The Challenges of Writing Modern Fantasy Without a Masquerade

If you've read most modern fantasy, you're familiar with the Masquerade. It is, in short, the idea that the vampires, werewolves, fey creatures, witches, wizards, etc., move among the masses without being seen by the general population. Whether it's by magic, by constantly staying in the shadows, by manipulating media to make their very existence seem ludicrous, or just the idea that a majority of people will not believe what their own eyes tell them, the Masquerade is a common theme in a lot of modern fantasy because it serves two, important purposes.

The first is that it allows the author to keep our world, and its history, intact. If the supernatural community was kept behind the curtain, then as far as we know our history happened more or less how we think, giving the writer carte blanche to make edits and changes as the story progresses. This immediately gives the audience a foot in the door, as they know the real world, and can add the fantastic elements to it as the story progresses. The second thing it does is that it creates the illusion that this fantastical world could exist right under our noses. All you need to do is walk down the right alley on the right night, and you could find yourself in this world, too.

Oh dear... just how did you wind up in a place like this?

However, there are writers and readers alike who've grown sick of the Masquerade. They want modern fantasy stories where the magic and the monsters walk out in full daylight, and where there's no secret about who and what they are. And while you most certainly can do that, it is by no means an easier task to accomplish. The Masquerade does a lot of unexpected heavy lifting for you, and removing it means that burden falls squarely on your shoulders.

Before we get into it this week, make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter to stay on top of all my releases. Also, speaking of unusual modern fantasy stories, my second hard-boiled cat novel dropped, so if you enjoyed my Maine coon heavy Leo's adventures in Marked Territory, then you are going to have an absolute ball with Painted Cats!

You Will Need To Re-Write History

In The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe a man drops a golden scarab through a skull nailed to the end of a tree branch. The difference between one eye socket and the other, once the characters take 30 or so paces out in a particular direction, is the difference between an empty hole in the ground, and finding a king's ransom in buried treasure.

That situation is sort of what you deal with when you do away with the Masquerade. Because it's going to change history, and the further back you go, the more changes will be made.

The difference a few inches can make.

As an example, say that supernatural creatures have only been in public for a short period of time. This is, more or less, the sort of setup we have in True Blood. For while vampires have been around forever, they finally stepped out of hiding (along with a lot of other creatures), and the world is still changing to reflect this impact. But all the time they were hiding behind the curtain? Well, that history remains intact.

But go further back with it, and see how that alters things.

For instance, what would happen in vampires came out of hiding in the 80s? Or if werewolves were public knowledge in the 60s? After decades of being part of the world, how does their presence alter things? Are certain types of movies just not allowed to be made due to public outcry, with schlocky trash considered vamp-sploitation? Have civil rights progressed for supernatural creatures? Can they serve in the military, or in public office? Has science been able to understand anything about these creatures? Can lycanthropy cure cancer? Is there a push to use more plastic and aluminum in public spaces so that fey creatures aren't hurt by touching iron? Are vampires limited in the places they can live due to the widespread nature of churches? Are there hate groups that focus on these creatures?

You could go back even further, too. What effects did these creatures have on world events like the Great Wars? Are they found across the world, or only in certain places, and how has that shaped culture there? Have laws needed to be changed for life sentences (or life appointments) for creatures that are functionally immortal? The earlier the Masquerade dropped, the more the presence of the supernatural will alter the course of how the world developed.

You're Generally Better Off Making Your Own World

My two cents on this issue is that if you don't want to do a massive amount of world building for an alternate historical timeline, but you still want a modern fantasy world where elves, orcs, shapeshifters, etc. are a part of the day-to-day world, then you should just make your own, unique setting. Because at the end of the day it's usually a lot easier than trying to ask how things would have been different of Rome had been ruled by elves, and the Germanic tribes had been united by orcs come down from the mountains, and how that changed the events of the past few thousand years on Earth.

On the one hand, this is not a small undertaking. You need to dope out finance systems, technology, political relationships, cultures, and a thousand other things just to make the world feel like a real, lived-in place. At the same time, though, you're free to make those things regardless of what Earth's actual timeline was like, and without trying to mold our real world history, nations, etc. to fit what you're trying to do with your fantasy. It gives you total freedom to get as weird and wild as you want to!

Yeah, Smith and Wizards just dropped this beauty. You wanna talk trash now?

Unless your story needs our real world to act as the foundation for some reason (either to provide that extra escapism of the fantasy within reality, or to try to make a statement on how history might have gone differently with one or two fantastical alterations to the timeline), you shouldn't feel tied to using the world we all know and live in. Because unless it's required that you have New York, or Chicago, or Tokyo as a touch stone for some reason, don't tie yourself into knots to make them part of your setting.

Instead, take us to new places we've never seen before. Places where elven private eyes carry spell-slinging side arms, where werewolf orcs act as muscle for the mob, and where gnomish scientists try to crack the code of creation using a combination of ancient spells and a large hadron collider. Because that's going to be way more interesting, refreshing, and unique than another Shadowrun homage where in the year 20XX the event happened, and now there's ogres, trolls, elves, etc. in the real world because we want them here now.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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