Your Microcosm, Our World
By Donald Maass | June 1, 2022 |
Do you see the universe in a grain of sand? If you do, the beach must be a mind-blower. What about snowflakes? No two are alike so wrap your brain around a field of snow, right? Raindrops? For literal-minded folks they only get us wet. Those dullards have umbrellas, but for the rest of us a rainy day is kissing weather or maybe a chance to walk slowly down a noir street, trench coat collar turned up and fedora dripping.
It is our human tendency to make associations. We read meaning into things. An old jacket hanging in the hall closet isn’t just cloth sewn together with sleeves, it’s a memory of seasons gone by. Shrug on that jacket and it will tell you tales. It’s just waiting to do so. That’s why we don’t throw it out or donate it to the Salvation Army. Is that garment inanimate or is it magic? If you have a heart and an imagination then you know the answer.
The settings of novels invite us to make associations, too. We search for our world in the world of a story and we find it there—or do we? I am pretty sure that you think of the setting of your WIP as a microcosm, but will I feel that way when I read it? Sorry to report, in too many manuscripts—most, to be honest—I do not experience the microcosm effect. Why not? Let’s take a look at that today.
Certain settings seem as if they will act as automatic microcosms. High school. Hospital. Prison. Army. Pro football. Others ought to be microcosms because they fit the bill. Rock tour. Dog show. Casino. Congress. Life raft. The Ritz Hotel. Route 66. Ocean liner. Starship. Jersey shore. Time boundaries ought to produce the microcosm effect, as well. D-Day. The Victorian era. The Hunger Games. Same for geographic singularities. Shangri-La. Narnia. Cincinnati.
However, the truth is that the hometown settings of most hometown manuscripts do not feel like much of anywhere. Most offices in manuscripts are just offices. Even the CIA is too often only a generic spy agency, hardly more than an acronym. Fantasy realms are too frequently can be flat, which is a shame. I mean, why conjure a magic place only to allow it be like so many others and at the same time nothing resonant of our own reality?
The microcosm effect is not automatic. It is produced. By what means? Here we go.
The Human Carnival
There’s a reason that writers have long been drawn to carnival sideshows. The sideshow alley is a parade of human variety, mostly grotesque to be sure but nevertheless fascinating, bizarre and lurid. How did human beings become so deformed? What must it be like for them? How remarkable that people can turn their oddity to advantage, or at least a living! (If you can call it that.)
What’s different about people is not only entertaining, but causes us to reflect. To associate. Aren’t we all in some way The Strong Man? Aren’t we all awed—possibly even weirdly turned on—by The Cat Woman? Don’t we all feel leaping inside us the life-giving spark of Mr. Electrico? (Thank you, Ray Bradbury.) The greater the human variety, the more we feel kinship. The more we identify. The more others, somehow, become just like us. Is it strange that a community of oddballs can seem to represent our whole society? Certainly not. That’s the microcosm effect.
It is disappointing when in a manuscript a protagonist’s friends are just friends, nothing special about them. Absent parents in YA fiction are frequently either conveniently abusive, divorced or dead, as if there are no other options. And demons, don’t get me started. They so often have little personality other than a maniacal streak or permanent sneer. How can there be a microcosm without variety and surprise?
For the microcosm effect to take hold, there has to be a range of human types. Take a look at the following list, by no means complete, and ask yourself whether there are characters in your current story who could be more like…
- Unwanted Suitor
- Whip-smart Granny
- Idiot Savant
- Hopeless Addict
- Third Wheel
- Adrenaline Junkie
- Lone Survivor
- Hometown Booster
- Charming Moocher
- Crystal Healer
- Constant Loser
- Shoe Collector
- Civilian Who Is Still an Officer
- Man’s Man
- Woman’s Woman
- Broken Doll
- Ice Queen
- Too Good for This World
- Arch Enemy
- Horrible Driver
- Lucky S.O.B.
- Motorcycle Pastor
- Gambling Nun
- Fallen Sports Star
- Kung-Fu Santa
- Ballroom Klutz
- Beach Bar Blonde
- Blood Brother
- Better Friend Than Lover
Now, it may seem to you that I’m pressing for stereotypes; advocating casting your novel out of that wonderful time-sink website tvtropes.org. I’m not. Every character deserves your own unique spin, but every reader also deserves a walk through the human carnival and that’s not what every reader gets all the time. Are they getting that in your current manuscript?
Besides, we all know people who affirm some type or other. I do, right on that list. Did you guess that I know a “Kung-Fu Santa”? Well, it happens that I do. Kids sit on his lap in malls at Christmastime and he can use his ki to hurl you across a room with a mere touch of his finger to your sternum. (So he claims. I haven’t tested that out.)
My point here is that there’s no reason for any character to be nothing more than a walk-on. Every human comes with history, so why not make it an interesting one? Every human is a cypher, a bundle of contradictions, someone’s heart throb, a walking timebomb, nobody’s fool, a granny-wolf, Ahab with a grudge against an aquatic mammal, Alice with a bottle, Dorothy with a yearning for dusty Kansas.
The more the merrier—and the greater the microcosm effect.
Role It Out
In our real communities, people have parts to play. Professions. Assigned roles. Policeman. Fireman. Teacher. Lawyer. Librarian. Doctor. Nurse. Priest. Dog catcher. Your story may involve any of those, and if so I hope that each is distinctive, but there are certain other community roles that are not civic posts, sanctioned or necessarily paid.
To create the microcosm effect, it can be useful to find roles for characters to fill or characters to fill those roles. Let’s call them “unofficial” community roles, such as…
- Gadfly
- Busybody
- Legacy Guardian
- Rogue Historian
- Fixit Wizard
- Corner Bar Referee
- Police Band Monitor
- Beauty Queen Without a Crown
- Professional Divorcee
- Local Golf Legend
- PTA Lifetime Dictator
- Magical Baker
- Borderline Criminal
- Beloved Girl Next Door
- Despised Personal Injury Lawyer
- Full Time Activist
- Godmother to All
- Streetcorner Eye
- Knows Where the Bodies are Buried
- Handsy Poet
- Celebrity Pride
- Historical Hero now Pariah
- Famous Ghost
- Feared Enforcer
- Boogie Man
- Best Dad in Town (with Pregnant Daughter)
Again, the point here is not to grab at stereotypes but to make secondary characters interesting and round out the story world in a way that feels all too familiar. Every town has unique characters. Every city has strange public figures. Every nation has horrific heroes and hidden saints. Every story can too.
People Do the Strangest (and Most Wonderful) Things
The late Bob Saget hosted a TV show called “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. Who was it who figured out that we would watch hours and hours of people losing their shorts on water slides or sailing into barbed wire fences after jumping onto trampolines from roofs? Some low genius, that’s who.
Also Charles Dickens and thousands of other memorable novelists. People are not just who they are but what they do, and sorry to say it but in a whole lot of manuscripts the people don’t do all that much that you or I couldn’t do on any given day. Let me ask you, what’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done? What about your cousin Larry? Talk about crazy! Does anyone in your WIP do anything that memorable?
Here’s a list of prompts—just scratching the surface—suggesting things that characters might do…
- Mess Up Big Time
- Marry Too Well
- Play an Ace in the Hole
- Launch an Acid Attack
- Turn the Tables on a Sorority Initiation
- Discover an Ass Tattoo in the Morning
- Prank the Sergeant
- Adopt a Weird Fetish
- Go Back to School
- Get Back in the Saddle
- Come Back from the Dead
- Win a Battle of Wits
- Wipe the Slate Clean—Almost
- Risk a Ten-to-One Against
- Shatter an Illusion
- Forgive Thad for the Marshmallow Incident
- Eat the Wrong Mushroom
- Make a Fortune But Keep a Penny Jar
- Swim the English Channel
- Punch Out Someone’s Lights
- Give Away a Secret Recipe
- Travel Far Just to Shake a Hand
- Blurt Out the Truth
- Let the Better Man Win
- Blow the Roof Off the Place
You get the idea. Big actions bring it home. Without drama there is just ordinary life and who needs to read a novel for that? Outrageous behavior isn’t just for comedy, it’s what makes us pay attention and see that story people come from our planet.
No doubt you have in your life amassed a trove of human traits, achievements, foibles, fuck-ups and follies. People are weird and wonderful. You never can tell when a teacher will eat bugs or a Marine will take up weaving (two more true cases known to me). Many writers hope to capture the human circus but wind up with a story world that is too ordinary to be recognizable as the world we know.
A story world gets to be a microcosm not by being a perfect mirror but by celebrating our uniqueness and enacting a wide range of human behavior. We don’t see ourselves in a world that’s safely like ours. We recognize our world in stories in which it’s safe for characters to be anything and act in ways that we only wish we could.
Share your favorite microcosms in fiction! What is it that makes them that way?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
I swear, you are reading over my shoulder with these ideas of yours today, Don. I’ll take that as a sign that I’m on the right path with my magical baker, fixit wizard, busybody, and etc. They have a little more truth to blurt out, and they have to mess up big time at least once more, before the better man — or at least the one still living — wins. There may be marshmallows — an inspired suggestion.
Thanks for a fun post.
Yes, I AM reading over your shoulder. Creepy. But glad you enjoyed.
I’m looking forward to a list of fiction that contains these worlds. All I can think of right now are song lyrics. I could hear Dylan’s Desolation Row while reading your lists.
Some of us are lucky enough, or wise enough, to live in real worlds that celebrate uniqueness. I can look out my window and see a cast of unique characters.
But I get what you’re saying. Big acts by unique characters in interesting places. I’m working on it. Thanks for the reminder.
I love this about microcosms. I trained (partly) as an archaeologist, participating in several archaeological digs, and there’s always the sense of wonder that comes from holding something that was used by someone three thousand years before. And not as some treasured object, but simply a part of life. The person who used this– what did they think of it? Favorite cookpot, or tool of horrible drudgery? That goblet that wasn’t fired at quite a high enough temperature– how was that working out for whoever it was who owned it? That portable kabob cooking tray, the one that you fill with coals– man, wouldn’t it be really bad if someone tripped and put their hand in it? Sometimes we’d recreate tools like spindles and loomweights and work with them, to learn their frustrations. I can imagine someone trying to spin thread with a too-heavy spindle whorl and, lord, the thread constantly breaking while the spindle falls to the ground and the shaft gets knocked out of the hole? That is just the worst.
So, if archaeologists take objects and extrapolate an entire society, I enjoy using them as a jumping-off point for a single life. I’ll pull up museum displays and look at them. These objects, who would have really strong feelings about them? There are kazillions of rings engraved with scenes of warriors killing a lion. Who would really hate that? Maybe somebody whose name means “Lion-might.” Maybe he’s disabled, so there’s some irony there, and now he hates his name, too. His father was hoping for a warrior, and this was what he got. He disowned his son, and, instead of realizing that different children are different people, named the next one “Lion-strength.” Oops, this next son’s not a warrior, but a scribe. But what if the first son is a scribe, too? And what if he’s actually Son #2’s boss. And what would make it worse– how about if neither one of them realizes it, but it’s blindingly obvious to absolutely everyone around them. And what’s the next worst thing that could happen? Well, all the other scribes are awful, and then…
I love doing this, and will go through this process for almost every person, even the tiniest bit parts where a character shows up for only one line. Everyone’s got their favorite socks, their favorite mug, the old t-shirt they’d commit murder for, and these idiosyncrasies are where all the fun lies.
Thanks for this comment—it amplifies this post beautifully. How lucky you are to have had that archaeologist experience! Pairs well with your imagination.
“Where the fun lies.” There’s that too! Thanks for that.
I will always be grateful for the day I turned you on to TV Tropes.
In the first list you provided, note how many owe their intrigue to contradiction. The way to move them from type to character, to eliminate the gimmick factor, is to sink deeper into that contradiction.
So too with the other prompts. They remain types or gimmicks only if you stay at that first level and don’t go deeper. Who broke Kung Fu Santa’s heart? Who else will be rewarded if I wipe the slate clean? What does the godmother to all fear? What does she do or think when alone?
So sorry to have missed you this week. Good news, the Paxlovid ( great character name) is working wonders.
Any author worth a salt packet will delve into any character, yet in manuscripts I too often find a cast which lacks variety. To delve there has to be people interesting to delve into in the first place.
Okay, first thing that jumps into my head is Mel Gibson in Braveheart. He’s just killed the English officer that murdered his wife. He looks around, there’s a pregnant pause, and then he simply says “Burrrn it.” It makes me cheer every time. The backstory builds to this moment and I love when the jerks get their comeuppance (I wish we saw more of that in real life!) Thank you once again for an instructive post!!
Burn it. Our new motto?
Aye.
Therese is right, Don: this is a fun post. You say people aren’t just who they are but what they do. In other words, actions speak louder than words (although words are deeds). You ask us to share a favorite microcosm that’s distinctly different. My list would begin with Jim Dixon, the hero of Kingsley Amis’s novel Lucky Jim. From the first page, Dixon is established as both unique and universal as a character. It’s a post-world-war-two English university campus, and not Oxford/Cambridge. Dixon has returned from the war, and is now a junior history instructor. He is walking with his department chair. The chair is hilariously pompous and devoid of self-knowledge. Seen from afar, the two “look like a variety act,” a cliche of campus life. Dixon is playing the attentive, anxious-to-please subordinate, while reacting internally with laugh-out-loud rage. As they walk he imagines grotesque faces he will make later to express his frustration. Who hasn’t been where Dixon is? No one.
As an academic, this is not, hrrrrmm, uh, um, noooooooooooottt relatable. Nope, not at all.
Oh god. There was one professor we’d call, behind his back, The Disco King, because– he wasn’t. His life appeared to have stopped in the seventies. Or, at least, that’s when he stopped buying shirts. You’d find yourself trapped in an elevator with him. Suddenly your shoes became the most interesting thing around.
Never thought of Lucky Jim that way, but yes!
A detail in your post reminds me of a time in my real life when I tried to bring the best of a former microcosm into a current one.
For many years before I went to college, my favorite winter outerwear had been this fake fur coat with a satiny lining. It wasn’t stiff like some are, but was malleable—if I moved, it moved—and it was oh so soft. When conflicts got heated at our house I’d sometimes go to the closet, where holding its sleeve to my cheek brought me comfort.
I’d been so excited to go to college and get far away from home, yet once I realized I was stranded more than 10 hours away from everything familiar, I was surprised at how homesick I was.
By that time my coat’s pockets were ripped out but I’d brought it along anyway. When I got homesick, I’d spread it on my bean bag chair, sit down on it, and let its big furry hug bring the familiarity of home—and none of its tension—back to me. That coat was a moment in time—I’ve never found another like it.
Thanks for the memory Don, and the great list of character prompts.
Such a nice memory, Kathryn. I put a lot of sentiment into clothing (some call me a clothes horse), and have those same go-to soothers. Remember that short piece I wrote at the first UnCon that included a T-shirt the narrator had to throw into the desert? Well, the story was fictitious, but the shirt was real. It must be at least 35 years old, and I still have it, now tattered and stored in a zip-loc bag for safekeeping (I keep it as a totem to complete that story, which is still in the works, although back-burnered).
I still have a [constantly unmet] 30-year life expectancy for my clothes!
I see that a post on the symbolism and significance of clothing is needed. Here we come traveling pants…
There are so many favorite microcosms, Don, from the obvious Hogwarts/Harry Potter world to the obscure Janet Lambert Army families world in her Parrish/Jordon series (going from pre-WWII to Vietnam).
Another that comes to mind is R.F. Delderfeld’s To Serve Them All My Days. David Powlett-Jones is surrounded by characters like Algy Herries, the headmaster who has a passion for putting on Gilbert and Sullivan productions every year, the three very different women David loves, and the numerous cast of boys throughout the years whose uniqueness is often acknowledged by their nicknames: Spats, Ringer, Sax, Preacher.
Yet another are the Maeve Binchy books centered around the Dublin restaurant, Quentins. There are at least half a dozen books with a connection to the restaurant, including one with Quentins as the title, and characters move seamlessly from one book to another with the most memorable character for me being Muttie Scarlet, the father of one of the main characters in Scarlet Feather, and friend of many others in all of the books. Muttie doesn’t work, except to walk down to the betting shop and put his money on a race – that is, the money that his wife Lizzie (who cleans houses) lets him have to do his “work.” But Muttie isn’t a lazy bum, he is generous to a fault with his time and energy, and when he wins an accumulator (one of the most exciting scenes in a great book) he plans to spend his winnings on everyone else. When one of the twins he and his wife are taking care of asks what he wants for himself, he looks around and says, with all that he has, how could a man ever want anything more? His simple goodness is anything but cliche, and he is only a minor character.
So I guess I’d say what makes me love all of them and many others is as you say, Don, the uniqueness of each individual, their interwoven lives and relationships, and how those are interwoven with the settings. I go back to revisit those worlds all the time and even after many, many readings, they never grow old.
The whole idea that I could find the words Narnia and Cincinnati in the same paragraph puts you inline for Hugo. You’ve suspended my sense of disbelief!
Microcosms! Thank you.
Two of my favorite stories from my teen years were Georgette Heyer books: Frederica and Grand Sophy. I found her cast of intergenerational family characters and pets, and the situations they get into quirky and fun: the hijinks of a huge ragamuffin dog who drags his owner into public embarrassment, a science-mad boy who clambers into a hot air balloon as it rises, an absentee dad who unrealistically (Regency setting) lets his adult daughter do her own banking from his account, heroines who creatively work around female social restrictions, and suitors nonplussed by the females (they are romances) and hemmed in by male social conventions.
Now I’m looking to see if the microcosms of my story have made it out of my head and onto the page.
Lisa, I love her work as well! Those are also two of my favorites – it amazed me that with the myriad of characters such as Sophy’s military friends and her young cousins, that you could keep track of all of them because they were so individual. Sir Horace was hilarious, and those final scenes at his house were priceless.
Haven’t revisited Heyer in a long time but now I must, thanks!
A character who in many ways becomes the hero is an Idiot Savant. He’s up against a Kooky Detective, an Aunt clinging to a secret that could heal my MC, a dead mother who is eager to haunt and a damaged woman looking for love, who commits the crime to find it. I smile, hoping I am on the right track. After all, these are just people who blossomed in my brain, who I live with daily as I write. Do they all deserve time on the page–yes, but some more than others. Great post, Don, thanks.
I think you just explained to me why some cozy mystery series grab my attention and some don’t. I’ve mentioned before that I love the China Bayles mysteries, and I definitely can see where a microcosm has been drawn by Susan Wittig Albert. The Cat Who mysteries, also, have that microcosm effect. I’ve been on the search for other series to read, but often lose interest early in the series and I can see now that the books just become too ordinary. If you have any cozy recommendations, I’d sure appreciate them!
Don, I have a heavy leather bomber jacket from the late 80s that has worn much better than I have, and has been around for many life changes (and even small personality changes for me). It’s old enough now to tell its own tales without my prompting, and there are likely more to come.
I found your lists of types and characters fascinating, and as you imply, they can expand in a story into so much more than their summaries. But they are also fun to combine in the “take one from category One, and …” So, today I discovered that a Gambling Nun and a Handsy Poet had left me to Discover an Ass Tattoo in the Morning, the scoundrels.
Thanks as always, Don, for your insights. For a carnival of characters, you can’t beat the ones sung about in “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” All are unique, beguiling, touching.
So many ideas! So many prompts! This one is a keeper, Donald.
But I simply can NEVER forgive Thad for the Marshmallow Incident. EVER.
But what about the Feather Boa Tragedy?
Often I start a story with a memory of my self-centered, immature grandmother. She cursed regularly, especially when happy, blew smoke in my ear to cure my earaches, told me a shark got into my wading pool to get me out of the pool to eat lunch, had one snaggly tooth, broke my uncle’s rib hugging him. of course, that’s not all. Grandma lived with me and my family throughout my childhood.
Mr. Maas. Thanks for this article.When I turn my head, I see a shelf of books with your name on them. Not sure if I have every one, but maybe. My last was The Emotional Craft. I will probably never meet you in real life, but I have been an admirer and student of your work for a very long time. If your name’s on it, I read it. That takes some doing in 2022, fella. Would you please continue to grow and love and share with people like me? I think you were considering quitting or retiring or something in the Emotional Craft book. Even if you do that, would you pleaser consider continuing to write articles for blogs like this one?–just for kicks, and for people like me? I think I’ll never forget your chapter opener in the Emotional Craft where you talked about the necklace! Every time I read something new by you (damn it), I have to readjust the notes I want to look at when I start a new scene in Scrivener. When I think of all the people in my life who have the power to influence me in this way, there are only a few others: Lisa Cron; Robert McKee; Shawn Cohn; and a few others. Thank you for putting a new perspective in this newsletter, every once in a while!
Great piece, thank you. In my WIP I have a cop in a biggoted and gossipy town he once grew up in. So far it includes a female licquor store owner who doubles as the towns unofficial brothel keeper and a historical society manager who knows everyone’s sex life but has none himself. a red-necked housekeeper in love with her murdered town minister. This article gives me the incentive to do more. Thank you Don. BTW – loved The Emotional Craft of Fiction.
This post reminds me something a favorite writing teacher/mentor once said: The best characters are stereotypes with a twist.