The Muse & The Marketplace 2024

As writers, we know how it feels to move through one reality while our minds are somewhere else–but how do you narrate such a scenario for your characters? We’ll take a look at a wide range of literary characters with active fantasy lives to answer this question. Walter Mitty is the classic example, but we’ll also look at additional historic and contemporary examples of characters whose reality is deeply affected by their fantasy lives. We’ll discuss examples of non-fiction–like Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost In The Throat– in which the narrative is propelled partly by the tension between the fantasy upheld by the author’s family and her experiences in the “real” world.

Along the way, we’ll discuss how illuminating characters’ fantasy lives is a kind of hack. Why? Because accessing their fantasies allows you to convey your characters’ deepest fears and desires, urges and inhibitions, through the stories they dream up. Whether it’s Sylvia Plath imagining herself as a fig tree or George Saunders’ lonely barber crafting elaborate erotic daydreams that fall apart even in his imagination, giving your characters active fantasy lives is a great way to reveal interiority, create tension between characters with competing fantasies, and propel your plot forward.