I did spend the weekend reading, which was really nice. I even finished a book. I have found that even when I have an hour free I didn't want to read before because there was always something else for school that I should be reading instead. But since I worked so hard all week to keep up with school work, I gave myself the entire weekend off to relax.
Though I don't believe at this point that I will return to editing my book until Term 1 is over in December, I have been toying with the idea of writing a new story in my free time. It would be an unplotted story that I would write purely for fun and to use the creative side of my brain. There is 't much imagination involved in science.
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Magical realism is a term
coined in reference to early Latin American writers, most notably Gabriel
Garcia Marquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Its official
definition is combining realistic narrative and naturalistic techniques with
surreal elements of dream or fantasy. In layman’s terms, it’s when people who
live in a seemingly real world experience a different reality than us. If it
still doesn’t make any sense, it’s because it is a concept that is better shown
through examples than told outright.
In a dream, anything can
happen. So imagine that some of those things seeped into the real world and
everyone acted completely normal about it. It was as though there was nothing
wrong with people singing instead of talking, or it was the norm to go to the bathroom
in public. Whatever the difference might be, it is up to the writer to offer a
perspective where the reader begins to believe that it is also a normal thing
to do. So your protagonist can’t be aghast at all of this, they have to treat
it as if it is no big deal and play it off as a normal part of life.
At the same time, there
is an emphasis on the seemingly normal things that we experience in the real
world. That could be an activity such as a sport, or an action that we do
without thinking. But this contrast helps to show the reader that things are
different in other cultures, in other places and that our norm is not the same
as someone else’s.
There is so much to
explore in this genre. Time can be warped, ideas can be explored that are taken
seriously even if they might appear comical or strange.
If you would like more
reading on the subject this website might be of interest as it details the ways that this device can be
achieved. One of the front runners of the beginnings of magical realism is
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He has done an interview with the Atlantic in which he attempts to explain it.
Even though I seem to
understand how it works, it is still a true mystery to myself. I would be able
to recognize it when I see it but as to how to write it myself, I would have no
idea where to begin. But this seems like a very enchanting way to write so I
hope to explore if further so that one day I can incorporate even a sliver of
this into my own stories.
It has been suggested
that Western use of magical realism is not true to its original form. Without
the influence of mythology as other cultures have, it has been quickly summed
up as characters, setting and incidents not corresponding with the real world
or our acceptance of facts. This is basically what I have stated above, and yet
it is always so much more. This device is so confusing to most that critics
prefer to disregard it as a device at all. It is argued that if it can be
explained than it is not magical realism.
Whatever the case may be,
I highly recommend you spending some time to do more research on the subject as
it can prove to be very interesting.
Here are some places to
begin your research:
What Is Magical Realism? (Video)
Magical Realism Definition (Video)
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