Into Another World/Dimension/Time. How should it be done?

[HLGStrider]

There are at least two novels I would like someday that involve characters being pulled into another world from out present time. This is not an uncommon device in fantasy/science fiction. The only reason I have never started writing these novels (not seriously, anyway) is I can't managed to get them into the other world. Everything I use seems either a copy of something that has already been used or simply awkward.

Do you like the idea of sending someone into another world? If it is done how should it be done?

Some ideas:

Already Used: Through a book
Already Used: Down a cave/hole
Already Used: Through a Mirror (used at LEAST twice)
Already Used: Through a seemingly mundane doorway in an old house
Already Used: Transported by touching an old object.
Already Used: Through an accident.
Already Used: Through a scientific means
Probably already used but I couldn't name where they were used:
By a strange bit of weather.
Sent or taken by a powerful being.
Dream you are there and can't wake up.

[greypilgrim]

you forgot walking through a wardrobe... :D

[Shilo]

Some people say you travel into another world/diminsion when you disappear or get sucked into the Bremuda triangle. Like if your boat drifts into the triangle & your never heard from or seen again. Their are several such triangles of mysterious fate in the world that cause planes, boats and people to disappear, including a huge one over the country of Austrulia.
I was going to write a book on this very subject, but I changed my mind and decided to write about another subject of interest. Good luck with your book idea.

[greypilgrim]

maybe they step through a crack in time or get hynotized there, or kidnapped by aliens, or broken down into sub-atomic particles and sucked up into the ozone layer or something.

[Hobbit-GalRosie]

Hmmm....tough question. I never like trying to come up with these things, it really does seem as if everything has all ready been done, and done, and done to death. I can't seem to think of anything unique, or even a tiny little twist on one of the old ideas. The one overused device no one has mentioned is something like wandering into a thick fog and coming out somewhere else.

Um, wouldn't you be dead if you were sub-atomic particles in the ozone layer? :confused:

Okay, never mind.

Oh, I suppose something that's a little less worn-out, but probably wouldn't work in your particular story would by something more like a person somehow being part of another world and just drawn there in some inexplicable manner. Of course, to make that believable you really might want to come up with some sort of gate anyway, so that just leaves you where you started. Sorry. I'm just really not that helpful, am I?

[greypilgrim]

They could be born there, sent to earth as a child, and then "called up" to come home to their world/dimension/time...all of a sudden...for whatever reason.

...Sub-atomic particled into space... but when they reach their destination...get put back together again, with alien magic. sorry, forgot to mention that :cool:

[Barliman Butterbur]

I am absolutely convinced (I "have faith" if you like) that there are already countless dimensions to ordinary reality, to which we have no access because we "aren't built for it," just as the proverbial dog "isn't built" to read the sports page even though it exists.

It is also a fascinating (and scary) prospect that some rare humans do have what it takes. And if there are other dimensions or an afterlife (btw: if it is logical to posit "afterlives" it is just as logical to posit "forelives"), who knows what ecstasies or horrors abide there, and this is not a new idea:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

"To sleep [the sleep of death], perchance to dream — ay, there's the rub." —Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

Barley

[greypilgrim]

It's like the Twilight Zone

[Kelonus]

I was thinking of a scifi book in, which a person an astronaut dies and wanted to send his body in a casket to space as a last wish once he died. His casket goes into a wormhole or something that transports him to another world. His casket is found in space and taken to a planet that had the ability to revive him. He would now live in that world and deal with it's problem. Of course I would have to figure that out, but I am a fantasy/adventure type so I don't know.

I did finish a trilogy, short I believe that I was thinking of an alternate ending, in which one of the characters gets sucked into a vortex created by the enemy bosses use of power as a last way of getting rid of his enemy although he was dying. The friends would be saddened that there friend vanished into that vortex not knowing where he would end up. Of course the character would end up in another world trying to figure out how to leave it while dealing with the problems of the world. I decided not to do it though.

[greypilgrim]

whats a vortex dude?

[Barliman Butterbur]

whats a vortex dude?

vor·tex
n. pl. vor·tex·es or vor·ti·ces (-t-sz)

1. A spiral motion of fluid within a limited area, especially a whirling mass of water or air that sucks everything near it toward its center.
2. A place or situation regarded as drawing into its center all that surrounds it.

Barley

[Kelonus]

You clarified that, but I meant to say like a portal, but I said vortex. The same right. Anything that sucks you in leading you somewhere unknown. Like wormhole.

[Zale]

How about plain old magic? Like in "Magician" (Feist). I did start writing a story about such a concept (except summoning 'out' instead of 'in') but it was lost when the computer died.
Anyway: magic. Either by some powerful magician (benevolent or not), or just rogue magic floating about discharging (if you do that sort of thing, like Pratchett). Does neatly away with all the science problems of how it's actually done.

Unless you don't have magic in your setting, in which case I'm clueless.

And Barliman, if string theory is correct then there are 11 dimensions to our Universe. If not then at least 4 (but they're all quite boring).

[HLGStrider]

I keep on working on this. I have one where I think the characters may just end up getting lost in the woods and end up someplace else, but it is boring and doesn't make all that much sense.

The other one helps because the degree of light in the second world is so intense that the character will be blind for several days after her transportation, it's just the initial transportation which will be hard, from modern America, through probably a great light, into the next world. I know that someone pulls her into that world to use for their own uses. That book has a really fuzzy plot, however, the good characters are all there, but the villain is really fuzzy.

[Hammersmith]

I was once thinking of doing one of those sorts of books. It's sort of irritating that you seize on this grand idea of slotting some brilliant characters into such-and-such a scenario in time or space, then end up forced to write a cliched and horrible method of getting them there. I think if I do mine I may revert to the boring "secret military technology" cliche :o

[Hobbit-GalRosie]

I was once thinking of doing one of those sorts of books. It's sort of irritating that you seize on this grand idea of slotting some brilliant characters into such-and-such a scenario in time or space, then end up forced to write a cliched and horrible method of getting them there. I think if I do mine I may revert to the boring "secret military technology" cliche :o

Ah, Smitty, count on you to come up with the one cliche no one's mentioned yet...

It's funny I've just realized that in the stories I've come up with more recently I've been avoiding the issue without any actual thought or intention of doing so, I just sort of create a world in which some Elves exist or something like that and the story happens there, or else it might be our world a long time ago like with Tolkien, in a great many cases I'm not sure and dont' really care. Weird how that happens.

One idea I had that never went anywhere was to write a story where someone just wanderered into a painting by which they were fascinated. *sigh* Maybe that thought will be more useful to others than it was to me.

And you know I was only originally going to post here to make that little remark to Hammersmith? One thing leads to another...

EDIT: I just realized that my idea (which I did come up with on my own long before I'd read it) has also already been done by Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That man has done everything. No wonder everything's stereo-typical and cliched now, lol.

[ingolmo]

By a supernatural means. *Suddenly all the surroundings freeze, the air starts swirling around me, the sky turns multicolored, and I'm dragged by a super-magnetic force, out of thin air, with the sound of a wolf howling close by.* :D Something like that.

[ingolmo]

Here's an idea I had a few years but I absolutely forgot about it until yesterday. Amongst all the options, you've forgotten a painting. That would be the way I would use.

[sauronbill]

Frankly I am not fond of this traveling to another world/dimension stuff. I think that a character from our reality should not enter a fantasy world of hundreds of years in the past , or in the future for that matter. That might be okay for science fiction stories(where the traveling can be explained by an imaginative scientific explanation) but not if you are going to do a fantasy story. For me it kills the whole theme. Besides that , this theme it's been done to death. Characters are done according to their own time and their own world, it is better this way. But then again that's my opinion.....


However, I think I can offer you some advice after all.

1) Paintings or magical maps for example,they have been done to death but they never get old.

2) Mysterious doors, or wardrobes, or attics have also been used in countless occasions, so one more time won't hurt.

3) Magical books are always original and fun. Specially if the main character is reading a story about some hero from a fantasy land and suddenly he is transported to that world only to realize that he is actually the hero and he has no idea what to do. But he has the book and every path has been written, all he has to do is follow them , but of course there are complications along the way( this is only an example, of course, you can do a much better plot)

4) The thing I like the most is the one where the character is in a dream he can't wake up. Specially if the character awakes in a different world and he can't figure out if he is sleeping or awake...



All these ways are (in my opinion) better than some portal or some weather transportation. I like your way too HGL, but it lacks a little meaning. But as I said I am not a lover of transporting into another world and all that stuff. I hope you can find a way to do it and I hope you can finish your story. By the way, would you care to tell me about this fuzzy villain? Maybe I can offer some ideas to make it less fuzzy, because I am good at making bad guys. But if you don't want to is fine. It is fair to say that I don't think your plot to be fuzzy. I have read some of your stuff HGL, and your stories are always fun and well written. I hope my advices will help you in some way, if not then pick whatever you want. I am sure it will be fine......

[HLGStrider]

Well, the idea is that the world is basically dying, being slowly taken over by the shadow, which now has consumed half the globe. The shadow has some creatures in its service but it can also corrupt men . . . and that's about as far as it ever got.

The main concentration of the story is how she befriends a young leader of the resistance against the shadow. He is one of a heriditary group called the Injee, sort of like Jedi for lack of a better explanation. They have powers which they can use against the darkness, but it comes at the cost of their lives. While men of that land generally live to be over a hundred, Injee have an average lifespan of thirty because the power burns them out.

Noel begins studying the past of the planet trying to discover a way to save Nen from an early death and defeat the darkness that is taking over the planet. She researches the history of the powers and stuff, but I actually never got far enough into the planning to know what she has found out. All I got was an image of a planet that is half perpetually dark and barren.