a significant amount of time on the dreamscape, a spirit realm where thought and emotion decides reality.

The dreamscape portion has been giving me trouble. I've been getting comments from my writers' group that they don't perceive any jeopardy for my characters while in the dreamscape. Several "holodeck" analogies have been made. I'm guessing it's because so far I've chosen the wrong type of threats. In a dream realm, simulating a physical threat like a sword wound doesn't make much sense. After all, what can get physically hurt? Instead, I think I need to change tactics and go after emotions and memories.

[Danger Jane]

Very interesting. One of my stories actually does involve a fair bit of traveling, and I'd never yet analyzed it to include symbolic meaning.

But the characters must travel west before they travel east...just like things become worse before they get better. I definitely seem to pick my locations well...the western location was set in the mythology in which I'm working (Greek) but the eastern one was totally up to my discretion.

I do tend to use the sea, sometimes the sky, as a metaphor for the character's emotional state--current or future. Might be a little traditional, but it's a nice touch and adds just a bit of depth. Not to mention I write spare and if that description doesn't mean anything, you're pulling teeth to get me to write it :tongue

Great post. I'll be keeping this in mind as I edit...

[sunandshadow]

In my fantasy WIP, the locations are several different places within the same city: two inns, a stadium, and a noble estate where most of the action takes place. My MCs also spend a significant amount of time on the dreamscape, a spirit realm where thought and emotion decides reality.

The dreamscape portion has been giving me trouble. I've been getting comments from my writers' group that they don't perceive any jeopardy for my characters while in the dreamscape. Several "holodeck" analogies have been made. I'm guessing it's because so far I've chosen the wrong type of threats. In a dream realm, simulating a physical threat like a sword wound doesn't make much sense. After all, what can get physically hurt? Instead, I think I need to change tactics and go after emotions and memories.

I've seen two threats used effectively in dreamscapes: draining and overwhelming. Draining is basically sucking all the spiritual energy out of the character so that they feel cold and depressed and ready to give up. Overwhelming is when lots of seemingly harmless distractions pile on the character until they are totally confused, feel like they can't breathe or hear themselves think, and may physically get buried in a squirming pile or wrapped in a cottony cocoon.


I'm glad people like the topic! :)

[A. J. Luxton]

^^^
...Don't forget emotional threats -- embarrassment, things that wound a person psychically.

This suggestion is near to hand because I'm re-reading C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen at the moment. About two thirds of the conflict in the whole novel results from things characters do to each others' heads...

[tehuti88]

Very interesting. :) I'm not sure how well I could reply aside to reply with my own examples as others are doing. ^_^

In my first serial the "journey" basically involves the protagonist traveling from her normal, non-fantasy world to the fantasy world of the story. Oddly, kind of hitting on what you mentioned, it's an island, and a very small one, and most of the characters upon it have never ventured away from it; though it turns out that the Island has lots of strange locations of its own and the protagonist explores these before returning home.

In the second story she returns and, utilizing the Island, journeys to more faraway places to bring several people BACK to the Island, where the climax ensues, before again heading home.

Then in the third story, the MC goes to the Island, and then most of the action takes place far away from it, though as in the second story there are occasional trips back. The characters journey south, east, north, and then west for their goal, and they also go underground and up into the sky and through the water, all sorts of portals. There will be ANOTHER return to the Island at the story's end...everything results in the MC returning to the Island since it's the focus of the series. I utilize Jungian archetypes in the series, and the Island has kind of become my informal idea of the "Self," drawing everyone and everything toward it without them knowing it. It even "hides" parts of itself until it feels that certain characters are ready to see them, and the Island isn't all there is to itself; it's much larger than it looks, with all sorts of hidden places. (The characters even say now and then that the Island seems to have a mind of its own.)

They travel in the different directions to meet the Four Winds, skyward to meet Thunderbirds, into the water to meet merfolk and water serpents, and underground to meet little underground people and giant spiders, so hopefully all those beings are in their right settings. The underground and water can represent the unconscious, and so the fact that my characters are constantly delving there is probably no coincidence. The series is heavily related to dreams.

I wouldn't know if one character is good for a journey story and one isn't...I would say that homebodies aren't good for journey stories, but the story I'm currently writing kind of disproves that, as some of the Islanders who have never ventured away from home have been forced to journey far from it and see just how different the rest of the world is. There's a lot of culture clash, in other words.

How about cases where the same story has 2 endings: in one the character returns where they originally came from, in the other they set up housekeeping in fantasyland.

This is actually a theme I sort of wanted to explore in a possible future series, though not with the MC. The general idea behind the series is that the Island is an alternate dimension where various things went somewhat differently, and there can be numerous other Islands where other things went differently. What if the MC ended up traveling to the wrong Island...? So many possibilities. The same territory as the first story could be explored anew as everything would be all different. That's one thing I'm finding about this location, whenever someone thinks they know everything about it, it reveals another surprise.

Oddly though, I'm finding that sometimes I tire of the journeying and want to just get back on the Island and set the action there again! I guess it can always happen, like in the fourth story where much of the action is supposed to return there (although in an underground world of the Island's, previously unknown)...full circle.

I don't read enough fiction to properly answer with others' examples, but I think I like a sort of mix between journey fiction and that which stays close to home--maybe why I chose a local island to set much of the action on, and then gave it the ability to branch out so much into other worlds. Strange new things are good, as long as there's some familiarity too.

[dirtsider]

I never really paid attention to the psychological/mythological aspect of my MC's journey. But as I'm only on the first draft, that's not too surprising at this point. Right now, my MC's don't really journey too far from the world/places they're used to. (Not at this point at least.) But for the POV MC, it's not a matter of going to distant lands to learn things or go on a myth journey. It's more of a shift in perspective. She's starting to see "her" world differently as she begins to learn about the subcultures that exist side by side with the one that she's used to.

[josephwise]

I've always loved the up-river journey, a la Heart of Darkness. It allows you to show two journeys at once, and is ultimately very cyclical. Carnage floats downriver, as the story moves upriver. And when you get upriver you understand the carnage.

[Sarpedon]

Compass directions seem to be frequently important.

The evil guys always seem to live in the East. But if you go far enough east you get past them to a more friendly but inevitably exotic locale.

After East, North is the most popular location for evil. Followed by South. West is hardly ever evil. Sad that we have such biases.

[sunandshadow]

tehuti88 - If I may take a guess, do you play videogames? Your description sounds like it would be very appropriate for an RPG - ChronoCross is the first one that comes to mind because it has both islands and an alternate universe, but that pattern of going out to gather allies and bring them back to a main location to deal with problems is common to many RPGs, as is the idea of the main location having secret subareas that only become accessible later.

Oh here's one set of directions I missed earlier, characters often travel towards 'culture' (usually represented by a capital city) or away from culture to 'nature' (represented as a bit of wilderness on the very edge of civilization, or sometimes represented by a temple or magical place in the center of a forest.

[loquax]

I've always liked the classical hero format whereby the character must visit hell and come back again in order to gain deep personal insight. It's present in Homer, Virgil, Dante, and lots of other ancient mythology, as well as more recently the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

In my WIP, hell is represented by insanity. The main character is captured, tortured, and deprived of his medication in the middle chunk of the book (or the "second act"). When he comes out of this hell, back to the real world, he has several revelations that help conclude the story.

[tehuti88]

tehuti88 - If I may take a guess, do you play videogames? Your description sounds like it would be very appropriate for an RPG - ChronoCross is the first one that comes to mind because it has both islands and an alternate universe, but that pattern of going out to gather allies and bring them back to a main location to deal with problems is common to many RPGs, as is the idea of the main location having secret subareas that only become accessible later.

Oh here's one set of directions I missed earlier, characters often travel towards 'culture' (usually represented by a capital city) or away from culture to 'nature' (represented as a bit of wilderness on the very edge of civilization, or sometimes represented by a temple or magical place in the center of a forest.

Truthfully, no, I'm not a gamer... :) I find it kind of interesting though that games utilize a few of the ideas I do (although I was already aware of the RPG quality of gathering a group of travelers).

Civilization vs. nature is another interesting idea; the MC in my stories is from the 21st century, and the Island she travels to is a jumble of cultures ranging from the circa 1500s to 1800s. One small portion of it is the "civilized" town, while the rest is devoted to a pre-contact culture and is mostly left to nature. The two groups don't tend to intermingle much due to fear of each other's ways--the townspeople dislike the more natural side of the Island, whereas the Islanders dislike the more civilized aspect of the town. Both groups also deride each other, though the Island "accepts" both (those whom it doesn't accept tend to not be able to return to the Island once they leave). When the MC returns to the Island for the second time there's been a greater influx of outsiders and things go temporarily out of whack, but then balance themselves out again.

Away from this location, most of the action is in a pre-contact/early contact period so I've found that nature plays more of a part in terms of travel, and civilized areas tend to be small, scattered, and closely tied to the land itself (trees as homes, as opposed to buildings, for example). This might just reflect my own preference for natural areas as opposed to cities.