I’ll never forget when a blacksmith friend of mine made a sword for me.
He began by taking an old piece of scrap metal from a car and put it into the roaring fires of a furnace. Once the metal was molten red, he took it over to an anvil and began pounding on it with a heavy hammer. After a while, he’d put it back into the furnace and then he’d take it back to be hammered on the anvil. He did this again and again, shaping the metal little by little, until he had this blade.
Scrap metal from a car turned into an elegant sword.
This sword marks me as a nerd (because who else but a nerd would hang a sword on his office door?). It reflects my love of epic fantasy and sci-fi. Ever since I was little I was big into all that epic stuff. Now, I’m a writer of fantasy, and I teach how to write in that genre. So one of my passions is how to tell great fantasy stories.
But another passion of mine is why we tell fantasy.
A question that’s been on my mind for a long time is: Why are we as humans drawn to fantasy? Our blockbuster films are fantasy and sci-fi. Summer after summer will fill the theaters to see these movies. These are the stories we come back to again and again.
Not just in modern times, but all throughout history, all the way the back to ancient times as well when people would listen to epic poetry and folktales. Humanity has always been enthralled by fantasy.
But why? I believe the reason we keep coming back to fantasy stories is that these stories touch us on a deep human level. Fantasy teaches us lessons on how to live.
Fantasy calls us to do hard things, to make hard choices in the midst of conflict. Fantasy calls us to our “hero moments.”
A hero moment is that part of the story where a character has to make a difficult decision, deciding between doing what is easy and doing what is right. Is the character going to do what is easy, what may even be normal? Or are they going to do what is right, what is difficult yet heroic? When the character seizes their hero moment, they walk the more difficult road and choose to do what is right.
Epic fantasy and sci-fi are full of hero moments.
In Hunger Games, Katniss has to decide if she’s going to do what is easy or do what is right. On one hand she can choose to be a killer and survive the games. On the other hand, she can choose to keep her humanity. To kill and survive is the natural, easy choice—going along with the demands of the games, killing in the name of surviving and winning.
No one would blame Katniss if she chose this route. But there is another option. Katniss could choose to do what is right. In the midst of all the killing, she could rise above the violence and keep her kindness and compassion. She could keep her humanity. So Katniss is confronted with this choice to do what is easy or to do what is right. In this hero moment, she chooses to do what is right.
We see this choice all throughout fantasy and sci-fi. Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter—all of them have to make a choice between doing what is right or doing what is easy.
There’s a reason why heroes in stories are confronted with conflict that brings about difficult choices. And that reason is conflict reveals character. Are they going to bystanders or are they going to be heroes? Are they going to seize their hero moment?
It’s easy to make the right choice when life is going well. When life is all sunshine and rainbows, doing what is right can even be the convenient thing to do. But when life gets hard, doing what is right can be difficult. Who will you be in those moments?
Conflict reveals character. And the greater the conflict, the greater the revelation of who someone really is.
There is one particular experience I had that drove this lesson home. It happened a many years back when I was living in Nicaragua. It was about that time for me to renew my visa, so I drove down to the Nicaraguan/Costa Rican border to get new stamps in my passport. It was the second of January, and I was about to learn the hard way that the day after New Year’s Day was one of the worst times to cross and re-cross the border.
It seemed that Costa Rica and Nicaragua were swapping populations on that day because the line stretched out horribly, zigzagged across the dusty, fenced-in compound, and showed no end in sight. And it was a line that barely moved. It seemed like fifteen minutes would pass between each trudging footstep forward.
I had taken my place in line in the morning. The hot sun burned my neck, but then dark clouds rolled in and rained on me, drenching my clothes before rolling away. The sun came back out and dried my clothes. Then more clouds rolled in, and I was rained on again. The sun came out again and then went down. When I finished my time renewing my visa, it was dark out.
I had stood in line for eleven hours.
During that time, I learned something about people: they show who they are when put in frustrating situations. I could tell who the cutthroats were, those who pushed and shoved or used deception to get cuts in front of others.
I could tell who the kind people were, the strangers who would hold my place while I went to get a drink of water. Those who shared in that horrible experience of crossing the border—what I observed of them gave me a small glimpse of who they really were.
Let’s up the stakes. Let’s imagine that the line wasn’t to cross a border but to get onto a limited number of lifeboats on a quickly sinking ship. In such a life and death situation, we would get an even better look at who people truly are—the selfish who would fight and claw their way over their own friends and family to get to the front, and the selfless who would give their place up so that others could live.
Fantasy creates situations where the stakes are really high. Fantasy takes heroes into dark caves where they have to face terrible dragons. We can look to the conflicts faced by Katniss Everdeen, Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter. In the conflicts they faced, they had to make hard choices between doing what is easy and doing what is right.
Katniss chose her humanity over survival. Frodo chose to destroy power rather than be corrupted by power. Luke chose the light side of the force instead of the dark side of the force.
Difficult choices in the face of conflict revealed who these characters were. By their choices to do what is right, we see that they are the heroes of their stories.
Why do we as humans keep returning to fantasy stories like these? Because fantasy calls us to make the right choice in the midst of conflict. Fantasy calls us to seize our hero moments.
There will come a time in your life (and it may come sooner than you think) when you’ll have to decide between doing what is easy and doing what is right.
- When you see that there’s a sign-up for the school play, but you’re afraid to try out.
- When you see someone getting bullied, and no one’s doing anything about it.
- When you hear voices in our nation and world crying out for justice, and it would be easier just to ignore those voices.
Doing the right thing comes at a great cost. It means walking a difficult road, making sacrifices. Difficulty and discomfort are powerful barriers. They will keep most people doing what is easy rather than doing what is right.
The sword my friend made for me was once just an ordinary piece of metal–scrap from an old car. But it was put through fire and hammering to be made into something magnificent.
There will be times in your life when you will have the choice between doing what is ordinary and easy or doing what is right. Doing what is right can be difficult at times. It can mean being put through fire and hammering. But you will come out different on the other side.
In fantasy, heroes walk the more difficult roads. But they are heroes because of it.
Fantasy stories remind us that there will be hero moments in our lives. The question is, when that time comes, will you choose to do what is easy or will you choose to do what is right? I pray you choose what is right.
Don’t miss your hero moment.