A Guide to Creating Your Main Character’s Ordinary World
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Reading, Books, Creativity, Writing, Fiction

I’m working on (building my book’s) ordinary world, and I’m struggling with the opening image. I’m not sure if this is just the physical landscape or do the characters come into play in this part? Where I (can) find an example?

Have you ever seen a picture of a story arc? There’s a little bit of a straightaway, then a hill, then another straight away. You can think of those parts as the ordinary world, rising action, falling action, and a new normal.

Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash

It always makes me think of a roller coaster. I road one last summer at Waldameer park in Erie, PA.

I got into the car and for a few minutes, it was just — a straight away, like I said. Just a nice little ride to the bottom of a hill.

Ordinary world. Nothing scary. Nothing extraordinary at all. No speed. No thrill. Just five or ten miles per hour toward the bottom of a hill.

Then it was all rising action. A slow ascent up, up, up the hill. When I got nearly to the tippy top, there was this gorgeous view of Lake Erie. It took my breath away. It made me gasp for air just in the moment that things went crazy.

The falling action was intense. All of a sudden the ride took off. Fast. I couldn’t get another breath, my heart was banging against my throat, and brain rattled in my skull.

And then, just as fast as it started, it was over. Another straightaway while I tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person. And then the car stopped and I stumbled out.

Just like a rollercoaster, a story has to start with a straightaway.

The reader needs to orient themselves. They need to meet the main character and know their world, so that they can understand when things go haywire. That’s what the opening of your book does.

Figuring out exactly where that straightaway starts is not always easy. It has to both give the reader some idea of what’s going on and let the reader know what the character’s ordinary world is like.

Here’s the opening from Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451.

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his solid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

The reader meets Montag here. And they know, in the space of a paragraph and two sentences, that in this character’s world — there is fire. The fire is his work. It’s books that are burning. And Montag really enjoys it.

This is our straightaway. Montag’s ordinary world is not the same as yours or mine, or anyone’s. There isn’t such a thing as a fireman whose job it is to burn books. But in the world of this story there is, and now we know it.

I’m particularly struck by how Montag loves being a fireman the way a boy might have thought he’d love pretending to be one in 1954 when he played with his toy firetruck, when this story was written.

Here’s another example.

This one is from The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum.

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar — except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

This story was written in 1900. This one is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s all telling. The narrator is describing the house and Dorothy’s life there. The reader isn’t in the house, the way the reader is at the fire in Bradbury’s opening.

That’s typical of books written 120-plus years ago. Less common now. Modern readers want far more immediacy in their reading.

But we get a very, very clear ordinary world here. Kansas. A farm house. Aunt Em an Uncle Henry. A single room with a married couple’s bed in one corner and their young niece’s bed in the other.

And there’s some foreshadowing. That cyclone cellar, “in case one of those great whirlwinds arose.”

The Opening Image

Even with all it’s telling, the opening paragraph of The Wizard of Oz paints a very vivid picture of that farmhouse. It’s easy to imagine Dorothy there, in that single room. The reader can see that trap door in the center of the floor.

There’s also something almost creepy about the imagery of Dorothy in her little bed, in the corner. It’s easy to see why she wants out of there. And the difference between here and the eventually special world of the story — Oz — is stark.

The opening image of Fahrenheit 451 takes is right into the fire with Montag. We start with the image not only of the burning books, but of the joy the fireman takes in his work. It’s nearly manic. He shouldn’t love it that much.

Where will your story start?

It can help to think a little bit ahead to the inciting incident. What is the first really interesting thing that happens to your main character?

In Farenhiet 451, Montag meets Clarisse who makes him shift his thinking by asking whether he’s happy.

In The Wizard of Oz, that cyclone shows up and lifts Dorothy’s whole little Kansas farmhouse right up into the air and off to Oz.

Once you know what your inciting incident is, think about all the things that have to happen to get you there. What does the reader need to know, for the inciting incident to have the impact that you need it to?

Would Clarisse asking that particular question mean as much, if we didn’t start by seeing Montag nearly manic with love for his work?

Would Dorothy’s tornado lifting that house matter as much if we hadn’t seen exactly what it looked like, so we could picture Dorothy stepping out of it and into Oz?

The opening image isn’t always a physical setting, although it can be. It’s the camera lens focusing in on the story. It can start anywhere. You get to choose where. Which moment, before the special world of the story kicks in, is the one that will pull your reader in and hold on to them?