Creative Writing Studio Special Assignment
If you are working on science fiction or fantasy in this course, you are required to
Magical Realism
"I admit that two-and-two-makes-four is an excellent thing, but if all things are to be praised, I should say that two-and-two-makes-five is also a delightful thing." —Fyodor Dostoevsky
In "magical realism," the setting for a story is realistic, but elements of the fantastic, irrational, or hyperbolic are randomly or suddenly or steadily introduced: a horse in an otherwise realistic setting begins to talk; an average, everyday South American village receives a visit from a man with wings; the corpse of a beautiful, eight-foot man washes up on a beach; a vegetable garden on the edge of a quiet town becomes fantastically wild, etc. You might find scenes that tease credulity, or that exaggerate selected images almost comically—without forgoing a realistic base altogether. I.e., stories in this genre are NOT set in an entirely imaginary landscape or world. The effect is a sort of warping or defamiliarizing of everyday reality, or a reality which mixes everyday rationality with dream logic. When something "magical" occurs in a piece of magical realism, characters tend to react to it in a fairly matter-of-fact way, just as they typically react to any "normal" thing in their environment which is bonkers or inexplicable. (Strangeness, after all, is already all around us in the form of reality. Normal reality is exceedingly strange, if you see it with fresh eyes. Who needs fantasy, sci-fi, or surrealism when reality itself is the TRULY fantastic?)
Instructions
Compose such a story.
Note: It's especially important that you investigate sample work in this mode, in order to do this option well. Magical realism is not the same as fantasy or science fiction. Check out this very good web site on magical realism, and look up some stories by Alberto Rios (his book Pig Cookies is wonderful), Angela Carter, Tadeusz Konwicki, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende, and others).
Movies to check out: Like Water for Chocolate, Big Fish, Being John Malkovich.