Slipping Streams - methods and devices

Falling into a well is always nice, especially if you write a nice Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh!

There's also accidents with magic circles, walking accidentally through portals or making a really bad pot of Mac and Cheese.

Also, have a link between future person and the world they're going to visit (singular plural`d!). Have him be descended from the characters of the past, or have him carry the Mark of the Serpent on his left thigh(tm) that causes a long-dormant magical effect to activate.

Have your MC walk through a closet into a magic land where he and his siblings become kings and queens. I'm sure that's never been done before.

In all seriousness, if you feel the need to bring a character in from the outside (make sure it's necessary first though, why bring up all those questions if a MC from the world will work just as well for your story) you have a lot of options with magic. Magic portals disguised as common place objects, acient artifacts hidden in the main character's grandmother's attic and ghost planes, trains and automobiles all other options. A classic that I haven't read in a while is a mysterious mist like in Rip Van Winkle. A very classy choice in my opinion.

Have your MC walk through a closet

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*sweaty palms* Hey! It was a pantry!

Um, it was. I might edit that. I might not. The entire story is pretty much about what a threat a magical portal could be in the wrong hands, but the portal itself might be something of a McGuffin. Though that's no excuse for laziness.

The Mark Twain method. Get knocked out in one place, wake up in a different one.

Cybernaught said:

The Mark Twain method. Get knocked out in one place, wake up in a different one.

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I just watched the first episode of "Life on Mars," about a cop who is tracking a serial killer and gets hit by a car, only to wake up as a cop 30 (or so) years earlier. The tie between present (2008) and past (1970-something) is tracking down the past killer who the present killer is copycatting. BUT, that's pretty much resolved in the first episode, yet the character doesn't get transported back to 2008. So you don't know WHY he's really there, and I'm sure the show will develop the search for a reason over the course of the series.

All of which is a long way of saying your reader doesn't necessarily have to know WHY the character is where he is right off the bat -- they'll grant you some leeway in getting to the point if the journey there is interesting enough.

-- Marcy

sunandshadow said:

Do you have any particular favorite method for getting a character from reality to fantasyland?

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Yes: distract the readers with some other problem, so they don't dwell on the screaming discontinuity as the character shifts worlds.

I can't think of a viable story in which the MC says: "Oo! I've just shifted worlds; I think I'll take a look around." Every one of these that I've read has more cheese than a Chicago deep-dish pizza.

On the other hand, stories in which the MC is fleeing pursuit; chasing a thief; or hit by a car and not sure of his sanity; or abducted, seduced or coerced or sentenced to exile -- as long as there's high character tension, seem to work just fine, whether the transition is quick or gradual, whether the means are meticulously explained or a pure leap of faith.

I got my characters into fantasy land just fine...my problem is getting them out!

My most favourite method was in a fantasy book I read about 8 yrs back so I can't get the name right now.

There is a church in real world, and an identical one in fantasy world. When the MCs enter the church in the real world, a wacky mysterious guy plays a violin. The speed of his playing and pitch all rise over time. Suddenly, he plays really quickly and at high pitch, and the frequency of the sound matches the natural frequency of the church bell. This causes the church bell to resonate. The resonation of the bell causes the bell in the identical church in the other world to also resonate. The double resonation of both bells causes everything in the churches to exchange realms.

It was really cool.

Darzian said:

My most favourite method was in a fantasy book I read about 8 yrs back so I can't get the name right now.

There is a church in real world, and an identical one in fantasy world. When the MCs enter the church in the real world, a wacky mysterious guy plays a violin. The speed of his playing and pitch all rise over time. Suddenly, he plays really quickly and at high pitch, and the frequency of the sound matches the natural frequency of the church bell. This causes the church bell to resonate. The resonation of the bell causes the bell in the identical church in the other world to also resonate. The double resonation of both bells causes everything in the churches to exchange realms.

It was really cool.

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Could you be thinking of ELIDOR by Alan Garner? If so, it's one of the best books ever written, in any genre. I'm getting gooseflesh just thinking about it.

However, maybe it's a different book, because in ELIDOR, first a tramp plays the violin, then he vanishes and the children start playing football with a ball they found under the demolition truck that's there to knock down the church (the demolition gang are on lunch break). Then the youngest, Roland, accidentally kicks the ball through the window of the church. It shatters it even though it was only plastic. The other three children go in to look for it, but they don't come back out, and when Roland finally ventures in to look for them, they're nowhere to be found. He climbs the church tower, alone and frightened, and that's when he hears the tramp playing the violin again, louder and louder. The violin sticks on a high note... and a strange light floods through the broken window... and Roland is pulled into ELIDOR.

I don't want to spoil any more of it for people who haven't read it, but I agree: this book has the hands-down best "from reality to fantasyland" scenes -- and logic -- EVER. Like when the children's Dad starts getting static shocks from the rosebushes... and the shadows on the walls in the attic... wow. Gooseflesh, ten years after I last read it.

"Slipping streams"? There's actually a name for such a process?? I never knew.

My current WIP utilizes "medicine" (from the American Indian term for mysterious forces). It's usually located in passages such as tunnels, caves, and rock formations (because of webs spun by special spiders who generate such dimensional-travel medicine), but can show up in other places, usually artificially made (portals).

My MC first enters the "fantasyland" by traveling through a fog which, when it covers a particular area, somehow seems to cause dimensions to shift so people can travel to the Island where the story takes place. (The Island itself is an anomaly, existing in different times/dimensions at once and in the exact same place as another island.) She returns home through the same fog. Some people must know how to use this fog properly, or else it's unpredictable, as the man who transports her home doesn't accompany her to her own time, and the people who were on the ferry with her when she first traveled to the Island didn't end up in another dimension like she did.

In sequels she uses a dreamcatcher which has some webs spun by the spiders mentioned before, meaning it has the power to open up interdimensional gateways. It has to be hit by a light source of some kind and cast its shadow, however. In the second story the light source is the moon; in the current WIP, it's flashing lightning. The shadow cast opens up a portal which leads to the Island. The drawbacks are that she needs both the dreamcatcher (with its magical webbing) and a light source (probably other than the sun), and the portal seems to always carry her through to different, unexpected locations. (Many other portals in the story are unpredictable as well, so it's not an exact science.)

In the fourth story she's going to end up someplace REALLY unexpected.

So that's my favorite method. It's not very scientific, but I never claimed it was, and at least it works (most of the time).

mrockwell said:

I just watched the first episode of "Life on Mars," about a cop who is tracking a serial killer and gets hit by a car, only to wake up as a cop 30 (or so) years earlier. The tie between present (2008) and past (1970-something) is tracking down the past killer who the present killer is copycatting. BUT, that's pretty much resolved in the first episode, yet the character doesn't get transported back to 2008. So you don't know WHY he's really there, and I'm sure the show will develop the search for a reason over the course of the series.

All of which is a long way of saying your reader doesn't necessarily have to know WHY the character is where he is right off the bat -- they'll grant you some leeway in getting to the point if the journey there is interesting enough.

-- Marcy

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That sounds pretty cool. I meant to watch it because Gretchen Mol went to my school and I like to keep up-to-date with her. I'm going to check it out. That's a good example too.

Large Hadron Collider or some other experiment gone awry?

Or is that not slipstreamy and leans more towards SciFi?

How about drinking a dusty bottle of Absinthe from an unusual bodega?

in a short story i wrote for a class i used a mirror that opened a portal to the past when the light of sunset hit it in the weaks around a solstice.

lol MC did not know this untill he tried to get back through MWUHAHAHAHAH trapped him in 13th century eroupe, and because he disapeared they put all of his stuff in storage.