It seems that everyman characters are OK, to me. But I was getting from OSC that I needed to make my characters interesting. Maybe he doesn't do everymans. I thought about those that did:
Alice in Wonderland. She's there to be normal while the world is insane. A friend of mine says no, she's very unusual, in that she objects to illogic and is determined to overcome it. She's a 7 1/2 year old scientist.
Hastings (like Watson) are POV characters that are everyman, but they're not the MC; they watch the MC. My character isn't watching any one person in particular; she may not be able to fit that model.
Sandra, in Connie Willis's Bellwether, is a scientist studying fads. Most of what she does is observe the craziness in the world around her (like Alice) and wish to impose order on it. She also wants the answer to a scientific question. In that book, we don't get grounded in a particular time and place for 2 1/2 pages -- and we don't even get MC's name until about the same time! She's talking about science, fads, and falling in love, and that's what the story's about.
I'm tempted to do a lot of everyman. In fact, I get impatient when authors take a character whose purpose is to see strange events, and add a lot of detail about how he felt when his father didn't show up for his high-school football games, etc. etc. (Stephen King, The Stand). OSC said, make the characters interesting. I don't find anything in Characters & Viewpoint about "everyman."
When do you like an everyman MC? Any other thoughts?
An "everyman" isn't a nondescript person. They're fascinating people who don't move beyond their set social spheres, or at least, not often. One of the best stories loaded with the "everyman" is Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Every character is a completely regular person from beginning to end, and it's a wonderful showing of what their lives are like.
Hmm. Does that make sense?
The crazyness angle I hadn't noticed. What do the rest of you think? Offhand, I can't think of an everyman I liked that *didn't* show up in a very odd world. But then I like to read about very odd worlds.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited August 14, 2006).]
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I like everymam characters, that's probably why Sam was always the hero for me in LOTR.
I would say a character can be quite interesting without being explicitly unique. He doesn't shoot torpedos out of his eyes and he can't fly, but he isn't the coward most real people would be when faced with his situation.
The point about the role of an everyman I'll substantiate. That is, I agree that the role of an everyman is to provide a surrogate for the audience in dealing with a strange milieu, someone who asks the questions that a character from that milieu would never think to ask. Thus you only find everyman characters in stories that deal predominantly with the totally unfamiliar. Ransom in Out of the Silent Planet is an everyman. In Perelandra he begins to lose his everyman quality and becomes more a hero in a variant form of a story with wich we are all somewhat familiar. By That Hideous Strength he is even beyond being the hero, he is almost a demi-god. Of course he undergoes significant change, but most of that occurs at the end of Perelandra. The reason he is not an everyman in Perelandra has more to do with the underlying familiarity of the milieu, not its lack of essential strangeness.
An everyman shouldn't be particularly average. But the everyman shouldn't deviate from those qualities that are nearly universal amongst the intended audience. The point of an everyman is that he comes from the audience's milieu.
For instance in, again the WOT: Rand, Mat and Perrin are everyman's. But the initial setting is very familar to most, a rather mundane rural village very removed from the world at large, full of farmers and shepards, blacksmiths, roofthachers. From these everyman's we learn of the world as they begin thier journey set for Tar Valon. We learn of it as they do, as well as the concepts of the One Power.
Of course, the Two Rivers was a clone of Tolkien's Shire, another springboard for ordinary character into a fantastic millieu.
You can't have an Everyman MC in his everyday world with his everyday friends. That's boring, nothing to tell.
Everyman definition according to dictionary.com: An ordinary person, representative of the human race.
Youths are people too. And in a way, very representative of the human condition overall, in that humanity as a whole is far from mature.
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited August 14, 2006).]
Ordinary people presented with extraordinary circumstance will act, and those actions will always appear extraordinary -- extraordinarily good or extarordinarily bad. Never ordinary.
If you really want a clue to Sam Gamgee, at the end of third book he turns to his wife and say something like, 'Well I'm back now.' indicating he has exited what he considers an extraordinary world and is back to his ordinary life, one of work and family and stuff. His adventure was never over in his mind until he said that.
The fact that it is Sam that most fully follows the Monomyth Cycle format indicates, to me that he became the master of two worlds, happy in the ordinary but unafraid of the extraordinary.
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loyalty, resiliance, personal fortitude
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited August 14, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited August 14, 2006).]
To really test this, consider carefully as to whether you, under your exact knowledge, exact skills, exact physical abilities, could ever survive in any world you create.
I have never created a world I could survive in. I could walk two miles, but I would be laid up for a month afterwords because of foot problems. I could not put in a whole hour of physical labor because I am used to a desk job. My knowledge is of the kind that cannot come up with the best answers at the spur of the moment. I can solve problems, but it is slow and plotting. I don't do well in game shows.
The few of my real skills could be useable outside my father's 90 year lifespan or my eventual 90 year lifespan, because of changes in technologies. Simply put, A tolerably average person such as myself would DIE in any world I create.
Because of this, one has to "improve" the character to survive riggors of the story. They are not average, they are superior to the average person.