• Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writing is captivating because of the way it blends the real world with the fantastic. In a short story he wrote titled, Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles, there is never a clear distinction between what's real and what's fantastic. The main character is said to be a magical healer who is able to cure people of diseases. However, it's never clear in the story if he's actually healing them, or simply conning them. He also describes a variety of scenes that combine real world experiences with visions, such as when the main character revives a dead rabbit.

    I've recently been dealing with a similar issue in a piece I described a while back. In the piece, I am walking through Prospect Park, overwhelmed by the destruction around me. Seeing this destruction, I find memories of the past invoked. Bringing these memories into the real world, I "see" tombstones amidst the park's ruins. These tombstones are engraved with memories of friends gone by.

    The challenge with this strategy, is that the piece is rich in imagery, which can cause potential conflicts with the tombstones that I describe. The tombstones almost become a part of the landscape, which is what I want, so long as the readers are able to distinguish between the two. However, how can I achieve this goal? I've been playing with a few different ideas, so I thought I'd go through them one by one.

    First, describing the fantastic objects using unreal descriptions. For instance, when I describe seeing the formation of tombstones amidst the ruins of the park, maybe I could use them a more magical portrayal. So the tombstones might flicker into view, or appear translucent, a ghostly image decreeing past love.

    Second, I was considering replacing the tombstones with fantastic creatures. So rather than have a tombstone representing these friends of the past, maybe I will include a spectral image of them that seems to move through the ruins. The eulogy I recite at their tombstones will now be spoken when addressing them.

    The third way I've considered is the most explicit route. In this case, stating that the tombstones begin to form, not in the devastation of the park, but in the darkest corners of my mind. It loses some of the luster and magic of fantasy and reality melding together but it avoids confusion the most.

    Dealing with these issues might seem trivial to some, but they go a long way to making the piece feel more real. Sometimes, capturing what's happening in the real world requires a magical feel and it's only through this clever combination of reality with the fantastic that we can truly achieve it.