Fantasy fiction strives to get the reader caught up in the story, free their imagination and allow them for a brief time to live in another world. An essential quality of a fantasy story is to create a world and characters so believable, a plot so urgent and a conflict so daunting that the reader cannot separate from it. Drawing the reader in through their imagination, fantasy aims to have them participate in the making and meaning of the story.

Tied directly to the importance of the story are the characters. While the story offers lessons in experience, we as readers obtain those lessons through the experiences of the characters. Characters pull the story along and while these characters may not always be human it is important that they are like us, the reader. The reader is not meant to take a detached perspective but enter the story by seeing traits of similarities of their own within the characters themselves.

Characters often have general traits that might apply to any one of us. This allows us to enter into the story via the characters. Commonly found in fantasy fiction is a naïve character that retains their sense of innocence. They avoid having any worldly or political alliances and have not yet become cynical or spoiled by the world around them. This character instead maintains a wide-eyed openness to engage in the adventure before them and can grow and develop the most through their experiences and the lessons they learn along the way.

The importance of fantasy fiction taking readers to another world or a world built on our own is key to the genre. But layered upon this fictional reality is the readers reality, characters need to confront the same terrors, choices and dilemmas that the reader might have. The building of the world goes beyond having users suspend their disbelief and pretending that it is real and edges the their minds closer to a place where the world is real somewhere.

Fantasy is a diverse genre and so there are bound to be exceptions to this point but on a whole the conflict between good and evil remains an essential defining trait of the genre. In fantasy fiction there is a strong sense of right and wrong, good versus evil and the drive to act or make decisions based on those choices. Often the character does not know for certain if their actions will fall on the correct side until they have made them. Fantasy reminds us that these things must be worked towards and one does not exist without the other.

In fantasy fiction the actions of the characters helps to clarify what good is but also, that doing the right thing may not always save us from pain or sorrow. The end to a successful story is not simply joy but a joy distilled from the experience of tough choices or errors in our actions that allow us to understand the shades of good and evil alike.

Unlike the whimsical frolic of an adventure, a quest is a serious undertaking by someone who has been appointed to the mission. While an adventure may lead anywhere a quest is always moving toward something, even if that something is not always clear. Quests are a serious undertaking in which the character must call upon their willpower to push forward. Quests usually are a result of a threat to the status quo and pursued in order to recover that state.

In the end Fantasy literature never denies that evil exists but promotes that even the feeblest of creatures can individually confront it. Fantasy believes that confronting evil is worth the risk and takes an optimistic view that life is worth living and the human spirit will endure, no matter how flawed.

Well a good storyteller is always essential for capturing a readers interest in fantasy there is a greater emphasis placed on the imaginative willingness of the reader. Fantasy readers must set aside what they know to be true and allow the rules to be broken for the sake of the story.