A Guide to Creating Your Main Character’s Ordinary World

This is how you figure out where to start your story.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

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…