The challenges of fantasy that stars ordinary people

MadScientistMatt · Aug 3, 2006

It seems that a lot of fantasy stars some Chosen One with exceptional magical powers, a prince or king on an adventure, an incredibly powerful wizard, or similar Great Heros. I've been working on a fantasy which often focuses on more common types. The hero is in some ways a "chosen one," but he's a soldier of fortune with no special powers. He just happened to be in the right place when a goddess needed a prophet.

So I've found out that having rather ordinary characters provides an opportunity for putting up obstacles that would be relatively inconsequential to a Rand Al'Thor or Belgarath, but seem overwhelming for a group of average people. Right now I have a priest (who is traveling incognito and has no magical powers) and mercenaries who have to retreive a mysterious relic of an ancient civilization. While I was preparing for this, it suddenly hit me. A lot of fantasy stories make things like that hard to find by having them guarded by a dangerous witch, or dragon, or devious magical traps, or something else requiring a difficult quest. And where did I put the relic I've sent my characters after?

It's buried a few feet under the dirt floor of a busy tavern.

And since my characters have little money and no magic or authority to call on, such a mundane problem looks like it's going to be just as daunting as any more common sort of fantasy guardian. I have some idea of how they might get this thing, but it is not going to be easy!

It seems that fantasy so often has heros of immense power that trying to write it otherwise has been something of a challenge. Any thoughts on this?

MidnightMuse · Aug 3, 2006

First let me say, I love what you've got ! While I tend to lean more toward SF and only dabble in something one would label Fantasy, I prefer to avoid magic and conjuring and Herculean heros. So the idea of Joe Blow being the hero always turns me on.

And the Hidden-in-plain-sight is always more logical to me. Just the fact that they're standing on it while swillin' beer doesn't mean they have a clue it's there.

I'm actually babbling today - I should stop. Is it possible to gag one's brain?

dclary · Aug 3, 2006

It seems that fantasy so often has heros of immense power that trying to write it otherwise has been something of a challenge. Any thoughts on this?

I don't know. Frodo had no powers whatsoever other than a good heart, and a better friend.

Thomas Covenant had a ring of great power, but no idea how to use it. The first time he defeated Lord Foul, he did it not with power, but with laughter. The next time he did it, he couldn't even use the ring without risking destroying the earth.

I'd have to say that *most* of the fantasy I enjoy reading is of the ordinary person being pushed into a situation he'd rather not be in. Willow. Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace. None of these were all-powerful princes or wizards.

BiggerBoat · Aug 3, 2006

Some "High Fantasy" depicts protaganists who are very powerful (magically or otherwise), but I'd day that the more common approach is things like "Coming-of-Age" stories (a protaganist struggles and aquires abilities as he matures) and "Capable Character" stories (a protaganist demonstrates special knowledge or abilities that allow him to excell and eventually succeed at his goal, but certainly not easily).

Readers want to admire a protaganist. They want someone who is interesting and larger-than-life. But, it's not any fun if they are all-powerful. It's also a matter of scale (very powerful hero = more powerful enemies), but I really haven't read any recent fantasy (that I can think of) with ultra-powerful heroes going after ultra-powerful relics. I'd probably not be interested in it.

So, yeah, I'd say you are on the right track but I'd also say that it's perhaps not that unique an approach.

Christine N. · Aug 3, 2006

The heroine of my first book is very ordinary. Or Less-than-Ordinary, actually, is how she thinks of herself. Plain, shy and nothing special.

Part of her journey is figuring out that she is.

TheIT · Aug 3, 2006

MadScientistMatt, as to digging things out from under floorboards - ever watch "Paint Your Wagon"?

My stories have an assortment of ordinary and extraordinary people. For example, my main MC has extraordinary magical powers, but he's also got a manservant who has no magic whatsoever but he keeps my MC's feet on the ground by doing things like making sure my MC remembers to eat.

dclary · Aug 3, 2006

The heroine of my first book is very ordinary. Or Less-than-Ordinary, actually, is how she thinks of herself. Plain, shy and nothing special.

Part of her journey is figuring out that she is.

Sounds much like Bink, in his first book.

ChaosTitan · Aug 3, 2006

In my latest novel, the MC has no special powers. He's just an average guy, who happens to be a mechanical engineer.

Almost every other important supporting character in the novel has a unique power (telekinesis, pre-cognition, etc..). A lot of the fun is how the "normal" guy reacts to these powers.

mdin · Aug 3, 2006

They should rent the tavern out for a Bar Mitzvah. Then get someone to distract the owner while they tear up the floor boards and dig.

ChaosTitan · Aug 3, 2006

XThe NavigatorX said:
They should rent the tavern out for a Bar Mitzvah. Then get someone to distract the owner while they tear up the floor boards and dig.

Or your MC can spike the ale barrels (or whatever they like to get sauced on) with something that gets all the drinkers super-intoxicated and open to suggestions. Then have the drunks dig up the floor for him. They won't remember a thing in the morning. :tongue

dclary · Aug 3, 2006

"Floor inspector, ma'am."
"Beg pardon?"
"Floor inspector. We've got word that your floors are demon possessed."
"Possessed!"
"We're going to have to perform a perfunctory review."
"A what?"
"We need to look at them. Can we?"
"Oh heavens, yes!"
..
"Egads! This one is DEFINITELY tainted with evil. It will have to be removed."
"Removed!"
"Gentlemen, test each plank, and remove only the ones that are possessed. Ma'am?"
"What?"
"You don't really want to be in here while we do this, do you? I mean, you can. Do you have a demonhide-piercing knife in your cupboard?"
"No! Do your job! Leave me alone! Tell me when it's safe to come back!"
"We will. Have a nice evening, Ma'am."

HConn · Aug 3, 2006

I like powerful protagonists. They're fun.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 3, 2006

MadScientistMatt said:
It seems that fantasy so often has heros of immense power that trying to write it otherwise has been something of a challenge. Any thoughts on this?

My favorite characters are usually more capable than most but they're thrown into "impossible" situations where their advantages may be either overwhelmed or in a different specialty and useless in that particular pinch. I think you need a bit of capability for a hero, just so you don't have to trudge over every single freakin' detail about how they managed to get past the minor challenges to get to the major ones.

Think of Indiana Jones for instance: he was no sherpa but he could handle himself on a rope pretty well. He wasn't a linguist, he was an archaeologist, but ancient languages weren't that tough for him (and when they were, he knew where to go [and brought friends that told him not to eat the dates]). He's no prize fighter – but for an academic, he can throw a pretty good punch. Nor is he a commando but he certainly knows to bring a gun when the other guy shows up ready for a sword fight. In the process of being "pretty good", he also gets the snot kicked out of him and keeps on going – and that makes the audience root for this guy.

You could even start with a not-so-well-rounded specialist and give them the chance to grow. Conan starts out a pit fighter and is eventually educated to cultivate some level of wisdom. In the "Eaters of the Dead" – you had the academic Arab who couldn't lift the Northmen's sword. The advice: "grow stronger." And he did. It was a fantastic opportunity to see character growth.

Andrew Jameson · Aug 4, 2006

chaostitan said:
In my latest novel, the MC has no special powers. He's just an average guy, who happens to be a mechanical engineer.

Hey! I'm a mechanical engineer, and I'm just an average guy, and I have no special powers. You're not writing about me, are you?

Anyway, I rather like stories with ordinary-guy type main characters. I still like magic and so forth, so I also like characters that can *do* something, but the less useful the magic is, the better, if you see what I mean.

In my current work, the main character is an ordinary guy that happens to be immune to magic. You can imagine why that might be useful skill, but there's also times where it's a pain in the keister. If you've got a spell that turns everyone invisible except for one person, it becomes much less useful.

RedWombat · Aug 4, 2006

Engineer heroes forever!

I do a webcomic with an engineer hero. It's fantasy, and our heroic engineer (who happens to be a wombat) has no special powers whatsoever, except a general resistance to divine intervention. She is desperately ordinary and occasionally frets that by the time she gets back home, all the good engineering jobs of her generation will be taken.

I get a small but significant portion of my fan-mail from engineers and geologists, so there's a definite audience for the practical and logical minded hero out there.

glutton · Aug 4, 2006

I have two early WIPs (ideas, really) with heroes who aren't all that powerful. One is about a town guardsman whose mother IS a legendary hero. He lives with his uncle on his father's side, since his father was killed by an evil king and his mother left on a crusade to avenge him. Flash forward some time, mom comes back and hero decides he wants to reconnect with her, so goes after her when she leaves for further adventures.

The other one is about a "chosen one" who really isn't. An old crone (who is known for being a charlatan in her home town), told his mother that he was destined to become a legend, but she only made it up. His mom believes it however, and it is supported by monsters trying to kill him when he was a baby. So he grows up determined to fulfil his great destiny... he does become a great hero later, and when he finds out the crone was lying, he honors her at her grave anyway and tells her "you made me what I am", as in trying to live up to the false prophecy, he achieves greatness.

MadScientistMatt · Aug 4, 2006

Ordinary_Guy said:
My favorite characters are usually more capable than most but they're thrown into "impossible" situations where their advantages may be either overwhelmed or in a different specialty and useless in that particular pinch. I think you need a bit of capability for a hero, just so you don't have to trudge over every single freakin' detail about how they managed to get past the minor challenges to get to the major ones.

Think of Indiana Jones for instance...

Indy's a pretty good comparison. I've given my main characters a fair amount of ability but they're way in over their head. It follows three mercenaries who are shipwrecked in an unfamiliar land. Any one of them is pretty dangerous in a fight, and I've given them a few other skills.

The one who's my usual viewpoint character was once part of an elite unit with a lot of training in wilderness survival, but he finds he has to pretend to be a more competant leader than he believes himself to be in order to keep them alive. Another one gets messages from a goddess - they're prophesies usually seem completely incomprehensible to him at the time, and it takes the others a while to figure out that he's not going bonkers. And the third one absolutely does not believe in magic - which in that world makes him rather dangerous.

Some of the ideas of how to get the relics out from under the tavern floor are pretty entertaining. I had suspected they would plan to get somebody else to dig it up and then steal it, but maybe not... especially since I have mentioned there are interesting things one can slip into beer in this world.

maestrowork · Aug 4, 2006

People do like larger-than-life heroes, but with humanity and weaknesses. Indiana Jones is a good example. He's human. He's a regular guy. He's afraid of snakes. But he's also larger than life.

dclary · Aug 4, 2006

This was actually my biggest problem with the DaVinci code... His knowledge of a top secret organization was so complete, and his puzzle-solving skills were so adept, that sending a single crazy monk after them didn't make for much of a challenge. I never felt the prot was beyond his capability, or in any great danger.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 4, 2006

MadScientistMatt said:
...And the third one absolutely does not believe in magic - which in that world makes him rather dangerous.

This fellow sounds pretty interesting, especially given all else that he must've seen in the world already. If there's magic, and evidence for it, then it's there... but this guy is in denial? Is it something pathological or does he have some really unique world view? You've got my curiosity up.

MadScientistMatt · Aug 4, 2006

Have you ever heard a psychic who failed an attempt to test his powers scientifically, only to claim that his power didn't work in the presence of skeptics? Well, in this story, that really is how magic works. So he actually has never seen any real magic, particularly since he comes from a land where the real thing is almost unheard of. In addition, he blames a fake magician for the death of his mother, so his anger drives him to condemn anyone else's belief in magic as superstition and gullability.

His accidental appearance in an empire ruled by a circle of magicians pretty much throws everything into chaos.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 4, 2006

MadScientistMatt said:
Have you ever heard a psychic who failed an attempt to test his powers scientifically, only to claim that his power didn't work in the presence of skeptics? Well, in this story, that really is how magic works. So he actually has never seen any real magic, particularly since he comes from a land where the real thing is almost unheard of. In addition, he blames a fake magician for the death of his mother, so his anger drives him to condemn anyone else's belief in magic as superstition and gullability.

His accidental appearance in an empire ruled by a circle of magicians pretty much throws everything into chaos.

That's pretty cool... a type of belief-based magic-dampening field. Sounds vaguely like an arcane Schrödinger's Cat effect.

...If one group of mages can get this guy to bother their competitors, voilà!

dclary · Aug 4, 2006

LOL... Right there you could play it like "Yojimbo" in a fantasy setting. Very nice. Magic-nullifier playing two rival wizard clans against each other.

TheIT · Aug 4, 2006

Ordinary_Guy said:
...If one group of mages can get this guy to bother their competitors, voilà!

Or if they see him as too much risk to the stability of magic in the realm, I can also see the mages hiring the best assassins in the land to kill him. Is it well known that disbelief negates magic? If not, the mages would definitely want to keep the secret away from the general public for fear of losing their own power.

triceretops · Aug 4, 2006

I love the relunctant hero. My guy is kind of brash and spiteful, until he meets the Roman Goddess of luck, Fortuna. She tells him that it is his time for 15 minutes of fame, and that the great cornacopia awaits. Trouble is, Fortuna's evil twin daughter, who is the maid of misfortune has also claimed him for disaster and evil. He's rich and prosperous one day, only to be devasted the next, as a result of these two divinities, which both grasp hold of him in a power struggle, which leads the two goddesses into a cat fight from hell. All the while he is used and abused, nearly losing his life, and finds out in the end that he's the pivitol character is this divine grandslam event. Tons of fun.

Tri

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