This Thursday, August 15, is my appointment to see a throat specialist. I mostly just want to find out what is wrong with my throat. After that, I want to find out what they can do to fix it. I’ve been experimenting with different toothpastes to see if they could be irritating my throat. My recent toothpastes have been whitening toothpastes. I used sample toothpastes I got from the dentist that weren’t whitening, and it seemed better. It wasn’t so much better that it was the only cause of the problems. I’m going to mention it when I go for my appointment.
I recently changed these Thoughts from Life articles to only come out on Tuesdays. They were coming out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I was heading close to 2024 entries. Pretty soon, the current week would catch up to me. I don’t have time to create new entries every week. If these writings were my only job, I could easily do it. That would require me only working on the articles. Even if I could afford to do that, I would still want them delayed by time. Thoughts from Life are not the only things I want to write.
I have science fiction and fantasy stories I’ve been working on for years. The fantasy story has never left my mind. I sent notes to myself about it from time to time. They mainly spelled out how magic and magical creatures worked in the stories. Listening to other fantasy stories by other people helps me to know what I don’t want in my stories. I find many fantasy novels gloss over how magic works and how the magical creatures evolved. I’m trying to stay away from just slapping together existing animals. Yes, I’m looking at you, griffins.
There’s a danger of explaining too much in a fantasy novel. If you must explain every aspect of magic and magical creatures, you’re going to explain away the readers. At its center, the magic must be just another form of reality. Once you get done explaining the rules of your universe, you still must tell an interesting and entertaining story. For my novels, I must know the history of magic and magical creatures of the story. Only a small part of this history will make it into the book, but I must know these things to tell a convincing story. The main character in my story is new to this world so we learn through him. Learning facts without a story is boring. The best history teachers tell good stories.
I can listen to, watch, and read fantasy stories because I accept the reality of the story. Science fiction can only have one or two non-realistic elements in them, whereas fantasy stories are complete worlds that only adhere to the reality of the world itself. You must create what is realistic in the world of your story. If people fly in your world that is realistic. Reality is what you say it is. Once you establish flying as a rule, you don’t have to explain it again each time they fly. If you establish a world with too many unrealistic elements, readers stop relating to the story.
Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite stories, but it pushes the boundaries of reality too much sometimes. The Disney version of the story didn’t do well when it came out because the story became too unrelatable. When you enter a world where everything is “contrariwise,” you have characters who are nothing more than metaphors. You can only deal with metaphors for so long before you crave relatable characters or a relatable story. Alice in Wonderland is not a book you read for the story. It is literature that connects to readers, as does poetry. I’m not a fan of poetry. My connection to the book is mainly to the weirdness of the characters. Alice is an anti-hero. She is a stuck-up English girl who must deal with characters who do not act like proper people. They are rude in her mind because they don’t act like she wants them to. It is a fantasy because fantastical things happen. In my books, I will not have such anti-heroes.
Thoughts from Life 
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