New moon on July 5, 2024
Today begins the Thunder Moon. The theme this month is the fish out of water. This character, usually a familiar type (like the country mouse/city mouse), is thrust into a situation or context that they aren’t familiar with.
Longstanding tradition has identified a basic narrative structure: a main character needs something that causes them to leave their ordinary world and start an adventure where they either satisfy that need or they don’t; return to their life better than when they started or don’t. But simply recognizing that basic pattern doesn’t take us very far in creating a good story. That requires an interesting cast of characters who do entertaining things.
Fish out water provide ways to develop those requirements. They are relatable types that help generate incidents (plot points or story beats) that make a story more interesting, and they solve technical problems with exposition.
Every one of us, at some point, feels out of place. We’ve all been fish out of water, whether it’s our first day of school or starting a new job or meeting new people. We quickly empathize with others in similar situations. And it’s often useful to create a main character with whom the audience can empathize.
Plot development requires many things—from pacing to thematic development—but among them is giving your characters something interesting to do. If you have a clear vision of what makes the character different from those around them, it becomes easier to envision scenarios that highlight those differences.
Finally, the art of communicating vital information to your audience needs careful attention to develop. Leave aside for now how to determine what information is vital. Let’s take that as given. How do you communicate it without an info dump? In one hackneyed trope, common with spies and superheroes, the antagonist explains everything that they’ve been up to and why. That’s bad exposition. It was spoofed nicely in The Incredibles.
One solution (of many) is to employ a fish out of water type of character that others in the story must explain things to. They may do so out of affection or out of scorn or anything in between. Alongside Harry Potter, audiences got a lot of information about the history and magic system of his world from both allies and enemies.
You can pack a lot of tonal variation into the story depending on how you approach this. One of my favorite examples is from Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, in which Julien Sorel, the main character and a provincial, embarks on a career to become a second Napoleon; although he has neither the standing nor the temperament to do so. Watching Sorel eat his heart out with every condescension and insult from his social betters (and post-Revolutionary France was a highly stratified society) imparted a powerful effect on the novel.
Wherever your medium of choice takes you, we hope this month’s prompts inspire you in your work!