Exchange of Realities

All around me I see people playing games of More Epic Than Thou. You get Big Grand Hero-Types who have to be at the top or at the bottom in everything they do, plots that involve high magic and improbable sword-fighting, villains that go after the whole world rather than just messing with one place at a time. It’s nice and all, I suppose, but I prefer my stories a bit more aligned with the ordinary.

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Blasphemy? Not so much; I doubt I’m alone.

So why use the ordinary in a narrative?

For one thing, people are likelier to know what to do with it. It’s one thing introducing people to a new magic system, or trying to get them to improvise their way through surviving in an environment that doesn’t exist and definitely bears few similarities to one they’re used to. Exciting? Yes. But a lot harder to be clever about. On the other hand, a situation similar to an ordinary circumstance that people have encountered in the real world will give them a chance to apply what they know. Makes the plans a lot more interesting.

Conversely, you’ve got an existing framework for the situation, and you don’t have to worry about vision clash. Dropping people into a half-formed magic system may result in them suggesting ways to fill it in that just happen to be to their advantage, and what happens when your image of a swordfight is gritty medieval and theirs is more along the lines of swashbuckler movies? While this is more for game masters than writers, even a writer in full control of the world will probably have more luck coming up with solutions to problems that are within her frame of reference.

There’s a lot more room for it. If you try to avoid the ordinary, most of what’s left tends to involve Big, World-Saving Things. And really, haven’t we seen enough Destined Heroes, World-Shattering Wars, and other things with the full weight of Destiny behind them? There’s a lot of unfilled space out there.

It should help to avoid power creep. What happens when you’ve saved the world but still want a sequel? Bigger, badder enemies. I believe the term most people use is “DBZ Syndrome”. But when you’re starting ordinary, you can stay ordinary; the new complication doesn’t have to be more powerful, just different. If power increases, it can do so more slowly, like working one’s way up through a political system or outward through trade connections. Easy does it.

It might hide something greater. Now, I wouldn’t do that all the time; otherwise, everyone’s just going to wait for the twist to reveal itself. But once you get people used to being in an ordinary world, you can spring something a little more unusual on them, and they’ll value it all the more for its contrast. Scarcity is a wonderful thing.

When in doubt, let it serve as inspiration. Even if you don’t want to deal with ordinary things on their own, it’s not that hard to come up with new ways of looking at them. Young children are extremely good at this; they can turn a long drive into a space opera, chores into quests, and sorting small objects into a matter of life and death. Can’t we learn from them? Use an ordinary thing as a framework, then make it into something else entirely.

So don’t be afraid that use of the ordinary will cause people to lose interest in what you’re writing. Embrace it. It will give you ideas you’ll never find if you’re only looking for Epic.