The Appeal of the Everyman

I've been writing about how to make your writing more literary, regardless of your genre.  One character that has eternal appeal is the everyman.  The everyman traces its origins to a medieval morality play, but it has been used throughout the history of literature.  The everyman is basically a regular guy, and there is an incredible appeal to a regular guy with whom we can relate.

Yes, we all love Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, and all the other specimens of perfection we could name.  They all run in circles we couldn't dream about, doing deeds that make our fantasies run wild, just as the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and other pantheons did for their respective cultures.  But we don't really identify with them.  They're almost too perfect.  Batman and Iron Man are rich beyond our wildest dreams.  Super Man, Wonder Woman, and Thor are gods or close enough.  They're maybe just a little too perfect for us to imagine living next door to them, much less being them.

We all love an everyman.  When Spider-man came along, he was a novelty.  His alter ego, Peter Parker, wasn't super rich.  He was a teenager who could get zits.  He was the everyman.  And, as a result, he has become one of the most popular characters in the super pantheon.  Captain Kirk from the original "Star Trek," young Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars movies, and Star Lord from "Guardians of the Galaxy" all have this regular guy appeal of the everyman.  We can identify with them because they're not perfect.  They make mistakes.  They don't have god-like power, though Luke acquires it as he goes along, and Star Lord temporarily exhibits some in movie two.  An everyman helps us truly see a story from their point of view because we can see ourselves doing what they're doing.  We see some part of ourselves in them.  Some critics may argue that Rey from the latest Star Wars movies is a bit too perfect, a bit too much of a Mary Sue to be an everyman (everywoman), but others find her very identifiable in an everyman way.

Everymen are everywhere throughout literature.  Harry Potter is a clear case of an everyman.  When he starts the series, he has no idea he has powers and blunders more than he acts heroically.  The same is true of Percy Jackson.  Jane Eyre is very much an everywoman.  She's not rich.  She's not strong or beautiful, but she comes out with a happily ever after, anyway.  Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird is nothing special.  He's a hardworking, not particularly rich lawyer who only excels in his integrity.  Mark Twayne's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn both have nothing to recommend them beyond their humanity.  Neither is strong or rich or perfect in any way, but that is part of what makes them charming.  We can see ourselves doing what these everymen/women do because they are us.  They take us from where we are and show us that we can be more than we are now.

Look through your stories.  Identify your everymen.  If you can't find any, think of where you may insert one in order to help your reader identify more with your characters.  Make sure your character has human drives, flaws, and strengths, to bring more meaning into your works.

Writing Children's Literature

I've been writing about how to make any piece more literary.  Children's books can be shallow and trivial, but they can also be literary and profound.  A lot has been written on how to write children's books.  I've been making a particular study of this since I have been working on a children's book series.  There are some really specific things you can do to make your children's books more meaningful. 

I've made mention of a League of Utah Writers conference I attended recently.  In it, Christy Monson pointed out that if you want to write great children's literature, the best thing would be to find those award-winning, literary pieces and figure out how they do it.  She pointed out most good children's literature is built on a try-fail three cycle structure.  The character should solve his/her own problems without the help of an adult or outsider.  First, you introduce the characters and the problem.  Those characters should be quirky and flawed.  As the main character struggles with the problem, they try to overcome it three times then have some kind of revelation that allows them to prevail in the final climax.  There should be an aw moment or a plot twist.  Monson highly recommends an outline to help you know what's coming.  To get a feel for what works, though, the most important thing is to know the genre.  Read what you want to write. 

If you want to write picture books, study picture books.  If you want to write chapter books, read those.  Research your genre both in terms of the books and in terms of what experts say about writing them. Read the books that really make a splash, that kids really want to read.  Writer Jennifer Jensen says, "The most successful [children's books] let kids laugh, cheer or cry over characters doing things they can imagine.  You can develop characters that stretch readers' imaginations, but if they're really off-beat, try leaving them in a familiar setting."  Children are like other readers.  They want to see themselves in what you write, but they also want to feel.  If your book doesn't make them feel, you may get published, but you won't make a difference in these children's lives. If your reader doesn't relate in some way, you've lost them another way. 

As Jensen says on her site, write in a way that is fast paced, interesting, lively, and simple.  Use a lot of dialogue to show characterization. Make those stories work for your particular audience based on your research. But don't get bogged down in the research.  For the first draft, just write.  Then, make sure you follow the rules.  And most of all, have fun.  If you're not having fun, neither is your reader.  Best of luck. 

Emotional Symbols

I've been writing about making your pieces more literary.  Most recently, I've been focusing on talks from League of Utah Writers Fall Conference.  For this post, I'll look at advice by Angie Hodapp's suggestions of how to externalize an internal voyage.  Your main characters should make both, and this is one way to tie both together.  

A lot of novice writers make the mistake of simply explaining a character's emotions.  For instance, a beginning writer may write the following: "George was angry.  He could not stand what was happening to him."  This is very boring and doesn't make the reader feel anything.  The point behind writing is to make the reader feel.  Just telling everything fails on every side.  Meanwhile, a more experienced writer understands showing is much more effective as in the following: "George's face turned red, and he clenched his pencil until it snapped.  He stood up, threw his chair to the ground, and stomped out."  The reader is left in no doubt about the character's emotions.   

Hodapp goes one step further.  She proposes that you use an external symbol to show a character's internal journey.  For instance,  she gave the example of cancer patients passing around a candle.  They may show fear of its going out through their behavior and how carefully they shelter it to make sure it continues to burn.  That candle becomes a symbol of their mutual fear that their own lives can be blown out just that easily.  Or each character can react to the fire differently to show how they feel about it.  

She gave further examples.  Say you want to show your character's disdain for a high class open house.  She sips the tea, makes a face, and then spits it out or tosses the glass.  The glass externalizes her internal emotion.  Say you want to show a character's discomfort at staying at a friend's house.  She beats the lumpy pillow repeatedly.  The pillow becomes a symbol for how she feels inside.   

There are so many examples of this in literature.  For instance, in The Scarlet Letter, the red letter A starts out as a symbol of Hester Prynn's fellow pilgrim's condemnation of her action that gave her a baby out of wedlock.  It becomes a symbol of freedom for her, a symbol of liberation from their expectations.  The turtle in Grapes of Wrath that keeps trying to cross the road represents the internal and external dangers and frustrations the Joads endure.   Prospero's staff symbolizes his internal power, emotional, social, and mystical.  When he puts aside it and his book, he's showing his internal voyage back to the land of the mundane.  

Go back through your scenes.  Is there a really emotional moment that could be embodied and shown more vividly in a physical symbol?