I come to you with a personal conundrum: when a story is bound within confines of utter mundanity, how do you develop an interesting plot? Oftentimes when I either read or browse other aspirants' WIP their story happens to fall under a more intrinsically intruiging setting, involving such elements as fantasy or loose imagination. With such foundations backing your writing playground I see smoother facility in progressing the plot and providing the characters with development opportunities. Now, fantasy or any approximate genre obviously differs from real life, so while the plot flows readily in it, when refering to a setting more bound in reality, challenges ensue. To get into more details: I have me a nice, cohesive story put in theory. It has interesting characters, conflict, desire, stakes, character developments with solid grounds, a few whimsical scenes, and a message which to me seems to convey itself nicely throughout the story. This whole thing takes place in a less than mundane town and a sleepy, boring world such as ours. I've actually had to stretch reality to make the town more whimsical than is reasonable to imagine. My issue comes not in implementing the good scenes but rather in fillings the gaps in between each. Scene X is monumental, and so incorporating it in close proximity to Scene Y, which is also monumental, seems a bit overloaded for so short an interval. However, there is no "magical factor" than can dish out fillers (good fillers, mind you, not fodder ones) and opportunities for the setting to change and provide room for the characters to act in. There is no evil empire swooping in overnight to wreck havoc on the town, no monster, no artifact, no overarching force of change. In a normal town, where people follow 24-7 schedules, and nothing threatens to wage a difference on its balance, I have to reach hard to create fluidity and interesting scenarios for my characters to convenietnly and believably pave their way to the big scenes. As in real life, a normal day is mostly uneventful. I do not forget, though, that a story is more so its depiction than the actual plot. The words you use, the quirks and insight of your characters, those are what truly makes the story flow. This does not mean that you can throw in any two characters in a cave for a whole novel and wonderful things will happen. Setting is important for opportunity, and my mind cannot conjure much with the one I have. This problem solves itself out in the short story format. Short stories would usually convey simpler, less prosaic and more concise nuggets of interest. More often than not I read short stories that span a moment, an hour, or a few days. Even in short stories that span years the author may be less elaborative and more to-the-point, and so it is trickier to overstay your welcome in the eyes of the reader. I have many more thoughs on the subject but my rambling is fruitless. I prefer to hear what people have to say on the matter. It will be profitable also if you can name movies/novels that are simple and awesome, but are not short.
I think you're approaching it the wrong way. You're right in that monumental events do not follow other monumental events. That would be fatiguing to read and unbelievable, even if you managed to come up with enough material that way to actually finish the story. But you shouldn't just provide filler between them - they wouldn't contribute to the plot and it would feel disjointed. So in the absence of a fantasy environment to provide context between the monumental scenes, you need to find other ways of segueing between them. Since your setting is, as you put it, mundane, it must be the characters who provide the interest, the material and the link between the major events of the plot. These scenes are your opportunity to show the reader what the characters have learned from monumental scene X, how they have changed and grown, and set the scene for monumental scene Y. How you do that is up to you. It might be a conversation between characters, a monologue, or a description of the character's reflections and thought process. Alternatively, they could show through their actions how they have been changed and affected by monumental scene X. These scenes are the glue that will hold together the pivotal points of your plot and make it all seem believable. For example, I've got a character who is living in complete isolation and for various reasons cannot travel far from his current location. This limits what I can do within the environment to keep things interesting, so after monumental scene X, in which the character is forced to leave his immediate environment and move into a potentially (but not actually) dangerous one, the next scene involving this character involves a lot of description of his thought process and emotions. This guides the reader through his development, due in this case to his perception of being in danger, to the next monumental event.
I am not 100% sure I follow. It sound like you asked more than one question so I will try to address what I noticed. 1. How to make a story interesting with mundane elements such as the real world. POV! Its all POV. If you write it correctly. A story about a girl protecting a catipilar in a jar from just the walk home from school cuz she is five could be amazing! I mean. To her, this is the most insane thing she has ever tried to do and if she fails the butterfly won't appear! EPIC from her POV anyhow. The stakes don't need to be objectively strong or world ending. Just important to the POV we are following and like. 2. I have two big plot points near eachother and am afraid of reader fatique. How to avoid? Well this has nothing to do with magic or fantasy. Actually thinking you can just toss a monster out is a bad idea. This is about flow. And if you feel the two big events near each other would cause reader fatique it is probably best to space them out somehow if you can. There is no real magic trick here. This is the serious hard part to writing that cause boldness from ripping our hair out! 3. How to make life interesting when real life is boring? The average person does have a fairly boring life. This is why the average story doesn't focus on that but again, POV, make the mundane epic! Or try to mix it up. Thing is. Unless its a biography you get to have some fantasy even in a non-magical story. Don't let the boringness of real life stop your story. If all that you give is just a bit more unlikely fun events happening. I am more than willing to accept that. Its about the middle ground in this regard. Were those your questions? Did that help? Did I miss anything?
I am always trying to advocate that a plot doesn't need to be about the world ending to be the most intense thing ever! lol
But as you said, to the character that might be exactly what is going to happen. To that little girl, the caterpillar is her whole world at that time! Describing her fear for the fate of the character could give the reader the same sense of the world ending as a story which literally describes the end of the world.
lol you know what I meant! That the Earth doesn't have to be physically threatened to be destroyed or all humans enslaved or killed!
Thank you both Wynn and Mashers for the input Wynn, the caterpillar story does sound quite amazing. I do agree and understand the whole point of POV and what is serves. In fact I do recall a Ted talk in which a professor relates a story about when his family got its first laundry machine, the most mundane thing ever! But the way he describes this so called spectacle is what truly makes the story fun. So yeah, I do have many mundane things dramatized by my characters. Perhaps I did not explain myself properly. I do not think that I need to throw a monster in there for sake of filler. It's an awful idea. Every scene must have its purpose in the overall story. Plus, I believe that a character arc can be the satisfactory reward of a journey and its key point rather than the journey itself. To those who read Abbercrombie, for example, his stories are convoluted AF but in the end not much happens setting-wise, what changes is the characters and that is satisfying. What I meant is that reading a story about a, let's say, super interesting guy doing mundane things sounds challenging to convey in novel form, because no matter how interesting they are and how insightful they are towards the mundane, it is still lacking in action, in motion. It is a story, not a thesis, so something must drive the plot forward and not expand it sideways. A possible solution, like Wynn said, is to insert elements of fantasy to the story, which I quite decently do with the whimsicality of my characters. But something still feels off. Let me ask you guys: in novel form, 300 pages, if you had to read a story about a 24-hour schedule of interesting people doing boring things, would that grip you? A story about normal people, mind you, not rich, not resourceful. And again I really need to ask, can anyone reccomend a good story with a boring plot that does not detract from it being good? I know there are a lot, but I can't think of any.
Well, it is hard to give specifics without specifics but if the story feels like a thesis, it sounds like you don't have an over arching plot line. I mean the story ends not just on Tuesday. If you wrote about a normal schedule for 300 pages, you would likely end on some random non-event. But you can't do a novel that way. It needs to have some sort of climax. Which your building towards. The mundane things you speak of. They really need to be downplayed. I mean. You aren't gonna write about everytime he goes to the bathroom just to be complete. You skip over the boring parts. Or you make the boring parts to them(slow parts) about character development. Not sure this is a good example and not a novel, but it is the only example I can think of. A Manga called "Marmalade Boy." The plot is essentially. Your protangist parents decide to get divorced and remarried in the same day. To a different couple who did the same thing. No magic. no nothing. It is all about how the main character, a sixteen year old girl is handling have her life turned wacky. And it is very much like you said. Mundane beyond that random fact, though, situations like that(super weird family moments) do in fact happen in real life. So she goes to school, she goes home. Rinse repeat. Yet you see her interact with the situation each day. Maybe it is telling a new friend. Maybe it is getting advice. Maybe it is trying to plot a way to piss her parents off because she herself is still angry. ANd ultimately she has to grow to accept her family and move beyond just her superfitial concept of weird. No magic needed. Right? Does that help?
Check out Richard Ford. "Independence Day" won a Pulitzer (I think) and isn't about much more than a divorced middle aged dude navigating modern life. Or "The Corrections" by Franzen, which was a Pulitzer nominee. That was the hot book a few years ago... nothing really happens in it but it was a good read. ETA: you're talking about contemporary fiction, which is VERY hard to write. You have to be a master of characterization.
@Tella I can't think of a good example of what you are describing, but The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro is a good example of a story with lots of mundanity. I have to be honest, it doesn't work for me. It was so incredibly frustrating to read. So much explication of things which didn't feel meaningful and ultimately led nowhere. If anything it's a masterclass in how to frustrate a reader with pointless detail and meaningless actions on the part of the characters. Which leads me to a question. You mentioned a story about a "super interesting guy doing mundane things ... [which] no matter how interesting they are and how insightful they are towards the mundane, it is still lacking in action". My question is, if they are so mundane and lacking in action, why are you telling the reader about them? If they contribute to the scene-setting or character development, acknowledge that they are mundane (perhaps through the character's reactions to or thoughts about them), say what you have to say about them, and then move on. If they advance the plot, then dramatise them from the POV of the character - it doesn't matter what you think about them, or what you think the reaeder will think about them, it's how the character feels that matters. If the information neither explicates the setting/character nor advances the plot, then I think you have to ask yourself whether it is information the reader needs to know about. And if it isn't, then you'll have to find something else to link your epic scenes. Your idea of the 24-hour schedule of interesting people doing boring things could be fascinating, or it could be tedious. It would depend on what made the characters interesting and how these interesting character traits related to the things the people were doing. As others have said, without specific detail on what you are writing about it's difficult to say. But I would suggest that you think about how the characters relate to their situations, how they feel about them, and whether those feelings and reactions would be interesting to the reader. Because in this type of situation, where the events are boring but the characters are not, the characters are literally the only thing providing interest to the reader.
Aha! Thanks both. Wynn, my situation is half and half what you said. I have slightly wacky characters, one more so the driving force of "fun" of the novel, on a semi-mundane schedule. One of the main points of the story is to avoid the mundane through wackiness and creativity. You could say it's a character arc. Regarding what you mentioned about my story not having a climax, let me clarify: I have good beginning, I have a good climax and pre-climax, and a few, but not enough, middle events that connect the thread. Essentially I just want to get from point A and to point B in a believeable, or even enjoyable way. I am satisfied with the message, satisfied with the character arcs, everything. What I need is kind of... again, either we call it filler or in-between action. If this were a short story I'd be having it much easier. I thank you again for the recommendations, they sound good and I will make a point to check them out. Also, didn't realize this term is called contemporary fiction. Good to know. If you happen to recall more stories I'd appreciate it.
Sounds like all you need is to add semi random interesting events. Like imagine a tennis tournament! Doesn't matter if they play tennis. How do they react? Does one like tennis? Does one hate tennis? Do they help set it up? How do they react to something like this. And yes I totally used that as an example cuz Marmalade Boy almost everyone is a tennis player. Point being if you need to stretch the events. Give us more about them!
If done correctly, this could actually be very entertaining to read. I didn't realise that you had included that wacky element, so I was assuming it would be quite drab and depressing to read. Juxtaposing a wacky character with mundane, daily events could actually be very amusing, and I would be really interested in how the characters develop under these circumstances!
Okay, let me see if I can detail further. I have a recluse as an MC, someone without much social interaction and a sense of denial towards it. I made him bald, as a tribute and a joke to buddhist monks, as he is reclusive in a monkish way. He sees people as either weak or stupid, but never evil, and kinda gives up on socializing because he never finds anyone to be challenging enough mentally or intellectually. The grind and pursuit of the mundane in society has desensitized him. His conflict and ultimate challenge would be to take the initiative and be willing to at least try and change the world around him, to see himself as a cog in the inner workings of society and not a loose screw, because although he hates people, he kinda likes people. That's his denial. In comes a coincidence that entangles him with a wacky girl who throws frying pans at him at first sight. He accidentaly catches her rummaging (ahem, stealing) tools and miscellanea for unknown purposes during an annual festival. Later it is revealed that she intends to build something big and unbelieveable that will act as the foundation of her "brigade", from which she will preside over town and go on a campaign of making the world a better place. Now she has demons too. She is quite the opposite to MC but similar. On the outside she adores the people of her town, claims to want and tap into their inner hero. Inside really, she loaths their lack of theatricality, lack of character, imagination, goodwill and overall lack of otherworldliness, so to speak. Her life is dull, her prospect is dull, her sanity is fragile, but she hangs on. MC and wacky girl team up to build that thing, each for their own interests, and on the way they develop and kinda complete each other's denials and acceptance of their reality. The ending is positive, there are humorous moments, social criticism obviously, and so on... P.S: No, it's not a romance and they never get intimate I have a few semi-interesting side characters of course, wondering how to incorporate them more solidly into the plot.
@Tella I'll be honest, that sounds like an incredible story. The potential for character development is huge, and I think the interest for the reader will be in how their relationship grows and changes both of them. This is an example of a plot which is a vehicle for the characters to develop rather than the other way round. Go for it! Although I can't think of another example in literature, the movie Groundhog Day has just come to mind. Extremely dull and mundane events happening over and over again, but it's the development of the character which keeps you riveted to the plot.
(Slaps head) John Irving... how could I forget him? "The World According to Garp" is his big one. More modern life with some, uh, bizarre and often prurient distractions. The rest of his stuff is similar. Mundane, but offbeat and a little whacky.
Thanks a bunch So you see, I have this solid idea, of which I have only began to scratch the surface with the details I did give (quite a few I didn't). I am hesitant with writing about the same 2 characters doing X, then doing Y, then maybe separating one of them for a few solo chapters. I think adding more substantial characters into the mix might alleviate this issue, but can't think of any true role other characters could play besides conversations. I could tell the whole story though dialogue, but that's not good enough.
Must say, never read Irving but now I have a reason to check him out!!! Feel free to just name more stories and expand (if you are so inclined) on why those stories work. Might as well make this thread a testament to Simplicity = Not necessarily a bad thing, actually it's good.
I think that depends on how long the story is going to be and how independently the two main characters can advance the plot. If it's a short story, or if the characters can advance the plot without much intervention from others, then you might not need other characters. If it's intended to be novel length or if there are points where the characters might get stuck, then you might need to introduce other characters. I don't think they necessarily need to be POV characters though - just other characters for your MCs to interact with. In a broader perspective, I think it would be interesting to see how other characters feel about what is happening. You have a MC who is finding his place in the world having been isolated and misanthropic. I for one would like to know how other people feel about the changes he is going through. They don't need to be substantial characters. Even the waiter your character used to be rude to but to whom he has started saying "have a nice day" might have an interesting interpretation of his developing character.
I think that if your plot is fundamentally about people growing and changing then keeping it simple is better. You want to emphasise the personal journey they are going through, not distract the reader from it.
I'd say that what you're describing is the opposite of simple. A dude that has 24 hours to assassinate the president of Mexico before narco-terrorists kill his daughter is a simple plot. A hobbit that has to throw a magic ring into a volcano before the forces of darkness engulf the earth is a simple plot. But regular people doing regular things in a regular way? That's not simple at all. The aforementioned plots are user-friendly driving engines. The reader knows what the story is about, what is likely to happen next, and a limited range of probable outcomes. Success or failure for the characters is fairly black and white (which is why stories of life, death, and love are so popular), and because the reader is familiar with that kind of character arc, their attention span free up some real estate to take in the characters and imagery. But an emotional journey, say a middle aged man coping with divorce and the gradual erosion of the values he grew up with, is not a straight line at all. His success or failure could look like a lot of things and the reader has to become attuned to emotional cues rather than plot points. Miss one of those and the story falls apart for the reader. Not simple. Not simple at all.
Catcher in the Rye comes to mind. Old Man and the Sea, in some ways. Quite a few contemporary romances, really. Anne of Green Gables (and all the sequels). Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor. Friday Night Lights (non-fiction, but written in a narrative format). Austen. James Heriot. A Girl Named Zippy (memoir, but might as well be fiction). The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (as I recall - it's been a long time since I read it.) My Family and Other Animals. Lives of Girls and Women. Lots more, too, but that'd be a good start, surely? I think the key thing is characterization and character growth and character arcs. A character-driven story can be wonderful, as long as the characters grow and change. So don't look for ways to make the plot drive the story, look for opportunities to display your characterization.
I have never heard anybody say before that realistic fiction is harder to write an interesting plot for than SciFi/Fantasy. I'm not quite sure how to respond yet.
