Mundane Can Be Good

I’ll start by clarifying upfront that I will be using “mundane” as a positive connotation in this series of thoughts. Mundanity in fiction is fairly common, especially with the non-supernatural. This has even been celebrated via shows like Seinfeld, described as a “show about nothing”. The reader/player/viewer follows characters going about their day and the entertainment/investment comes from how well the author executes those events. While Seinfeld does it primarily for comedic purposes, dramas like This is Us, or the many British period dramas, can create engaging stories that don’t solely rely on humor. However, when it comes to stories involving the supernatural, the more fantastical the story is, the less the mundane is given attention.

Plenty of stories will get hung up on some background information. The Lord of the Rings is famous for expositing pages after pages of lore about content that isn’t needed to understand the main plot. And because of that, the reader will get lost on what the main story is, or they could even get bored: waiting for the A plot to pick back up. But if you were to take that side lore and put it together in its own story, suddenly neither that lore nor the main story will get in each others’ way.

Think of your favorite fantasy story. Now think of some side character or passing event which, at most, helped nudge the story along. What was the setting? Who were the seemingly unimportant characters involved?

Beaver Lore

Whenever I watch the 2005 adaptation of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, I think of a particular interaction between Mrs. and Mr. Beaver. In the scene, a kind fox was just injured by evil wolves to protect the location of the main characters. While Mrs. Beaver tends to the fox’s wounds, she comments that he is “worse than Beaver on bath day” to which Mr. Beaver mumbles “Worst day of the year”.

Every time I get to that scene, I can’t help but wonder what seeing Bath Day would be like. I take into account the pre-set lore of the story–a landscape covered in snow because of the White Witch’s magic–and imagine a comedic squabble between the kindly couple as Mrs. Beaver works to scrub down her husband.

Another instance from the Beavers happens when they first meet the protagonists and Mrs. Beaver’s first assumption is that her husband has been “out with Badger again”. And that made me wonder who this Badger fellow is. I started picturing a scene right out of The Quiet Man (1952) where two drunken men come waddling into the Beaver home, singing terribly with their arms on each others’ shoulders. And after that, I imagined what kind of person this Badger would be like.

The story of the badgers before the protagonists arrive in Narnia is probably a mostly quiet life. It could even be assumed to be boring. But imagine the following premise: Little House on the Prairie but it’s Talking Animals in a Magical World. The first story that evokes imagery of is Willows in Winter, an absolutely charming tale about animal neighbors and their everyday struggles. And while none of this is as big and epic as the battle against an evil witch and a Jesus lion, I could see myself watching a short film about the badgers or reading a novel about their typical week.

Expanding on The Don

Let’s take something more modern. In the 2019 film Captain Marvel, the protagonist encounters a cocky biker who calls himself The Don. The movie cuts their interaction short. The Don hits on Captain Marvel, she dislikes his advances, he leaves, and she steals his motorcycle to get to her next destination. However, a deleted scene has the two interacting more.

Instead of passing by, The Don walks up to Captain Marvel directly, moves her newspaper out of the way so they can see each others’ faces, and asks for her to smile for him. Captain Marvel is clearly unimpressed but decides to offer a handshake instead of a smile. The Don happily accepts and Captain Marvel uses her superior strength to start crushing The Don’s hand. She threatens to destroy his hand if he doesn’t give her his motorcycle keys and then leaves with the bike.

For understandable reasons, this deleted scene got a lot of buzz. But beyond the gender politics, there was a short-lived trend of personifying The Don beyond his 1-2 minutes of screentime. The Podcast, Every Frame a Pause, started a running joke of turning The Don into this tragic hero: going as far as creating a dead wife, The Don volunteering at an orphanage, and more. Further still, the Youtuber, Li’l Poteto, made a mock trailer for a movie about The Don, portraying Captain Marvel as the biker’s main antagonist.

People are free to debate who was in the right and wrong and how much when it came to the original and deleted scenes. What I want to emphasize is how a background character, with barely any screentime, managed to get people’s creative juices flowing, and how that can be turned into full-on stories in their own rights. You’re not supposed to like The Don according to the movie but because he made an impression, people wanted to know his story in a movie where galactic battles and shapeshifting invaders were the main focus. The Don was just a biker.

The Alien Diner

Something more overt in the supernatural Sci-Fi scene is 2002’s Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. While searching for a would-be-assassin bounty hunter, Obi Wan Kenobi visits an alien friend named Dexter Jettster.

Dexter is the owner of his own diner in the middle of a bustling city. He takes the form of a stereotypical diner owner/cook–overweight, stained clothes and apron, gruff voice–with the spice of being an alien. He has a big, jolly personality but he also has knowledge about the underworld which helps Obi Wan in his search.

Dexter left quite an impression on the Star Wars audience to the point where people wondered what became of him when the Galactic Federation fell and the Empire rose. Was his diner still around? Did he become a rebel? Did he survive? The Star Wars writers had an answer, as Dexter got his own short story called “The Veteran” in 2023.

Imagine getting to play a restaurant simulator about Dexter Jettster. Maybe every so often, some lowlife or government official shows up and you have to navigate a hostile work environment. But most of the gameplay would just be upgrading your diner and keeping customers happy. The activities are mundane but the excitement comes from having to understand the diets of different species and operating machinery we don’t have access to in our everyday world.

Excitement in the Mundane is Everywhere

The three examples so far have been about existing franchises but you don’t need to build on something already there. Think of any premise and add a supernatural spice. Here are three off the top of my head.

1. Someone hitchhikes across the country and vlogs about what he sees every week. SPICE: The setting is an alien moon. The moon is being transferred from the authority of one planet nation to another and the vlogger is observing the gradual change in the moon’s culture as well as running into legal issues as the new regime settles in.
2. A man lives a normal life when he finds out he has important heritage. SPICE: The man is a descendant of a great magical race and refuses to be involved with his heritage or politics. He continues to live a normal life with the bonus of a weaker version of the powers he would have gotten. (Credit to ProZD for this idea)
3. A hotel owner has to manage her popular location. SPICE: The setting is modern day but with fantasy creatures and monsters. The hotel is famous for accommodating dangerous monsters like Vampires and Zombies. A month-long national event is coming up and the hotel owner struggles to ensure none of the clients are harmed or harm each other while keeping her business above water.

I absolutely love to write and think about topics like this because it’s worldbuilding. It fills in the gaps of a setting and makes it more believable. If you have an existing setting in your head, branch out to the sides of the story and think up all the other things that would happen in that world. You’ll find that when you do, it will likely bleed into the main story. Suddenly, that passerby the protagonist bumps into goes from “random man in the street” to “Derrick who was on his way to help his brother file a change of address form”.

An experiment anyone can take part in for some great brainstorming is to think of the last supernatural story you consumes and pick out a person, place, or thing that stood out despite not being directly important. Come up with a story about that and see where it takes you.