# Ordinary People



## Svrtnsse (May 11, 2016)

In another thread (http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/16533-perspectives-youd-like-see-more.html) the idea of writing fantasy stories from the perspective of regular people came up. This is a concept that's quite dear to me, and it'd be interesting to discuss it further.

One of my theories is that when writing about mundane people in a fantastic setting the contrast between the extraordinary and the regular becomes much clearer. I'm thinking that if you anchor the story onto concepts that the reader is familiar with, the fantastic elements seem more fantastic by comparison. It increases the potential for escapism in the story. 

Does that make sense? What's your thinking on this?


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## Heliotrope (May 11, 2016)

Yes yes and yes. I really love using the mundane in my fantasy for exactly the reason you desribed. Whether it is a mundane character, mundane setting, etc I feel that the contrast really makes the magical elements leap off the page. 

Here is a writing excuses podcast on the topic that I really enjoyed: 

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/...ode-2-blending-the-familiar-and-the-original/

And here is a quote from Save The Cat I also found really interesting: 

*Double Mumbo Jumbo*

I propose to you that, for some reason, audiences will only accept _one peice of magic per movie_. It's The Law. You cannot see aliens from outer space land in a UFO and then be bitten by a Vampire and now be both alien and undead. 

That, my friends, is Double Mumbo Jumbo. 

Straining the suspension of disbelief. 

Trying to do too much can make an experience muddy and confusing for readers.


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## Caged Maiden (May 11, 2016)

I write many tales about normal people. I think the trick to writing normal folks is to simply give them something mundane they're really good at. What makes them heroic and sympathetic? Locke Lamora had no magic, but he was super talented.He was scrawny and plain, but he was so good at disguises and so smart he could scheme with the best.


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## FifthView (May 11, 2016)

I have a few miscellaneous random thoughts about this.

*What may be "ordinary" for a fantasy world may not be ordinary in our own.*  You had mentioned Enar who is an archivist for a local police station in one of your stories–but who happens to be of the hobbit-like anfylk race. So...what exactly is "ordinary" then, considering the variety of extraordinary fantasy worlds possible?  A stable boy who tends the unicorns that random customers hand over at the tavern where he works:  ordinary?  (I know of no ordinary unicorn husbandry in our world!)

*I think that maybe science fiction often uses ordinary people as MCs, more often than fantasy?*  I haven't read much sci-fi in the last couple of decades, although I used to read a lot of it.  This is my recollection.  A good example, though comedy/farce, might be Arthur Dent from _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.  But then, this may also be a case of "ordinary person becomes extraordinary in some way, embroiled in an extraordinary adventure."  In science fiction, there's more of a tendency to take a mechanic, a lower level government employee, a lab assistant, a common settler in an off-world colony, etc., for a MC.

*Just because a character is "ordinary" doesn't mean that character can't have distinction, idiosyncrasies, a fully formed personality, history, emotions, and so forth.*  This one's rather obvious.


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## Ray M. (May 11, 2016)

For me, that doesn't work, not as a reader and definitely not as a writer. I want nothing to do with mundane, every day people - life itself is mundane enough. I write and read fantasy to escape from the world as it is.

That being said, I've enjoyed stories where the ordinary person is thrown into oddities, but also retains some control over the events that happen to him/her. Harry Potter being one of them.


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## FifthView (May 11, 2016)

Another thing that came to mind, that I forgot to add to the last.

I think that even if we have an ordinary character going about mundane tasks while a larger, more typical fantasy tableau is playing out around him, we'll still have to come up with a story for him.

So while thinking about this idea, I started brainstorming.  Suppose I had what passes for a middle-class merchant for an MC.   One of his idiosyncrasies is that he loves arranging "_gaming parties_" for his friends.  This could be like poker night in our world.  But he's always on the lookout for interesting tobacco varieties, various drinks and foods–whatever will make those gaming parties interesting for his largish group of friends.  The games played at the various parties he throws change; he's always trying to match up that night's fun with tobacco, drinks, food...maybe even an occasional wandering minstrel.  And the whole story is about that. 

Meanwhile, two armies are clashing a few miles from the middle-sized city in which he lives.  Occasionally, dragons and/or magical events–a consequence of the nearby battle–intrude on the city, interfering with his activities.  Within the  story, he occasionally meets various people from the two armies, as they come to the city for whatever purpose.  So he gets an "inside story" about the larger drama playing out.

Essentially, that "larger drama" would be the typical fantasy novel–but, it's totally told from the outside, from this character's being a type of observer to that event.  The meat of the story would be his dilemmas, interpersonal clashes, perhaps some rivalries he has with some gamers or even other organizers of such gaming parties.

Would something like this work?  I think it'd be interesting to try and tell.  But the point is, there still has to be a compelling story, even if we use an ordinary person.


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## Chessie (May 11, 2016)

Ray M. said:


> For me, that doesn't work, not as a reader and definitely not as a writer. I want nothing to do with mundane, every day people - life itself is mundane enough. I write and read fantasy to escape from the world as it is.


This pretty much sums it up for me. About as normal as my characters get is that they're hardly ever royalty or warriors. Aside of that, I love fantasy because it gives me a mental out from this world. I want the MC to be out of the ordinary because that's what makes story interesting to me.


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## X Equestris (May 11, 2016)

I've thought of doing a story focused on a refugee fleeing warfare, and his struggles to ensure his family survives.  Just a normal fellow caught up in an event many times bigger than he is, and one he has no hope of influencing in any measurable way.  Not sure I have the chops for it right now, but it's something I'd be interested in touching on sometime down the line.


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## Svrtnsse (May 11, 2016)

FifthView said:


> *What may be "ordinary" for a fantasy world may not be ordinary in our own.*  You had mentioned Enar who is an archivist for a local police station in one of your stories—but who happens to be of the hobbit-like anfylk race. So...what exactly is "ordinary" then, considering the variety of extraordinary fantasy worlds possible?  A stable boy who tends the unicorns that random customers hand over at the tavern where he works:  ordinary?  (I know of no ordinary unicorn husbandry in our world!)



This is a very good point, and it's one I think I may not have made very clear. Enar is very much a regular guy in his world, but he and his people don't exist in the real world. The places he visit and the things he experiences aren't extraordinary in his world, but they could never exist in this world. 

Most real world police forces do not have a shamanistic division that needs an archivist to take care of observational data. Most people who go on a hike in the real world don't get to go in the company with a grumpy dog that's both older and taller than them. If you've got a squirrel in your room and you're trying to chase it out, it's most likely not going to blind you by making its tail flash bright white.

There's all kinds of stuff happening around the character that would never be possible in the real world. However, in the setting where the story takes place, it's not that big a deal, and as such it's not portrayed as that big a deal.

The main focus of the story is on the character. I could have made him a human and set it to take place in West Cork or some other real world place, but it wouldn't have been the same. The setting is still an important part of the story, and it helps create an escapist experience of the kind that just isn't possible in stories set in the real world.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can still create a sense of awe and wonder without having ancient immortal heroes that ride into battle on burning dragons. It's different, but it's no less wondrous.


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## FifthView (May 11, 2016)

Svrtnsse said:


> I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can still create a sense of awe and wonder without having ancient immortal heroes that ride into battle on burning dragons. It's different, but it's no less wondrous.



Yes, I think that's absolutely true.  So for my little brainstorm...I've been picturing that merchant being forced, by the ruler of that city, to sell his entire stock to one of the leaders of one of the armies.  The MC makes a fortune, all his friends congratulate him–but _drat!_, included in his stock were two kegs of a special ale he was reserving for one gaming party.  So he cracks a plan to sneak into that army camp and steal those kegs back.  So it's possible to have adventure, even, with an ordinary person concerned with ordinary things.  It's possible to draw a picture of a very interesting milieu.  What the readers learn about that conflict, the world, the magics, and so forth can be wondrous still.


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## Sheilawisz (May 11, 2016)

Hello everyone.

I prefer to have protagonist characters that are somehow special and out of the ordinary, because that helps with the escapist Fantasy factor that has been mentioned before in this thread. It's true that a character can be completely normal in his or her world and yet extraordinary in ours, but that does not create quite the same effect, at least not for me.

Even though all of my main characters are somehow special in their worlds, I do appreciate what the perspective of the ordinary and non-special characters can feel like and what they can add to a story.

In my _Joan of England_ trilogy, I particularly love the perspective of Jerry and Megan.

They are a happy couple and parents of the protagonists, and even though they are very wealthy, they are nothing truly special in that world. They own a chocolates factory, they are very talented in creating new recipes and that's all... Anyway, how they feel and how they view the magical stuff that takes place around them is a very interesting part of the story.

I love how Jerry springs into action to protect Megan during certain part of the story. They were inside of a Mall that nearly collapsed when Vancouver received the shockwaves from the magical blasts at Seattle, and Jerry suffered serious injuries as a result of the falling glass and other debris that would have hit Megan if he had not been there to protect her.

Jerry is no wizard, no vampire or anything like that, just a man, but still I was cheering for him a lot just like I get all excited and cheering for my magical characters during the supernatural battles...

Yeah, non-special characters have their own way of doing special things =)


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## evolution_rex (May 11, 2016)

Its an extremely common archetype in fantasy to have a character who is ordinary become part of an ordinary event. It creates a relatable character in an unrelatable world.


Ray M. said:


> For me, that doesn't work, not as a reader and definitely not as a writer. I want nothing to do with mundane, every day people - life itself is mundane enough.


I suppose fantasy is an exception, but this is sort of how I feel (well, I don't feel as passionate as this character does) about viewing 'ordinary' plots or characters as uninteresting. _Warning though, there is inappropriate language._


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## FifthView (May 11, 2016)

Thanks for that video.  Made my day.


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## skip.knox (May 11, 2016)

That word "ordinary" is a tricky one. It's one of those words that everyone thinks they can agree upon, but which, upon closer examination, turns out to be one where we differ each from the other. One could argue that almost every MC in every novel, regardless of genre, is non-ordinary in some way.

My WIP stars a barbarian princess, a Roman aristocrat, a Macedonian slave (he objects to being called Greek), and a career army Tribune. All could be called ordinary in some sense. And all could be called extraordinary. 

To go to the other end, Robert Jordan (in _For Whom the Bells Toll_, not the writer) could be called a perfectly ordinary guy. Certainly there's nothing exceptional about him within the novel. At the same time, he can't be called ordinary because he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Done right, everyone is ordinary and everyone is extraordinary. Every circumstance is ordinary (no matter how fantastical) and every situation is extraordinary. I know, that's not very helpful. I'm doing philosophy here; it's not supposed to be helpful.


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## Demesnedenoir (May 11, 2016)

Ordinary is so subjective as to be pointless. Writing the story from the correct perspective is what matters, not whether that perspective is ordinary or extraordinary by someone's standard.


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## TheCatholicCrow (May 12, 2016)

Yes, please! I would love to read a Fantasy novel or short story about the "ordinary" wife of a dragon slayer, an average chambermaid for the king's head sorcerer, a random dude that works in the fish market or as a cook in training camps for young warriors aspiring to become professional troll hunters. 

To me, "ordinary" means a non-royal, non-magical person/character that is probably otherwise forgotten (gardeners, farmers, homemakers, local shop keepers, etc.) ... but due to reader's expectations, I suspect it might work best in Low Fantasy.


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## valiant12 (May 12, 2016)

> I've been picturing that merchant being forced, by the ruler of that city, to sell his entire stock to one of the leaders of one of the armies. The MC makes a fortune, all his friends congratulate him—but drat!, included in his stock were two kegs of a special ale he was reserving for one gaming party. So he cracks a plan to sneak into that army camp and steal those kegs back. So it's possible to have adventure, even, with an ordinary person concerned with ordinary things.



Why should the reader care about the character's first world problem.



> To me, "ordinary" means a non-royal, non-magical person/character that is probably otherwise forgotten (gardeners, farmers, homemakers, local shop keepers, etc.) ... but due to reader's expectations, I suspect it might work best in Low Fantasy.



I'm not sure about low fantasy, but ordinary people  are very fun in sci fi. 
By the way we have a different definition of ordinary. To me ordinary are people that can be described as human , neither super privilege nor prosecuted and no one in their or our universe will describe them as badass.


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## Svrtnsse (May 12, 2016)

valiant12 said:


> Why should the reader care about the character's first world problem.


I'll have a stab at this. The reader will care because the writer makes them. If the character and their motivations are well written the reader will care about what they're doing, no matter what it is. 

If the end of the world hinges on the character's actions, that ought to be interesting, but if the writer doesn't make me care about the character and their world I may not even finish the story. 
Going to the shop and picking out a tie for a work function may be really dull, but it could probably be made quite interesting if the character is set up correctly (though I'm not sure I'd be the one to pull that off).

In short, it's up to the writer to make the reader care.

EDIT: I guess another way of thinking about it is that everyone is the main character of their own story. For an outside observer, certain people's lives/stories seem more interesting than others, but I'd like to think that very few people view themselves as just a supporting character in someone else's story.
It may be that they feel like that's what their lives are, but even then their story is still told from their point of view.


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## valiant12 (May 12, 2016)

> If the end of the world hinges on the character's actions, that ought to be interesting, but if the writer doesn't make me care about the character and their world I may not even finish the story.
> Going to the shop and picking out a tie for a work function may be really dull, but it could probably be made quite interesting if the character is set up correctly



The story don't have to concern the fate of the world.  However a story where the main character is sneaking in a army camp to save his children is way more interesting than a story where the main character  is saving his ale.


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## Miskatonic (May 12, 2016)

The Hobbits. Enough said.


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## Svrtnsse (May 12, 2016)

valiant12 said:


> The story don't have to concern the fate of the world.  However a story where the main character is sneaking in a army camp to save his children is way more interesting than a story where the main character  is saving his ale.



I'd say that still depends on the writer and how they write the story. Saving the children sounds like it will be a more interesting story than saving the ale, but it doesn't have to be. A story about a father saving his children is probably an easier sell than a story about a brewer saving his ale, but the idea of the story isn't the story itself.

As a writer, it's up to me to make the the reader care about my characters. If the way I tell my story isn't good enough, then it doesn't matter how great the idea is.


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## Svrtnsse (May 12, 2016)

Miskatonic said:


> The Hobbits. Enough said.



I actually had to think about this for a moment. >.<


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## Miskatonic (May 12, 2016)

Svrtnsse said:


> I actually had to think about this for a moment. >.<



I was going to put Frodo and Sam, but it was more than just them.


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## Svrtnsse (May 12, 2016)

It's extra silly of me not to spot the joke here, seeing as the anfylk race of my character Enar is basically a knock-off of the hobbit race.


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## FifthView (May 12, 2016)

Demesnedenoir said:


> Ordinary is so subjective as to be pointless. Writing the story from the correct perspective is what matters, not whether that perspective is ordinary or extraordinary by someone's standard.



But what is the "correct perspective"?  Correct may be rather subjective.  The word "dog" may also be subjective.

My first impulse when considering your comment was to wonder whether the issue of subjectivity was being used in the way some may use the term _relative_.  "It's all relative!"  "It's all subjective!"  And then, my next impulse was to wonder at the oddity of a writer claiming that a word is meaningless!  My third:  To wonder why, then, some seem to be in favor of using "ordinary" characters while others have so quickly rejected the notion because, well, we read fantasy to escape the ordinary world and our ordinary lives—surely both perspectives, although in disagreement, accept the validity of the word "ordinary."

My original impulse was to wonder whether, in a fantasy milieu, we can establish a common idea for ordinariness.  A hobbit-like archivist at a police station?  A common stable boy tending unicorns?  What, within a fantasy world, is "ordinary"?  In the thread that inspired this (linked in the OP of this thread), I'd raised the idea of ordinary Joes and Janes, but I'd also said this:



> Plus, it could be said that everyone who is alive really is remarkable, even if they aren't named Obama or Kardashian or GRRM...and a good story would always find the distinction in any given character.



And in this thread, that even "ordinary" people can have full personalities, idiosyncrasies, histories, and distinction.  Does this make them extraordinary?  More or less a "correct" perspective?

I do think the word has meaning, and dismissing the idea seems peculiar.  (I don't know whether the dismissal is an ordinary or an extraordinary response, however.)   (And saying it has "all meaning" potentially, because it is so subjective, is like saying it has no meaning.)

From the moment I saw the title to this thread, I thought of the movie _Ordinary People_, which I think was given that name (or rather, the book that inspired it was given the name), in order to show how "ordinary people" nonetheless have deep feelings, major conflicts, strong passions, etc., in their "ordinary lives."  Drama, tension, tragedy.

But _Ordinary People_ didn't have superheroes (mutant, godly, alien, or super spy agent varieties) running about saving the entire world, or entire universe, from super villains.  Conundrum. But what is super?  What is villain?  What is hero?  It's all so subjective I wonder whether we should cull a great many threads from Writing Questions, given the uselessness of discussing these things, quibbling over semantics.

As a side point unrelated to your comment  Demesnedenoir, and not to derail things or instigate another 27-page thread, and maybe for no constructive purpose whatsoever...I sometimes, lately, have begun to feel that, when any issue is brought up for discussion, there are those who read the OP and don't recognize what's addressed as being descriptive of what/how they write, and so the automatic response is, "Something must be wrong about this idea."


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## We Rise Above (May 12, 2016)

Svrtnsse said:


> As a writer, it's up to me to make the the reader care about my characters. If the way I tell my story isn't good enough, then it doesn't matter how great the idea is.



Quite right. I've recently found a couple of books where a great idea was hidden beneath a style that just put me off completely. For example, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (not fantasy, I know): the basic idea is great but I found Jonas Jonasson's writing style had too many quirks and I had to give up after about 30 pages. The only reason I know that the story is a good one is because I saw the film version.

I cared about the characters in the film, but the book left me cold because I was too busy grappling with the way Jonasson had written about them.


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## Geo (May 12, 2016)

One of the things I have come to realize is that if you look hard enough, everybody --and my comment applies to both characters and real people--- is extraordinary at some degree, and by extraordinary I mean out of the ordinary in some aspect or their life, personality, or abilities. I don't need a character to have super powers or being royalty to be extraordinary, but if somebody does something out of the ordinary immediately that somebody turns into an extra-ordinary character (it almost seems like a definition). For me, this means, that each character can be both, ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, that is why I kind of agree with Demesnedenoir saying that “ordinary” is subjective (which I also interpreted as relative).

When reading, and writing, a tend to look for that bit of "extraordinariness" in each of the characters. In some, it's very obvious –Harry Potter surviving a curse, Aragorn the unnamed king— in others is very subtle but not because it’s subtle, it's less important. Take Samwise Gamgee, at first sight he is perfectly ordinary but his loyalty and resilience, soon make him extraordinary. 

Of course, you need extraordinary circumstances to reveal the “extraordinariness” of the characters. Such extraordinary circumstances can come in many shapes but they always represent conflict, it’s the conflict that drives the characters to do the “something extraordinary” (conflict within themselves or with the surroundings, that will depend of the story). Once the conflict is resolved, some characters continue to be extraordinary (like Tristran Thorn from Stardust), others seem to retract back into their ordinariness (like Samwise, or Chihiro Ogino in Spirited Away, or Coraline). By back to ordinariness I mean, without getting powers, status, or even recognition after the fact. Of course they all change in the process, they all “evolve” so to say, but that evolution no necessarily makes them less ordinary in the traditional sense of the word.

Independently of the ordinariness or extraordinariness of a character at the beginning of a story, they all need conflict otherwise what would they be doing all through their stories? And why would we like to read about them?  Even the wife of the dragon slayer needs conflict to make us want to read about her. It can be as simply as she having to find a magic product to clean her husbands’ clothes after a day of hard work, or her thinking of leaving her husband because she is tired of worrying for him all the time, or something as big as having to go and slay a dragon herself in order to save her children. In any case, she will have to do something out of the ordinary (something different to what she had been doing up to now) in order to create her story, hence become extra-ordinary herself (even if only temporarily).

Without conflict –without the "out of the ordinary" circumstances— even the most extraordinary characters will become ordinary.  Just imagine, by Wizard’s world standards, how non-extraordinary Harry Potter’s story would have been if Voldemort would have wait to put his plans in action after Potter had died of old age. Yes everybody would have pointed at Harry for surviving the curse and because of his past but he himself and his story may have go by as the life of many other wizards. For example, he would not have participated in the Triwizard Tournament so young (may be never), he would not had have to master his patronous  charm until much later, and many other things big and small would have change to probably make him a mildly interesting character. His very extraordinary beginnings wouldn’t have amount to a great much without the extraordinary conflict brought by such extraordinary adversary.

Summarizing, I think that ordinary people are great in fantasy stories but they can’t be permanently ordinary (all through the story I mean) for the stories to work. At some point, ordinary people turns extraordinary by facing extraordinary circumstances, and it’s then that the stories become alive and the characters turn real, even if at the end, once the conflict is resolved, they go back to their apparent state of ordinariness.


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## Chessie (May 12, 2016)

I rather read about characters doing the extraordinary than going to the store to buy a tie. Now, if the tie being chosen will be poisoned and used to assassinate someone, then that would be interesting. But to read an entire book about a character just doing normal things in a fantasy setting? No. 

I'm glad Miskatonic mentioned hobbits because that's the first thought that came to my mind when I first read this thread. Frodo was hella ordinary. He went through some seriously crazy things and was the star performer in one of the best fantasy tales of all time. _That's_ how it's done. 

This thread is an interesting topic, because I'm also tired of the royalty characters. Yet...Martin  has made thousands of people care about his royal born characters. How many endless fantasy books have warriors and mages and chosen ones and empires? Pretty much all of them because those are staple tropes in fantasy. The more I learn about reader expectations, the more hesistant I am to change things that readers rely on. Giving them a story where an ordinary character does average every day things might not go over so well. Fantasy readers (all of us) want to read about magic and dragons and sorcerers kidnapping princesses and sweeping their goblin hordes over the land to pillage. 

Readers want stories that matter.


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## Svrtnsse (May 12, 2016)

I think the example with the tie might have been a bit over the top - or under, as it were. 

My original fascination with "ordinary people" started quite early on. Originally, I wasn't writing stories, and I wasn't planning on doing it. I was just world-building and I planned to use the setting for a pen and paper rpg, rather than as a setting for writing stories in. I put quite some effort into it, and I discussed my thoughts and ideas at great length with friends of mine. They were quite patient with me.

Eventually one of them said something along the lines of:


> Why don't you write a short story about someone living in the world? Something like A Day In The Life Of... or something. That way you could show off what life is like in the world in a different way.


That's basically what got me started writing stories. I wrote a few shorts where "regular" people experienced or interacted with aspects of the world that I'd made up.

Most of these stories are pretty crap, but they were a lot of fun to write. They don't have a real plot, and there's little to no point in them other than to describe the main character as they go about their everyday chores. You could probably call them snapshots rather than stories, and you wouldn't be far off the mark. 
Some examples of what these snapshots were about are:
 - A man waiting on a train while someone at a newspaper stand goes on a bigoted rant about elves.
 - A man driving an air-bus (zeppelin style) between two cities.
 - A werewolf having a cup of coffee at a cafe run by an ancient elf.
 - A chocolate magician using magic to make luxury pralines.
 - A woman standing on her balcony, looking at her flowers and being homesick.
 - An archivist looking at a brochure from a travel agent and thinking about going on vacation (this turned into a novel later on)
 - An elf riding the subway on her own and making sure to cover her ears and eyes so the humans won't see she's an elf.
 - A shaman visiting some dwarves doing maintenance roadwork to make sure they're meeting their deadline.
 - A chronicler having a coffee while the paladin he's keeping records of is meditating (this is turning into a novella at the moment)
 - A receptionist visiting a shrine to seek guidance from the gods.
 - A polar elf having a baby.
 - A woman dancing at a rave and nearly setting fire to her sweater because she's a bit tired and not that skilled with her magic anyway.

Okay, so not all of these are mundane or ordinary from our perspective - and some of those not even from the perspective of the setting. They're all low key stories though, with not much happening and not much going on. They're not particularly exciting, but I greatly enjoyed writing them, because they gave me the opportunity to explore and get to know my setting in a way I wouldn't have if I set out to write a story about some unlikely hero on a quest to save the world (that's something I'd like to try my hand at too, but I'll save that for later).

Could I turn any of these into an interesting story that others would want to read? Probably not all of them, but certainly a few.


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## skip.knox (May 12, 2016)

>- A woman dancing at a rave and nearly setting fire to her sweater because she's a bit tired and not that skilled with her magic anyway.

Bal des Ardents
First thing at jumped out at me when I read your list, Svrtnsse.


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## Heliotrope (May 12, 2016)

Svrtnsse, I love all those so much! 

I'm deeply inspired by the mundane becoming magical. Disney's short film "The Paperman" has to be one of my all time favorites: 

Here is the film (though for copywrite purposes, the music is not original). I absolutly LOVE the concept of the mundane becoming magical.

Paperman Oscar Winner Disney HD - YouTube


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## Tom (May 12, 2016)

I love the idea of ordinary people in fantasy! It's a great opportunity to show what normal life is like in a certain culture--what they value and how they live day-to-day. 

For _Southerner_, I've been thinking of writing a companion anthology called _Tales of Issadai_, which would chronicle the lives of various people of the different ethnic groups, cultures, and belief systems in Southerner's world. I'm really excited to start on it a) because I'm an anthropology nerd, and b) I think it'll give me a richer and deeper understanding of each culture and what makes them who they are.


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## Chessie (May 12, 2016)

Okay...maybe I'm confused. When I think of ordinary characters, ones that aren't royalty or already bad asses at something comes to mind. Like my dim-witted bandits in my WIP. They're 'ordinary' to me. But there are fantasy books out there where regular people go through some fantastical journeys. 

So is the journey part what we're disagreeing on? Is it that you'd like to read a story about an average joe who does average things in his normal life? I don't get where that would be exciting or how readers would care about that. Then again, it's just my opinion and specific tastes which provide the bias for my statement. 

Fantasy≠reality. Average joes are fine so long as something fantastical happens to them along the way. Like the Twilight Zone.


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## skip.knox (May 12, 2016)

>Is it that you'd like to read a story about an average joe who does average things in his normal life? I don't get where that would be exciting or how readers would care about that.

That might be a tough sell in the fantasy genre (though, again: Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham), but it happens all the time in "serious literature". So people do indeed read that stuff. Not I. When I want to read about ordinary people doing ordinary things, I read history.

It has to be the things being done, not the people doing them, that compels. Consider: ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances is something lots of people here have said they love. Now consider how many people love reading about extraordinary people doing ordinary things?


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## Geo (May 13, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> It has to be the things being done, not the people doing them, that compels. Consider: ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances is something lots of people here have said they love. Now consider how many people love reading about extraordinary people doing ordinary things?



That was the point I was trying to make, that ordinary people is ok, great even, as long as in the story they do extraordinary things. I like that. 

The other way around, extraordinary people doing ordinary/everyday things but with zero conflict,  I think it won't work...  like a story of Superman cleaning it's shoes (not much excitement there). Now, may be if he has misplaced one boot when flying over the Himalayas and he has to be ready for a date with Louise Lane, then it's interesting. However, Superman misplacing his boots and having dates it's in itself extraordinary. That will be a story of somebody extraordinary doing something out of the ordinary (even so cleaning shoes/having dates may be  very ordinary activities in this case there are not... and that goes a bit to reflect what I (and others) had said about "ordinary" being relative/subjective.) 

My comment goes into saying that for a story to work you need conflict, and conflict brings things out of the ordinary/extraordinary. If the surroundings of a character become extraordinary and the character acts to overcome such problems, then the character itself becomes a bit extraordinary.


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## Svrtnsse (May 13, 2016)

I probably should have put a bit more thought into the definition of "ordinary" before I started this post. 



skip.knox said:


> >Is it that you'd like to read a story about an average joe who does average things in his normal life? I don't get where that would be exciting or how readers would care about that.
> 
> That might be a tough sell in the fantasy genre (though, again: Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham), but it happens all the time in "serious literature". So people do indeed read that stuff. Not I. When I want to read about ordinary people doing ordinary things, I read history.



Aye, it probably is a tough sale. I don't think it's impossible though. The way I see it, _Enar's Vacation_ is targeted towards someone who's read a lot of fantasy and who wants a character centric story that's a step away from the big adventures, but that still has the escapist elements of a fantasy story.
It's not going to be for everyone, or even for most people, but I think there are those who will enjoy it.



skip.knox said:


> It has to be the things being done, not the people doing them, that compels. Consider: ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances is something lots of people here have said they love. Now consider how many people love reading about extraordinary people doing ordinary things?



From the example I think we may be talking about slightly different things, but I'll disagree anyway. 

I think that in order for a reader to stick with a story they have to connect with the characters of the story. If you can get the reader to care about the character, then chances are that the reader will also care about events that are important to the character.

Then again, I guess it comes down to the definition of ordinary...

The things that happen to Enar in his story may be trivial and ordinary to anyone (everyone?) else, but because the story is told from his perspective, and because the events happen to him, they become interesting - assuming I'm successful in making the reader care about the character.

To add to the confusion, let's sum things up as it relates to the story I wrote:

Enar is an ordinary person in the world he lives in.
Enar is extraordinary to himself as he has no experience being anyone else.
The world Enar lives in seems extraordinary to us.
The world Enar lives in is ordinary to him.
All of the events in Enar's story are ordinary because they could easily happen to anyone in his world.
Some of the events in Enar's Story will seem ordinary to us because they could happen in the real world.
Some of the events in Enar's Story will seem extraordinary to us because they could not happen in the real world.
The events in Enar's story are important to him because a) they happen to him and b) they are not regular occurrences in his life.
The events in Enar's story will be interesting to a reader if they care about Enar.
A reader will care about Enar if I successfully make them care about him.

Now...
How do I make the reader care about Enar?
Well, that's a very good question, and I'm really glad you asked, because it's a great question...

It's also an entirely different topic.


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## Svrtnsse (May 13, 2016)

Chesterama said:


> So is the journey part what we're disagreeing on? Is it that you'd like to read a story about an average joe who does average things in his normal life? I don't get where that would be exciting or how readers would care about that. Then again, it's just my opinion and specific tastes which provide the bias for my statement.
> 
> Fantasy≠reality. Average joes are fine so long as something fantastical happens to them along the way. Like the Twilight Zone.



I don't think it's so much a disagreement as it's a bit of a confusion about definitions, concepts, priorities and all kinds of other things.

One of my key beliefs when it comes to writing is that it's really important for me to make the reader connect with and care for the character I write about. If the reader cares about the character they'll care about what happens to them. 

If the reader cares about what happens to the character, then what happens only has to be important to the character for it to be important to the reader. It doesn't have to objectively important within the context of the setting in which the story takes place.



> Is it that you'd like to read a story about an average joe who does average things in his normal life?


This really does sound rather boring. 

However, if the average joe lives alone on a high-altitude air-ship and spends his days harvesting the jelly-fish that live in the clouds, then I might find a short story about him interesting, just because what he does is so unusual (to me).
You could also take it further, and perhaps he has a crush on the pilot that comes to pick up his catch once a week, and he's working up the courage to ask her to stay for a meal the next time. Now there's a little bit of potential tension there, and it's still not really out of the ordinary: it's just a guy who's got a crush on a girl.

EDIT: Granted, that kind of story idea still probably doesn't appeal to a lot of people. But I hope you can see how it's something that could potentially appeal to a certain type of audience.

EDIT2: Full disclosure: my current WIP is about a character who's highly exceptional in all kinds of different non-ordinary dismundane ways.


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## Svrtnsse (May 13, 2016)

...and since work is really quiet today, here's some random vaguely related music:


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## FifthView (May 13, 2016)

Geo said:


> That was the point I was trying to make, that ordinary people is ok, great even, as long as in the story they do extraordinary things. I like that.
> 
> The other way around, extraordinary people doing ordinary/everyday things but with zero conflict,  I think it won't work...



For me, this raises the question:


Do readers come to care about characters because they first come to care about events surrounding the characters?
Or do readers come to care about the events because they first come to care about the characters?

I think that the answer is almost always the latter, although at some level the two, characters and events, blend to create an overall fascination.

I think we've all seen the sort of Michael Bay-ish approach:  Blow things up!  It can be spectacular but have a horrible story, barely developed characters (or stock characters), and involve the Fate of Everything.  On screen, this might work just fine sometimes, at least for a couple hours' worth of cheap entertainment, but it's not the sort of book that I personally want to read.

This is also why, for my part, I prefer the Harry Potter films over the Percy Jackson films (although to be absolutely fair, the PJ films have so much more that is wrong with them....)

BTW, I don't think that ordinary=no conflict.  Everyday life can have high levels of conflict, tension, and so forth.  It's just that the stakes aren't as high from an "objective" POV.  But from a subjective POV–i.e., the individual character's POV–the stakes might be even higher.  (Nero being more concerned about his own artistic performance than about Rome burning.  At the moment, I don't remember exactly what it was he was doing, although I know it wasn't fiddling.)  It's possible that such a disjunction can itself lead to the creation of an interesting character for the reader, an engaging character.

The issue of scale is an interesting one.  One of the "stock" fantasy "ordinary" character types is the street thief.  To most of us, being a street thief would be out of the ordinary, even if our own world does include thousands of street thieves.  But fantasy worlds seem to be chockablock full of them.  Can we create high tension at the street level?  This may be a Daredevil vs Avengers kind of question.

But I do agree that every story needs to have a...story.  A compelling story. What makes it compelling is the question of the day.


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## Demesnedenoir (May 13, 2016)

FifthView said:


> For me, this raises the question:
> 
> 
> Do readers come to care about characters because they first come to care about events surrounding the characters?
> Or do readers come to care about the events because they first come to care about the characters?



Arguably neither... readers will care when an event happens TO a character. Lots of explosions killing faceless people? meh. Nothing happening to a nice guy? meh. Lots of explosions trying to kill a likable guy, and that killed his wife, kids, and (gasp!) his dog? Now there is something to care about.

The reader won't care until there is something to care about.


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## FifthView (May 13, 2016)

Demesnedenoir said:


> Arguably neither... readers will care when an event happens TO a character. Lots of explosions killing faceless people? meh. Nothing happening to a nice guy? meh. Lots of explosions trying to kill a likable guy, and that killed his wife, kids, and (gasp!) his dog? Now there is something to care about.
> 
> The reader won't care until there is something to care about.



This reminds me of the MIW discussion.  If we interpret "worse" as the most extreme piling-on of All-Suffering and Absolute Devastation, then MIW might be horrible advice.  Similarly, no one is talking about "nothing" happening to a nice guy.  And "something" may not mean explosions, dead babies and wife and dog, and Galactus beginning to eat the planet–although I do think that type of extreme is being implied in the way the word is being used.

Put another way, "nothing happening" to a character, let's say someone named Bob, would be written like this:

Bob.​
That might be the entirety of Chapter One.

But let's be generous and give something for Bob to do for Chapter Two; still, nothing happening _to_ him:

Bob smiled.​
The moment we introduce another character interacting with Bob, a bit of rain falling on Bob, a bill arriving in the mail that Bob needs to pay, then _something_ is happening to him.  So every novel has _something happening_ to the character, at least every novel I've ever read and every novel I can imagine that will actually be published.

Geo's examples were:  


Ordinary person having something extraordinary happening to him (or around him, requiring his reaction/interaction)
Extraordinary person having something ordinary happening, or doing ordinary things.

#1 was fine, but #2 was not.

I don't know, but I think that a super-powerful wizard who receives a jury summons might be kind of funny and interesting–maybe not if that were the entire plot, but only one in a series of very ordinary events.  But maybe comedy/farce is being excluded from consideration?  Either #1 or #2 will depend on execution, in any case.



> Lots of explosions killing faceless people? meh.



I agree.



> readers will care when an event happens TO a character.



This describes every novel ever written.  This describes any theoretical novel about an ordinary person doing ordinary things, an extraordinary person doing ordinary things, an ordinary person involved in extraordinary events, an extraordinary person involved in extraordinary events.  Pretty much every possible configuration.


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## Reaver (May 13, 2016)

Svrtnsse said:


> It's extra silly of me not to spot the joke here, seeing as the anfylk race of my character Enar is basically a knock-off of the hobbit race.



Don't feel too bad Svrt... D&D has been using Hobbit knock-offs that they call halflings since their first edition in 1974.


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## Geo (May 13, 2016)

FifthView said:


> I think we've all seen the sort of Michael Bay-ish approach:  Blow things up!  It can be spectacular but have a horrible story, barely developed characters (or stock characters), and involve the Fate of Everything.  On screen, this might work just fine sometimes, at least for a couple hours' worth of cheap entertainment, but it's not the sort of book that I personally want to read.



First, I need to say that you may have missed my references to conflict, because by no means I think conflict is solely represented by explosions or otherwise by blowing things up in any way. 

Conflict can be external or internal, huge or small, obvious or subtle. A character may struggle with a change in circumstances, from loosing a parent to getting lost in the woods, or may struggle with his/hers internal monologue and principles, e.g., should I tell that my friend cheated on her magic examinations, should I go and be a warrior as my father or a monk as I want, should I choose to be a pirate or a sailor... conflict takes as many forms as stories exist but without conflict there is not story  (I have extreme trouble even finding an example a story of everyday/ordinary things that are not interrupted by some kind of conflict). And because of conflict, ordinary life suddenly becomes out-of-the-ordinary, and by reacting to this, ordinary characters also become a bit extraordinary themselves.

For me, it's only when the everyday is interrupted by conflict that our stories grow, and it's then that we get to fully develop our characters.

Knowing what a character does in his everyday life does not make us care for that character. A long description of any character features, position/abilities, or everyday's activities may help a bit to tell me who he is, but how that character faces the conflict that come to his life, what he thinks about whatever that event it's, how he reacts to its consequences, that helps me see the character in all his facets and engage with him and with the story.

When writing, it's my characters reaction to the conflict they are facing (which of course I'm providing)  what reveals who they are. 

For example, I can tell you that Dann is a great climber and the best guide you can have to travel across the Ridge and you may say that's cool, and I can tell you in great detail what he does everyday and you may find that interesting (or not), but I have little chances of you engaging with that character until he faces a conflict (which may be that despite being a great guide he would have to stop traveling because his mother is sick, or because the routes to the Ridge have being taken by the King's people, or because his village has been taken over by orcs, or because he comes to discover that he's the lost prince of the kingdom). Why? Because it's in facing the conflict that you get to fully know who Dann is (and when I get to truly develop that character, i.e., when we get to tell/show what he really thinks, what it's truly important in his life, how he reacts...).

*So to answer your question I think that readers come to care about characters when they get to know them, but a reader can only get to know a character when the character faces a conflict.* Now, the event represented that represents the conflict can be explosive and dramatic or more mundane, that's up to the story.

It's my believe that most readers will not care -engage- with a character if we only present that character in his everyday life, doing everyday things as he had always done and without anything changing. You don't truly care for Aladdin because what he do before meeting the Sorcerer found him, knowing that he was a poor rob-to-live guy may have picked your curiosity, but you truly start caring about Aladdin after he meets the Sorcerer and he accepts to go into the cave. We care because we want to know what it's going to happen, but above all because we want to know what it's he going to do when whatever it's coming comes.


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## Geo (May 13, 2016)

FifthView said:


> I don't know, but I think that a super-powerful wizard who receives a jury summons might be kind of funny and interesting—maybe not if that were the entire plot, but only one in a series of very ordinary events.  But maybe comedy/farce is being excluded from consideration?  Either #1 or #2 will depend on execution, in any case.



However, unless the wizard it's constantly receiving jury summons, this event means that he had to do something out of the ordinary -HIS ORDINARY. Under this logic, receiving the summons it's an extraordinary event in his life, hence a source of conflict, or at least conflict as I see it.

Now, imaging a whole story in which you are going to recall a whole day in the life of this Wizard with him doing exactly what he does everyday... absolutely nothing out of the ordinary (his ordinary) happening. Hence, absolutely no conflict. Would that be interesting? May be, on a very technical way (as world/character building work, probably) but I have real trouble thinking it would make for a very compelling story.


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## FifthView (May 13, 2016)

Geo said:


> Conflict can be external or internal, huge or small, obvious or subtle. A character may struggle with a change in circumstances, from loosing a parent to getting lost in the woods, or may struggle with his/hers internal monologue and principles, e.g., should I tell that my friend cheated on her magic examinations, should I go and be a warrior as my father or a monk as I want, should I choose to be a pirate or a sailor... conflict takes as many forms as stories exist but without conflict there is not story  (I have extreme trouble even finding an example a story of everyday/ordinary things that are not interrupted by some kind of conflict). And because of conflict, ordinary life suddenly becomes out-of-the-ordinary, and by reacting to this, ordinary characters also become a bit extraordinary themselves.



Geo,

I agree that conflict of some sort is necessary, and I think that's an important point to be made within this conversation about ordinariness re: storytelling, but I somewhat disagree with the fine hair you are splitting.



Geo said:


> However, unless the wizard it's constantly receiving jury summons, this event means that he had to do something out of the ordinary -HIS ORDINARY. Under this logic, receiving the summons it's an extraordinary event in his life, hence a source of conflict, or at least conflict as I see it.



So three levels have been addressed:


Ordinary for our real world.
Ordinary for the fantasy world.
Ordinary for the character.

I think you've added that third one; the other two had already been raised as considerations.

I believe these areas introduce interesting questions:

Can a character and/or situation that is "ordinary" within the fictional world but non-ordinary for our real world be sufficiently engaging for a reader?  E.g., the inn stable boy who tends unicorns and gryphons, which are common to his world, but who has no special powers, is not of an elite social class, etc.  

Must a character and/or situation be non-ordinary, or extraordinary, within that fictional world before it can be engaging for a reader?  E.g., the stable boy mentioned above who also happens to be the prophesied savior of the land, possessing great magical ability. 

The third one is your addition–ordinary for the character–and I don't think it's particularly good for determining ordinariness, for this reason:  "HIS ORDINARY" presupposes a life that is uniformly the same from day to day to day to day.  But I don't think such a thing is possible–in our world at least, and probably not even for fictional characters in a fantasy world unless some preexisting magical condition has caused such uniform sameness.  (At precisely 2pm every day, Bob sneezes and Jane tells him to cover his mouth with his hand.)   A mental experiment:  Ask yourself if you can remember any two days that were _identical_.  Or any two hours.  I know it's common to _feel_ as if every day is the same; but, they are not.  And so when a jury summons arrives, something that may well be common for that fictional world, it may not be typical for a character to receive a jury summons, but this doesn't make him an extraordinary person, any more than having a bird drop its business on the windshield in front of the passenger seat would make him an extraordinary person.  He might not ordinarily have to wash that side of the windshield at 8:59 am; his washing it doesn't make him extraordinary.



> Now, imaging a whole story in which you are going to recall a whole day in the life of this Wizard with him doing exactly what he does everyday... absolutely nothing out of the ordinary (his ordinary) happening.



And so I think this would be a failure to draw a realistic picture.  Well yes, a writer might well write one chapter and copy-paste it so that every following chapter is identical to it, the character is always doing the same things at precisely the same time.  That's an exaggerated example, of course.  A writer might indeed tell a story in which every sentence could theoretically have the phrase, "as he always did" appended to it.  And yes, it would probably be exceptionally boring.  I don't think anyone's suggesting otherwise?  But the failure would be in a) not choosing to mention any of the peculiarities that normal people experience every single day, and yes, b) in not choosing points of conflict–or, the character not noticing any of those peculiarities.

So I think your point is a good one to keep in mind, but it seems to me as if you are going to the other extreme.  On one side, it's unending explosions; on the other, a character is being described going about doing all the things he always does and never noticing, or having to react to, any peculiarities in his day.

I think it could be said that "ordinary" human life, "ordinary" days on Earth, are filled with variation.  Everything changes but change itself, eh?  And, that situation, of the river always moving and our never being able to touch the same river twice, _is_ ordinary.


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## Heliotrope (May 13, 2016)

Hmmmm, I've had to think about this a little bit today. 

So, for _me_ character is King. Plot, twists, etc all come after character. I'll try to explain this the best I can... 

For me it is how the character sees his world, thinks about his world, explores his world that is interesting. 

For example, Margaret Atwood is my favorite author. She has many collections of short stories, including one called Scarlet Ibis (linked below for anyone who is interested). This is a story about a woman who has travelled to Trinidad on vacation to help her husband relieve some stress and she decides to take him and her young daughter on a tour to see the Scarlet Ibis (a rare bird). The story itself is very mundane. But it is how she views the experience and how it changes her that makes it so interesting and compelling. 

As exercises in University we would be given a mundane sentence and we had to make it a 'climax' or an emotional ending for a story. So something like: 

_He tied his shoes. _ Is obviously not as exciting as _He thrust his sword through the dragon._

But, giving the right set up it _could_ be. IF the man in the first story suffered from agoraphobia and had never ventured out his door step and he was only now venturing forth into the street, or if he was in an accident that left him wheel chair bound and he was just now learning to walk, or if was a homeless man and had never owned a pair of shoes and was now trying on a pair for the first time in ten years, then the first story could be very emotional and compelling. Equal to that of a man killing a dragon. 

So for me, a lady visiting some rare birds, or a man laying in the street, or a couple drinking beers in a bar _can_ be compelling, so long as they are making some sort of choice, or they have a unique observation I've never thought of before, or they are giving a unique perspective and life lesson etc. 

http://faculty.scf.edu/glanvip/ibis.pdf


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## FifthView (May 14, 2016)

@Helio:  That reminds me of this, from _Witchcraft_ by Charles Williams:

"One is aware that a phenomenon, being wholly itself, is laden with universal meaning.  A hand lighting a cigarette is the explanation of everything; a foot stepping from a train is the rock of all existence....Two light dancing steps by a girl may...appear to be what all the Schoolmen were trying to express...but two quiet steps by an old man may seem like the very speech of hell.  Or the other way around."​
The poet Auden, in his essay _Making, Knowing, and Judging_, quoted that from Charles Williams and then added this:

The response of the imagination to such a presence or significance is a passion of awe.  This awe may vary greatly in intensity and range in tone from joyous wonder to  panic dread.  A sacred being may be attractive or repulsive—a swan or an octopus—beautiful or ugly—a toothless hag or a fair young child—good or evil—a Beatrice or a Belle Dame Sans Merci—historical fact or fiction—a person met on the road or an image encountered in a story or a dream—it may be noble or something unmentionable in a drawing room, it may be anything it likes on condition, but this condition is absolute, that it arouse awe.​
I think that maybe this whole discussion is skirting this issue:  What arouses awe?

Auden continued by listing four groupings of "Sacred beings" —


*Universal Sacred Beings*:  "Some sacred beings seem to be sacred to all imaginations at all times." He mentioned as examples "The Moon...Fire, Snakes and those four important beings which can only be defined in terms of nonbeing:  Darkness, Silence, Nothing, Death."  So, in our discussion we've already had children, wife, dog being killed or needing rescuing.  The World, facing destruction, may be a "sacred being" in our common imagination.


*Cultural Sacred Beings*:  "Some, like kings, are only sacred to all within a certain culture."


*Social Group Sacred Beings*: "...some only to members of a social group—the Latin language among humanists."


*Individuals' Sacred Beings*: "...some are only sacred to a single imagination."

So...I think that using those from the first grouping may often be an easier approach than trying to build, for the readers, a common appreciation for those in the other three groupings—although, now that I think more about it, this list may have a descending level of easiness, or grow more difficult as one moves from the universal class to the individual class.  E.g., one might write for an American audience, which would fall under the second type, cultural sacred beings, although some things might be lost in translation for readers from other cultures.  One might aim to appeal to a social group, e.g., readers of fantasy fiction—or, of a subgenre of fantasy fiction—and so use tropes that they expect and enjoy, but not appeal to readers who don't read much fantasy fiction (or that subgenre of fantasy fiction.)

Your example of _He tied his shoes_. —It might be an utterly ordinary sentence in most circumstances, but making that an act laden with meaning and significance _is_ possible.  This might possibly fall under the last category, although whatever the shoe-tying signifies might tap into something from the first three.

If we are trying to engage _through_ the character, then we have a new set of levels for the last three types of sacred being.  The culture may be the fictional culture of his milieu, the social group may be his fictional social group, and the individual may be that character—what is important _to him_.  If the reader has already come to identify with that character, then that character's "sacred beings" might become the reader's, as well, for the duration of that story.


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## Heliotrope (May 14, 2016)

Yes. 

I like to read tarot cards for fun, and tarot cards are designed like this. You have very obvious universal symbols upfront in the Major Arcana, death, the hanged man, the pregnant empress, the fool, the world, the wheel of fortune, etc. These cards use universal symbols like you have described, fire, snakes, birth, etc. 

Then you have the minor arcana, and these are geared more towards cultural symbols, kings, queens, knights, pages, swords, staffs, golden cups, etc. 

But within each card are also symbols that are totally up to interpretation. I try to explain it to my customers that it is like a rorchach (ink blot) test. The symbols in the backgrounds of the card (water, blood, darkness, sunshine, certain flowers and plants, castles, etc) are totally personal. The _true_ meaning of the cards come from what my client sees in them. One client may see a family travelling in a small boat over water and think it is about their upcoming move to another town. Another may see that the family in the image have their backs turned and may read into it that all their friends keep deserting them. Totally different meanings for the same card. 

I think that when developing characters and scenes, the closer you can get to that last level of individualism the more meaningful the story will be. So someone can write a broad epic, only focussing on the first level (Transformers comes to mind), and another can write a highly emotional character driven piece using the last level (Most Oscar winners or Nobel Prize winners). 

Probably most genre fictions falls somewhere in the first two-three levels, while most literary fiction falls into the deeply personal last two levels. I think that for all writers, however, practicing all levels in your fiction is probably a good idea. I do find that because the first level is the easiest most _new_ writers tend to hover there, instead of delving into the nitty gritty details and giving other things meaning.


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## Heliotrope (May 14, 2016)

I have also been thinking about this deep personalization as a way of avoiding "on the nose" narrative, like we spoke of before. 

So, for example, in my Top Scribe story I struggled to show the woman's shame at the deformity of her son. After reading Atwood, I realized how deeply personal she gets. Even though her character's struggle is totally individual to him, that individuality almost _feels_ more real and universal because of it's uniqueness... that is confusing... here is an example: 

So what I did was I took a page from Atwood's tool box and gave my character a totally unique experience with her own personal meaning: 

_When Antonia was a child her father had taken her to Laguardia, inland of her home in Basque, to see a miniature war: A checked board where two opponents could sit across from each other and battle with tiny knights and kings without any bloodshed. To her father, this invention was sure to generate more peace than his Holiness the Pope himself, but young Antonia was distracted by a desperate need to pee. Unable to drag her father from his turn at the game she emptied herself in the square, and, mortified, tried to cover the evidence with her shawl. 

Antonia felt much like that now. Like she had urinated in public, and no matter how she tried to cover it the smell remained. The puddle remained beneath her feet. The child slept at the back of the house more out of a sense of obligation to disguise the smell than to keep the boy a secret. Everyone already knew. _

And what I found was that the pure individuality of her experience... giving it her own personal meaning and symbolism, actually made it _more_ relatable on a broad spectrum. The opposite of what you would expect.


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## Svrtnsse (May 14, 2016)

Right, so this got very philosophical, but your points are well made after all. 

I'm looking at the definitions of the sacred beings and I'm thinking that for any of the three lower levels, chances are that the above level's sacred being is also included. It doesn't have to be, but there's a good chance.
If a in individual's sacred being is A, then chances are that the social circle that the individual is a member of also has A as one of their sacred beings, etc. Again, it's not necessary, but it's more likely than not. 

That wasn't what I meant to post about though.

I sat musing on this and it struck me that every now and then I find it interesting to read articles about people from different cultures or different parts of the world - if I'm in the mood. It can be interesting to learn about what life is like for them wherever it is they live, or whatever it is they do. 
It might be equally interesting to read such an article about a fictional person in a fantasy world. It won't be the same as reading a story, but it might still be interesting. I say _might_, because I'm not sure. It could be that part of the appeal of reading about people in the real world is that I _know_ they're real people. Chances are it'll be difficult to get that feeling to transfer over to fictional characters.

Difficult, but not impossible. If the _article_ isn't too long - say a few thousand words - it should be doable. The person may be an average Joe in the fictional world, but seeing the world from their perspective may still be novel and interesting for someone not familiar with the world.

Another idea I've toyed with, and which is actually on the table for something I plan to do later on, is a fantasy travelogue. Travel books, where the author tells about the places they visit, and their experiences there, are bought and read by people. There are those who find them interesting. It's not unthinkable that there may be some kind of overlap between people who likes to read travelogues and people who like to read fantasy. It may be a small overlap, but it probably exist.
After all, it's not completely unheard of that people in fantasy stories travel to places to do things.


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## Sheilawisz (May 15, 2016)

I think that it all depends on the story that you are telling.

In case that your story is about a character that is extraordinary, then said character _must_ be very special in his or her own world directly and not only from the point of view of our world. Think of Spiderman: What makes the character extraordinary is that he has those cool and useful powers, but what would happen to Spiderman if he lived in a world in which everybody has exactly the same capabilities?

In that case he would still be extraordinary from the point of view of our world and yet completely ordinary in his own, so the coolness factor of being _special_ would be lost.

In the other hand, we have characters that are ordinary in their own world and yet the story makes them special in different ways.

One of my favorite moments in the entire _Lord of the Rings_ film trilogy is when the Rohan armies arrive at the siege of Minas Tirith, and Merry is at first shocked to witness how large and powerful Sauron's army actually is... Then Eowyn says _"Courage, Merry! Courage for our friends!"_.

Merry was just a Hobbit, but he was brave and loyal and this made a huge difference in the battle when he helped Eowyn take down the Witch King of Angmar.

As much as I love stories about special protagonists, I really love it when the ordinary folks do something like that =)


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## FifthView (May 17, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> I have also been thinking about this deep personalization as a way of avoiding "on the nose" narrative, like we spoke of before.
> 
> So, for example, in my Top Scribe story I struggled to show the woman's shame at the deformity of her son. After reading Atwood, I realized how deeply personal she gets. Even though her character's struggle is totally individual to him, that individuality almost _feels_ more real and universal because of it's uniqueness... that is confusing... here is an example:
> 
> ...



@Helio:  That is the sort of writing that I absolutely love, the kind of writing that can grab me and keep me glued throughout a book.

I think that your first comment in this thread, particularly your link to the Writing Excuses podcast, ties into this:  the familiar + the original.

While Antonia's specific memories and past experience might be unique to her (the original), the passage taps into something that is probably universal, familiar to everyone.  Not only have we, all of us, embarrassed ourselves in the past, when children, but we continue to feel that same sort of social shame from time to time as adults.  It is probably this sort of disjunction between the individual & society that makes the passage seem so familiar despite its peculiar individual dimension.



Svrtnsse said:


> I sat musing on this and it struck me that every now and then I find it interesting to read articles about people from different cultures or different parts of the world - if I'm in the mood. It can be interesting to learn about what life is like for them wherever it is they live, or whatever it is they do.
> It might be equally interesting to read such an article about a fictional person in a fantasy world. It won't be the same as reading a story, but it might still be interesting. I say _might_, because I'm not sure. It could be that part of the appeal of reading about people in the real world is that I _know_ they're real people. Chances are it'll be difficult to get that feeling to transfer over to fictional characters.



@Svrtnsse:  I, also, am often fascinated by other cultures, whether those in the present or past cultures around the world.  I wonder if this has something to do with what I wrote above to Helio:  Seeing the familiar in the original/different.  And I think that, once we develop a sense of the familiar-in-the-strange, we might sometimes begin to wonder whether whatever is strange might be a latent possibility for our own world/lives:  If _they_ could be such-and-such a way and do such-and-such a thing, what about _us_?

Anyway...isn't fantasy that is set in a fictional world almost always a type of travelogue?  At this very moment, I'm remembering that Star Trek movie in which they traveled to a different planet and had their own observers hidden by invisibility shields, so they could observe the people of that planet without interfering.  This is similar to what happens when a reader comes to a fantasy world.


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## Helen (May 17, 2016)

Svrtnsse said:


> In another thread (http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/16533-perspectives-youd-like-see-more.html) the idea of writing fantasy stories from the perspective of regular people came up. This is a concept that's quite dear to me, and it'd be interesting to discuss it further.
> 
> One of my theories is that when writing about mundane people in a fantastic setting the contrast between the extraordinary and the regular becomes much clearer. I'm thinking that if you anchor the story onto concepts that the reader is familiar with, the fantastic elements seem more fantastic by comparison. It increases the potential for escapism in the story.
> 
> Does that make sense? What's your thinking on this?



It's almost classical.

Jesus is a carpenter (Ordinary Man).

Classically, an Ordinary Man is turned by Extraordinary Events.

It's the basis of the Two Worlds.


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## Phin Scardaw (May 24, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> I propose to you that, for some reason, audiences will only accept _one peice of magic per movie_. It's The Law. You cannot see aliens from outer space land in a UFO and then be bitten by a Vampire and now be both alien and undead.



I would TOTALLY go see a movie about alien vampires!!!


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## Bekka King (May 24, 2016)

J.K. Rowling did this in the Harry Potter series by including muggles in the stories.  She did a great job of showing the wizarding and muggle worlds side by side.


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## Addison (May 24, 2016)

I just took a cursory look at my book shelf. It's loaded with fantasy, with a sprinkling of thriller, horror and a few sic-fi. But all the fantasies do have a common element. Most of the time the hero is someone who starts off ordinary and becomes extraordinary in their world. Whether it's a power that grows, their being a Chosen One, who knows. There's only a few on my shelf where the hero is a normal person who has no special powers, or abilities, but succeeds by their own determination and one unique and normal skill or specific knowledge. 

Great now I'm thinking of re-writing my main character. Well I'll re-write my whole cast as a fun exercise.


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## Svrtnsse (Jun 3, 2016)

I came across this quote from one my favourite authors:


> “Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”
> *― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter*


Source (and more quotes): Quote by Tove Jansson: Ã¢€œQuite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. ...Ã¢€Â


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