McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
The Corvidian:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 03:24:47 PM ---Well I say that if an author wants to make it work an ordinary person CAN defeat the bad guys and it's boring and over-done to have them turn out to be half fairy or half vampire or whatever. I'm sorry you disagree but it CAN BE DONE.
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You'd have to have a bit of supernatural ability to do that. Perhaps the person in question has a piece of jewerly that allows them to do that, but the rest of the time, they are a vanilla human.
Hell's Belle:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 03:24:47 PM ---Well I say that if an author wants to make it work an ordinary person CAN defeat the bad guys and it's boring and over-done to have them turn out to be half fairy or half vampire or whatever. I'm sorry you disagree but it CAN BE DONE.
--- End quote ---
You seem to be taking this a bit personally, and I'm wondering if that's because you want to find a book that features someone you can identify with to a large degree.
I'm not talking about you personally. If you want something like that, write some fanfic or ask someone to write it for you.
What I'm talking about is that a hero, by definition, isn't an ordinary person. It may be the actual point of saving someone through whatever measure they use, that may define them as extraordinary, but there are many ways to reach beyond the 'ordinary' definition..
DragonFire:
--- Quote from: Borealis Belle on December 18, 2007, 07:24:09 PM ---You seem to be taking this a bit personally, and I'm wondering if that's because you want to find a book that features someone you can identify with to a large degree.
I'm not talking about you personally. If you want something like that, write some fanfic or ask someone to write it for you.
What I'm talking about is that a hero, by definition, isn't an ordinary person. It may be the actual point of saving someone through whatever measure they use, that may define them as extraordinary, but there are many ways to reach beyond the 'ordinary' definition..
--- End quote ---
I agree with BB, here.
Part of the problem is that overweight people can't really do the things that in shape people can. Please do not think 'in shape' = 'skinny'. It doesn't.
But most of the people who can, for example, kick a vampire's butt, need to be very highly trained, and that brings with it a measure of physical fitness that normally discounts being overweight.
Really the only way you can kill vamps, and still be overweight is using some sort of supernatural power, and not engaging physically at all. And that's not really butt kicking, is it?
AS to an 'ordinary person', there have been many 'ordinary' hero's, or rather, they started ordinary. Try reading the "Chronicles of Pyrdain" by LLoyd Allexander. His hero is the 'assistant pig keeper'. That's ordinary. He later becomes king, but he starts out at a pig keepers assistant.
The other problem with 'ordinary', read plain vanilla human, is that, in supernatural settings, they are both boring and ineffective.
Any supernatural you want to look at, vamps, were's, elves, all have significant advantages over a vanilla mortal.
You need to give your 'ordinary person' some way to fight back, and again, this lifts them from the ranks of the ordinary.
Protaganists are never ever ordinary.
DragonFire:
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 05:38:51 AM ---How about extrodinary compassion for other people? The willingness to risk their own life for a stranger simply because "It's the right thing to do"?
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That's motivation, but not means. What makes the protaganist any better able to fight off the monster than the intended victim?
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 05:38:51 AM ---
There's ordinary people who do this in the real world. There's absolutely no reason it can't work in a fantasy novel. Sure, maybe they luck out and pick up an old iron pipe to hit the fairy in the head with, or a broken piece of wood that hits the vampire right in the heart.
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Every single time? That sort of luck would start to border on the absurd. Someone who is that lucky, all the time, would not be ordinary.
--- Quote from: JamiSings on December 18, 2007, 05:38:51 AM ---Or perhaps they have a talent like I suggested before - they're able to sing a werewolf to sleep simply because they're such a talented singer. All without having to be anything more then an ordinary human.
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ok, beiong able to sing someone to sleep, let alone a werewolf, would sort of qualify as a supernatural power.
Even if it wasn't, that level of singing talent would mean you weren't ordinary.
Either way, this character is NOT an ordinary person.
Kali:
I'm finding a certain amount of amusement in the fact that this part of the discussion is taking place on the message board for a writer who's gotten a 6-book deal from an idea that started as a bet he could take two ridiculous, "unworkable" ideas and make a good story from them.
I'm with Jami. If you can write, you can make it work. If you can't make it work, maybe you need to stop blaming the idea and start blaming your writing.
And Jami isn't advocating ordinary circumstances, just a person who is, by all appearances, ordinary at the start of the story. "But... but singing to werewolves isn't ordinary!" Well dur. But that's part of her basic scenario (or at least one example of a possibility). So the *person* is still ordinary, even if the situation isn't.
And allow me to roll my eyes at the idea that being able to sing to a werewolf well enough to soothe them is an extraordinary ability. Only if you WRITE it that way. Maybe anyone who can sing well could possibly sing a werewolf calm, but it's just never occurred to anyone. It happens, for whatever reason, to occur to the heroine.
I also think everyone knows exactly what Jami means by "ordinary person", and there's some arguing for arguing's sake going on here.
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