SensaWunda™

A post about words and wonder

I’ve never been entirely sure where my love of fantasy fiction comes from. There were definitively some early encounters with it that left a mark—my mum reading me The Hobbit, listening to The Chronicles of Narnia audiobooks on long car trips—but I encountered plenty of other pieces of classic children’s literature growing up. My parents were big on that, bless them. But of everything I read, it was the fantasy stuff that stuck, and I’ve never been entirely sure why.

Recently, after a frank (and very helpful) conversation with my agent about sales and marketability, I have been working on writing a straight thriller. No fantastical or speculative elements. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve written something like that, but it’s probably the deepest I’ve dived into a project like this, and I think it’s given me a sliver of insight into what it is about fantasy that appeals to me.

Now, before we go any further, I should state clearly and loudly that I am VERY far from being the first person to suggest that a defining characteristic of fantastic fiction and a key part of its appeal is the sense of wonder it provides. Saying that’s why I like fantastic fiction, is like saying I like roller coasters because they send you through twists and turns really fast. Like… no shit. That’s kind of their definitional feature.

For those of you who aren’t raging nerds, fantasy’s “sense of wonder” is the sense of awe it provides when one encounters something vast, and new, and previously unknown. It’s what you feel when you see the Grand Canyon for the first time, or when you ride the Maid of the Mist into the heart of Niagara Falls. It’s the reason why, when they advertise Lord of the Rings, they show that shot of the Fellowship on a river rounding a bend to see two massive statues towering over the landscape with outstretched hands. It’s that little moment of sheer awe at the simple majesty of it all.

So, yes, that’s a big part of WHAT I like about fantasy. But it’s not the WHY.

Now, as tangents and asides seem to have become something akin to branding for these posts, buckle up for a brief sojourn into what I shall affectionately dub, “additional Jonathan nonsense.”

One time, for work, I got to go to TED’s medical convention, TEDMed. It was definitely one of my nicer work trips. I got to eat crickets. They’re better than you think.

Anyway…

The reason I bring this up was that one of the talks I saw while I was there was about research into the effect of emotions on physical health. The main thrust of the talk was that there has been a lot of research into the effect of negative emotions, like stress, but not much into the role of positive emotions, like happiness. The researcher talking had done some studies that showed that positive emotions were associated with an increase in anti-inflammatory agents in the body (or… something like that. The science writer in me really wants to reference this stuff, but the lazy fantasy writer in me is not going to, so I’m going off memory for better or worse). Anyway, the key here is that the emotion most strongly associated with positive outcomes was… wait for it… awe. Which, is another way of saying wonder.

So, that sense of awe, that sense of wonder that folk get out of fantasy books, maybe it’s good for you.

Again, welcome to caveat city: I am not trying to claim that reading fantasy books is good for you health. I am even not trying to claim that fantasy fiction provides exclusive access to “awe.” But I will say that fantasy fiction invests more in creating that sense of wonder than other types of fiction, and that feeling good after encountering it might be part of its appeal.

But I don’t know. I may be spouting quack nonsense. Make of all this what you will.

Anyway, it’s been a while since we had one, so let’s have another abrupt left turn:

I am not a religious person. It’s just not a big part of my life. I certainly don’t have a grudge against anyone who is. Some people very dear to me indeed get a lot out of religion and more power to them, I say. Rather, the reason I bring this up is because I think a big part of religion is its sense of wonder. It brings believers into contact with something vast and somewhat unknowable. It provides them with access to awe, and out here in the suburbs we’re not necessarily encountering breathtaking vistas that make us marvel at the nature of creation every day.

Now, as someone who isn’t religious, I’m not getting much of my wonder that way. That’s not to say I can’t walk into a cathedral and be awed by the scale of it, and by the majesty of the human endeavor that went into it, but… I’m not walking into cathedrals every day.

Now, I am not trying to say that fantasy fiction is my religion. Rather, I’m trying to say that I think we need wonder in our lives. I think wonder is good for us. And for me, fantasy fiction—and especially writing fantasy fiction—is where I get a lot of my wonder.

The writing part may seem odd there. At least it does to me. Because if I’m writing a scene, isn’t that scene internally generated? How can I get wonder from something I’ve dreamed up? And yet, here I am, doing that. And when it’s me doing the imagining, I’m engaging with that source of wonder more deeply. I’m giving it life, breathing into it.

And while writing and reading fantasy fiction isn’t the only place I encounter the numinous in my non-religious life (I swear there is a moment at a good concert where you loose yourself and just become part of the crowd and the music, which is SensaWunda™ on crack…) trying to write something that doesn’t have wonder at its core has helped me realize a little bit more about why fantasy fiction appeals to me so much, and the importance of the role it plays in my life.

Or perhaps I just think wizards are cool? I don’t know. It’s definitely one of the two at least.