Over the past few months I have been reading and trying to immerse myself in as many different takes on magical realism as I could, from the novels by Haruki Murakami to films such as Amelie. I think the reason I like magical realism so much as a genre is the subtleties it presents to the audience but in turn make the whole piece feel so much deeper as if there is a hidden layer of story that is often interpreted in so many different ways due to its complexity and abstract nature. In a way writing a piece that fits into this genre has provided me with a welcome challenge, and a way for me to attempt to further the stories that I create, hopefully improving as I go. I specific challenges that I've been faced with so far is trying to write in a way that fits into a realistic world but strays away from fantasy. Although I like fantasy, the real world plausibility of magical realism is appealing in that it plays on the in story characters' mentality and emotions whilst leaving the audience to decipher certain scenes. For example, some of the scenes in Murakami's work are incredibly surreal and boarder line fantasy, however the context the scenes are in can simply amount to a characters mental state and feelings - dreams or hallucinations, meditation etc. This use of emotion and feeling combined with the descriptions create very interesting imagery and varied responses from the audience, this is one of the aspects that drew me to the genre and the narrative complexities that it can provide a story.
When I was trying to come up with a concept for my own story there will several things I tried to keep in mind that would help me somewhat grounded whilst still trying to write a story I liked. Firstly, there had to be a real world setting. I ended up choosing Japan because I like the variety of forest, mountains and city all in close proximity and thought that suited the type of story I intended to create. Next, I tried to come up with some subtle fantasy elements, not necessarily things that wouldn't exist in real life but very peculiar events that are totally feasible within themselves. I also want to employ the technique of 'authorial reticence' which I discovered during my context of practice module which includes the deliberate withholding of information in order to allow the audience to learn about the world through interpretation.
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