Paranormal Fantasy

Paranormal fantasy is also known as Urban Fantasy. It has an urban setting in the modern day with paranormal elements surrounding it. In other words, People drive late model cars, use cell phones, eat at Taco Bell, but have problems with say, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, and Big Foot.

Fantasy doesn't necessarily mean paranormal. I'm not sure what defines paranormal, but I don't think Tolkien has any paranormal elements.

write2livelive2write said:

It might be a stupid question, but what is paranormal fantasy? Isn't fantasy paranormal by default? Why do some agents say they are only interested in "paranormal" fantasy?

Click to expand...

I've always thought of 'paranormal fantasy' as involving either telepathy, psychic powers etc...and/or ghosts, supernatural agents etc. It is only one subgenre under the giant umbrella that is 'fantasy'. Agents interested in only paranormal fantasy may not want to read urban fantasy, or high epic fantasy, or dark fantasy etc....

But this is just my .02 (and they may be bad pennies...)

Take care -

Edit: well...maybe urban does mean paranormal....I have a different idea about 'urban' fantasy....but then, I'm sure many people have differing ideas about all the subgenres.

Shadow_Ferret said:

I don't think Tolkien has any paranormal elements.

Click to expand...

Ghosts and shape-shifters definitely count as paranormal, and Tolkien has both. I wouldn't count him as paranormal fantasy, though, because I think the paranormal elements would have to be central.

I think you can also have a fantasy world that isn't necessarily paranormal. Dragons, for instance, if they inhabit the setting within the natural laws of the place, wouldn't be paranormal.

write2livelive2write said:

According to dictionary.com:

paranormal: of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena

Click to expand...

Dictionary definitions aren't that helpful when considering genres. With or without logic, certain words and phrases mean certain things, mostly by a tacitly accepted usage.

Urban Fantasy has come to mean, basically, recognizable people going about their everyday business, in a society easily recognizable as our own, but with supernatural elements as a major component of the story.

Jim Butcher Dresden series is Urban Fantasy. Wizard, spells, vampires. Also, Chicago cops, problems with his battered Volkswagon.

LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy is not. Wizards, but in a setting of a different world.

Harry Potter? Not really, because the focus is on Hogwarts, Lord V... I mean, you know who, and there is very little interaction with real society and culture.

Holly Black, on the other hand, has her YA protags firmly rooted in our world, living with the homeless in subway tunnels, for example.

Paranormal is now being most often used as a shortened version of Paranormal Romance. It doesn't have the traditional HEA, and in fact can be quite dark, but a major component of the books is still the MC's romantic entanglements - but with various supernatural creatures instead of difficult men. Protags in Paranormals are almost always female.

As with all classifications and genres, these lines occasionally blur.

As rugcat explained, there are many genres within Fantasy.

Tolkien, even iwth ghosts, is considered the epitome of High Fantasy.

Conan, even though it has ghosts and demons, is considered Heroic Fantasy or sword and sorcery.

Try Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife" for an early example of urban/paranormal fantasy. A man discovers that his wife has been practicing a sort of defensive magic, which he dismisses as superstion. He removes and destroys the amulets she has placed around the house and when he destroys the last of them he learns that it wasn't just superstition after all.

rugcat said:

Harry Potter? Not really, because the focus is on Hogwarts, Lord V... I mean, you know who, and there is very little interaction with real society and culture.

Click to expand...

There is a very thin line where Urban Fantasy starts and 'full-blown' Fantasy begins. Harry has contact with the 'normal' world between each year, even though we don't see that happening in the books. Simon R. Green's Nightside novels clearly start in a normal London as well.

I count both of those as Urban Fantasy, because both settings are still set in a slight variation of the real world.

The line gets even more blurred if you look at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe. In there you also start in the real world, but the fantasy world is something entirely different. I count this one as full-blown Fantasy.