: Re: What do Readers Expect from a Fantasy Novel Here and there I've been hearing about what readers 'expect' from certain genres. Romance readers expect the hero and heroine to wind up together.

@Kristi637

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According to the (note: controversial) theorist Bruno Bettleheim, fairy tales have an important psychological function because they directly access archetypal images with deep cultural resonance. In other words, they play out the central conflicts of the universal human life in an allegorical manner.

There is a big difference between modern fantasy novels and fairy tales, but the latter is the raw material for the former. A good fantasy novel has the magic and mystery of a dream, as combined with the structure and development of modern storytelling. The influential Jungian theorist Joseph Campbell identified elements of classic myths as underlying nearly every successful plotline, in all genres, but in fantasy this connection to the origins of storytelling are closer and less veiled.

There's no single list of elements that defines fantasy as a whole, although there are more formulaic sub-genres, such as "sword and sorcery," which tend to follow a set pattern. Rather, the important quality of a fantasy story is the liberation of the imagination through abandoning the requirement of sticking true to the parameters of reality as we know it.

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