Into the Fire

There is something to be said for the ordinary even though by working definition, few things are actually “ordinary”. The sun rises and sets. Some places observe the moon’s brilliance and the stars’ multiple displays every night while others camouflage the night’s ornaments with neon and smog. Both observances remain normal to the ones who spend their lives with those views. So who’s to say what ordinary is?

Most of us can say that usually nothing extraordinary “happens” in our lives. That’s not to diminish the beauty and extraordinary gifts of life or the tragedies of what we consider untimely or hurtful deaths. Nor is it meant to overlook the awards, certificates, accomplishments, and successes earned by everyday people doing their jobs, competing in sports, performing well in school or anywhere else without a spotlight on their achievements. And certainly it is not meant to diminish in any capacity the amazing interventions of the Lord in our lives or His potentially astounding answers to prayers we wonder if He even heard.

What I’m saying is this: most of us do not perform covert operations in North Korea or Syria. Few of us stalk serial killers, spending hours, days, months, even years chasing down evil, demonic murderers. And as popular as CSI work has become in recent years due to well done crime dramas, the bulk of us get squeamish at the sight of filleted intestines, raw brain matter, or blood splatter, and while we appreciate the magnificent science involved in catching perps, we couldn’t do it.

Ordinary lives involve falling in love, pursuing careers, struggling with self-worth, believing or not believing in the God of this universe, character issues, fears, what to wear to work, loving or hating the job, what can be done for a little fun within a budget, the challenges of raising children from infants through the teens, and how crazy fast life seems to operate.

Now within each of those “ordinary” examples runs the gamut of conflict. However, making those kinds of conflicts exciting and breathtaking? Hardly possible. But it is possible to make the journey meaningful with real characters in real situations portrayed by their experiencing real struggles. These types of novels are for certain individuals, not for those readers/writers like my dear friend Mark Harbeson who must have those exploding helicopters, subway train crashes, car wrecks, or buses diving off cliffs. Action is near everything in story for those like him. These are the readers/writers who witness and pen intense conflict via action and plot development even though their characters might be ordinary people—their experiences are anything but.

“Conflict on every page” or similar ideas make for the “breakout” novel according to Donald Maass whose new book on writing, The Fire in Fiction, is said to be even better than his original Writing the Breakout Novel. It’s a bigger challenge to make meaningful, poignant conflict when you’re writing a story around ordinary people living lives without spectacular occurrences. Rather, you’re writing to illustrate an importance that exists within even the seemingly most insignificant portions of what most of us seem to live. Our joys and sorrows, laughs and tears, crises and triumphs might be small within the framework of heroic or exceptional occupations or major league sports or you-name-it, but these ordinary lives that most of us participate in offer depths worth diving into if we can only tell the stories in a worthy way.

Sometimes it’s just harder to make ordinary extraordinary.

Father, you are the One who makes us ordinary people extraordinary. You alone. Thank you for being no respecter of persons. How could we measure up to so many others if you did? Thank you for loving us equally in spite of us. I’m desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.