Young Writers Society

Following my failure to get FoB off the ground, I have decided to take a break and try writing a short piece to get me into the writing mood again. I'm planning on making it an urban fantasy story and would love tips on how to piece such a story together.

All help appreciated.

Hello there. I can give you several writing remedies to this:

Remedy 1: Read urban fantasy's, they are mainly Young Adults. The Power of Five by Antony Horowitz, Harry Potter by JK Rowling being prime examples. Your library should have them.

Remedy 2: In urban fantasy we have the real world, then we have the fantastical world - or maybe there is a fantasy world embedded into the real world. You need to define these really, how is magic or the fantasy element disguised or part of a real world environment?

Remedy 3: The main character(s) - is he a magician? Or is he a helpless, thick person that doesnt know about the magical world.

BEWARE: Do not go into Potter territory. It has to be very, very original.

Yeah, I'm being very careful in my planning to stay away from Potter stuff lest I recieve the wrath of Potter fans.

Alrighty there.

I've, personally, never really thought of Harry Potter as being an urban fantasy. I mean, yeah, there are a few urban parts in it (Private Drive, for example).

But most of it is set in Hogwarts, the Weasley's home, the Quidditch World Cup, etc. And these are magical realms. Hogwarts may as well be set in the magical world of Tosvalos for all the difference it would make to the story.

No, I think something more along the lines of 'Modern Fantasy' is better suited to Harry Potter.

Urban fantasy is a story in which fantasy elements have been transfered to a recognisable modern location.

I, personally, think that the best example of Urban Fantasy is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It has demons prowling the streets at night, vampires chasing teenagers through a school, and Buffy fighting a monster in a graveyard whilst a car drives obliviously by on the nearby main road.

But you have to keep in mind, Urban Fantasy is hard to make realistic. You have to make the reader believe that these fantasy elements really do exist, and you have to present them with a way in which they have remained hidden (and why they wish to remain hidden).

This is something I think Rowling performed rather badly in Harry Potter. The reason Wizards hide themselves from Muggles is because they don't want to be asked for favours. This just doesn't strike me as realistic, as they don't seem to mind given favours to other wizards.

But even then, this doesn't explain why the wizards have kepts dragons, giants, hippogriffs, and the like from muggles. And Rowling never explains why they do this, and I feel that this weakens the believeabilty of her stories.

This is probably why vampires are so popular in Urban Fantasy. It's easy to explain how and why vampires have kept themsleves hidden from humans: they don't want to be hunted to extinction, and they have supernatural abilities that allows them to hide themselves.

Holly Black's Modern Faerie Tales (Tithe, Valiant and Ironside) were my introduction to urban fantasy, and they've remained my favorites in the genre. Then there's the Vampire Chronicles, which are kind-of like classics. (Most of the novels aren't really modern urban fantasy, but the beginnings usually are, like Louis giving the interview.)

Like Surreal said, Harry Potter is modern fantasy, but it's not really urban fantasy, except for a handful of scenes.