How To: Slice of Life · 11:36pm Feb 12th, 2015
I wrote this back in 2013 for the site, but it never ended up getting posted anywhere. I fought it again today when I was sifting through my Google Docs folder and I figured that since I haven't had much of a presence on the site for the last couple of months I might as well toss it up in the hopes that somepony somewhere finds it helpful.
How To: Slice of Life
Slice of Life is probably the least informative tag you can give a story.
That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad genre, of course, or that stories that have the tag aren’t good stories. It’s just a very broad category. It’s the Mystery Box of tags, the tag you default to when nothing else quite seems to fit. ‘Sad,’ ‘Dark,’ ‘Comedy,’ and most of the others at least imply a tone or set you up to know what to expect from the story; ‘Slice of Life’ really doesn’t. It could mean somepony going about their day-to-day life, or an over-the-top soap opera. Luckily, there are at least a few commonalities to the best ones.
With Slice of Life, you’re basically trading off the burden of creating compelling narrative thrust from ‘what happens’ to ‘who things happen to and what they do about it.’ If you want to wax poetic about sprawling, exotic worlds and magnificent vistas, well, that’s what the adventure tag is for. There’s still room for interesting descriptive prose, but it’s less important. Your description of a foreign city in the adventure fic is there to craft a picture of something new in peoples’ heads. The point of your prose in a SoL fic is to take a picture your reader already has of something familiar and either link it thematically to what you want to talk about (a character or an idea), or just talk about the familiar thing in a novel and amusing way. Unfortunately, this is considerably tougher than it sounds, and if you think it sounded easy to begin with you should probably take a step back and seriously reevaluate the scale of your ambitions.
So if the setting isn’t the star, and the plot is something well-worn and familiar, what’s left? Well, that’d be your characters. Even moreso than in other fics, writing interesting, believable characterization is a make-or-break factor in whether your story is going to see the feature box or sink off the bottom of the ‘New’ stack with a dozen views. Yes, I’m pretending the world is fair and that quality is the one and only determination of popularity or success. Just run with it for the time being.
‘So Eakin,’ you probably aren’t actually saying but really should be at this point, ‘how do I make a believable, interesting character? Everyone already knows who the Mane six and assorted supporting cast are, how do I say something different about that without mangling their personalities beyond recognition?’ Well, there’s nothing wrong with slightly divergent interpretations of a character. I mean, you probably aren’t going to get away with Fluttershy secretly living a double life as a stripper to make money, but you can choose what parts of the character to emphasize. This even happens in the show; sometimes Twilight is the frazzled psycho who’s gone totally out of her mind at the slightest provocation and sometimes she’s the cool and collected leader of the group. Bonus points if you can resolve this contradiction in an interesting way (in that case, both traits seem to stem from her unflinching devotion to impressing Celestia) or give an original reason for it. Turning a virtue into something that creates a problem or, if you’re feeling like a bigger challenge, creating a situation where a vice is key to the problem’s resolution are also good foundations for interesting characters.
Of course, just because the Mane Six are there and the center of the canon doesn’t mean they’re the only options. That’s where OCs tend to come in. Now, OCs get a bad rap because they’re pretty easy to mess up. You’re faced with the potential for the paralysis of choice, where you’re so wrapped up in how many things they could be you don’t pick one thing and make them good at it.
And for the love of Celestia, if you make them an alicorn I will hunt you down and beat you with your own keyboard. Alicorns are these larger than life figures, walking metaphors for whatever they’re rulers of (though with Twilight and Cadance the show might be moving in a different direction with that. Time will tell.) and that is exactly the opposite of what you want in a Slice of Life OC. You want a decent balance between talents and flaws, and again, bonus points if those can derive from the same core traits. The most important thing is to make them likable and relatable. Note I did not use the words ‘mind-blowing exceptional’ in there. Would you want to hang out with the guy who’s great at everything instantly and who has his victories handed to him on a silver platter without any real struggle? I wouldn’t; that guy sounds really annoying. Don’t go too far in the other direction, though. Nobody wants to hang out with the guy who whines for fifteen minutes whenever they get so much as a papercut, either. Throw challenges at them that are manageable for their station in life and capabilities, then have them deal with them in a realistic way.
The best part about developing strong characterization is that it opens up so many brand-new and exciting possibilities for ways to be awful to them (What? Have you read my stories?) by imbuing otherwise mundane actions with a layer of symbolic importance. If your protagonist is well-developed as an orphaned foal whose constant upbeat, pollyanna outlook has stood up to everything the world has ever thrown at him, then having a bully tear the head off the stuffed teddy bear that is the only remnant of his lost family is infinitely more heartrending than a thousand “Hello. I am Blank Slate. I had a little sister but she is dead now because cancer.” On the other hand, the scene two chapters later where said orphan stands up to said bully and gives them a swift kick in the nuts is now a cheer-worthy moment of triumph rather than just a cheap laugh. That’s what slice of life can be great at: establishing relatability and wringing the maximum amount of emotional payoff out of the tiniest little detail or action. Don’t be afraid of strong theming, either. Setting can be an excellent metaphor all on its own, especially if the setting in question is being built up/torn down/slowly decaying/being repaired to its former glory. The rising or falling of the place should match the direction of movement in that character’s life. An alcoholic put to work fixing up the Apple family barn while he dries out, for example.
Dialogue and character voices are so, so important to making this kind of thing work. With any OC or minor character, the reader is approaching them as a blank slate. You don’t want them to stay that way for very long. The character should say or do something within the first page, really within their first paragraph, that tells you something about who they are. Alternatively, if your protagonist is meeting them in a space they control you can speak volumes about them just by describing that space. A well-decorated home that feels like its been lived in for decades and a sparsely-decorated apartment with no pictures of friends or family paint very different pictures of their occupants before they even appear. I’m not sure I can give you any magic-bullet solution to writing interesting dialogue. If you read it out loud you can generally get a feel for when it sounds wooden or stilted, but that’s more about avoiding the bad than elevating the good. You should be consistent with the way the character sounds or acts and avoid anything that runs contrary to what you’ve established about them. Your pious nun shouldn’t curse like a sailor all the time, for example. On the other hand, if she’s been prim and proper for eight chapters then it’ll be extra shocking if she drops an F-bomb when something finally pushes her too far. If you’re going to have them say something that doesn’t fit who they are, you need to have a specific reason for doing so, and generally one that’s explained (implicitly or explicitly) around the time it occurs.
So yeah, slice-of-life isn’t something you should default to because it’s somehow easier. It requires a lot of nuance, introspection, and a light touch to make a good one. It takes just as much planning and attention to detail as a successful adventure/tragedy/comedy story, you’re just focusing those attentions on a different aspect. Still, a well done one can explore a whole range of different ideas that just aren’t well suited to other genres and be very rewarding to write and, hopefully, to read as well.
Holy shit, I thought you were dead!
And holy shit, you're still very insightful!
2791566
I have my moments. And nope, not dead. Just haven't felt the burning desire to write pony stuff for a while, although I did have a pretty good run last weekend.
Good advice, all around. Slice of life was never my genre (to write or to read; I indulge occasionally, but for the most part, I am a fan of the fantastical), but a lot of what you said about characterisation and theming could be easily applied to any genre. This blog would make a good general guide for beginning writers about how to write good characters in fanfic, I think.
Ahaha. Oho. You wouldn't think that this advice would still be necessary considering how much of a dirty word "Sue" has become in the fanfic community's lexicon. Alas, I know that it still is...
brb - going to write a slice of life fic with like twenty OC alicorns.
This is very important. Out Of Character Is Serious Business. In your given example, it shows that the pious nun is furious; the same cursing would have far less emotional impact in the mouth of the foul-mouthed Marine, because he talks like that all the time, and hence one comes to dscount much of it. Likewise, it means more if the idealistic virgin has sex than if the casual seductress does ... but it may mean more if the casual seductress opens up emotionally to her lover.
Well, f-
!
*wanderers off to do some deleting*
I like what you said about character, but I don't know that I agree that setting gets tossed aside. Ponyville is as good of a setting when Iron Will comes to town as it is when it's being eaten by parasprites or blown up in a battle with Tirek. You can be just as descriptive in SOL with setting as you can in adventure. Look at something like the anime Aria and how detailed the city of New-Venezia is. You can say, well, it's an anime, it's supposed to be beautiful, but even in prose, the concept of a new canalled city with its alleys and shops, and the machinery that runs it, is original and creative.
But even beyond that, setting is more than just description. The same characters can produce radically different slice-of-life stories based on whether their in a school, or an office building, or a jail. In my opinion, the only sine qua non of a slice of life story is that neither the characters nor the setting should suffer radical change. You're taking the parts that would be discarded in an adventure or a romance and focusing on them deeper. It's the genre for people who want to take their time rather than rush to the next plot point.
2791717
I wouldn't say the setting should be tossed aside, per se, but it should be a supporting character rather than the star role. Good and descriptive prose is always going to trump the bland or bad sort, but what I was trying to say here is that it shouldn't be where you focus most of your energies. Great characters in a bad or dull setting can potentially work as slice of life, but bad characters and a great setting can't.
I've noticed your absence, so it's nice to see that you're not dead.
2791717
I've just come from Skywriter's blog, and reading your comment I couldn't help but think of the Cadance of Cloudsdale cycle. So I checked and sure enough, both "In the Bleak Midwinter" (set in the Crystal Empire) and The First Time You See Her (set partially in the cloister-city of Reduit) are tagged [Slice of Life], and both have a very prominent and deliberately exotic (relative to Ponyville, I mean) sense of setting.
2791732 True enough, but is there anywhere where that does happen? Yes, something like Middle Earth is vast and epic, but Frodo is also an all-time character. Dune, maybe?
2791733
I think that works because:
1) Skywriter is damn good at this 'writing' thing, and
B) The setting emphasizes the themes the story is exploring. Reduit absolutely screams enclosure and isolation, for example, and you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that wasn't by design. Cadence growing out of her comfort zone and being confronted by the real world is a big part of her development, but the story is very much about her development and the place is incidental beyond that.
Well, I do like a nice surprise every now and then.
2791741
Tolkien is regarded as a master of worldbuilding for a very good reason. I would argue that Frodo isn't all that amazing as a character and that Middle Earth is the real star of the trilogy, but his sheltered nature is used to great effect in letting us share the wonder of exploring this new world with him. Beyond that, he could be the silent protagonist of JRPG #7,831 and not much would change.
And Iain M Banks' Culture novels do come to mind as another example of the setting being the star. Or, since I know you're familiar with it, Friendship is Optimal.
That could actually be a pretty interesting story to read. Especially if, say, she has her career in a town one train stop over at night (she really doesn't have all that many nocturnal animals to care for) under an alias and has kept it secret for a long time...only for it to come out at the worst possible time and one of her friends learns of it.
Or, if you really want a twisted way of revealing it, Spike winds up finally hosting Shining Armor's bachelor party at the club where Fluttershy works. You could either give it a comedic light with the addition of a comedy tag, or play it completely straight laced and leave it just SoL.
...Where's the thumbs-up button for blog entries?
Excellent insight into an underestimated genre. Thank you for it.
2791625
Nice!
Don't you know your choices have consequences? Now someone *cough* somebiscuit is going to write exactly that!
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2791732
You're both right, in the sense that the setting itself can become a key character within stories of any genre. Like any other character, the setting can interact with the protagonist, change and evolve (either within the experience of the protagonist or within his or her perceptions).
And I agree that in many cases (The Lord of the Rings, Ian Banks's Culture novels...) the setting becomes the central character of the story.
Even in very introspective Slice of Life stories, the protagonist's internal setting might very well fill the same role.
Obligatory rant: "Slice of life" is a narrow story category. It's a well-defined literary term that fimfiction does not get to redefine. It's been in use for about a century, and it means a story that by definition does not have a climax, a threat to the protagonist, a plot, character development, or a resolution, and probably doesn't have a point except a modernist or existentialist meta-fictional one. "Waiting for Godot" is slice-of-life.
If you say "Slice of life" and then talk about stories that get tagged slice of life on fimfiction, you're precluding being able to talk with the rest of the world.
2792461
Fair enough. This essay was always meant to be targeted at writers on this site in particular though. Much as I haven't noticed a rash of alicorn OCs popping up in the paperbacks you'd buy in a bookstore, I don't really worry much about stories being 'tagged' inappropriately out there in the wider world.
It's not so much that I've precluded talking to the rest of the world as that I've chosen to focus on this tiny slice of it, with a message that's tailored accordingly.
Well, then.
There's a bit more to Slice of Life than I thought it was. Being the writing noob that I am, I guess I felt its name spoke for itself.
I don't write any Slice of Life fics, but I do enjoy the idea of starting a couple of my stories with a chapter that has the -feel- of a Slice of Life fic before it shifts to, say... Adventure, or whatever it is I had in mind.
Or maybe I pay far too little attention and that's what most people, if not everyone, does.
2791910 That smells of crowbarring a character into a plot, not fitting a plot to a character, which is why Eakin called it out.
I agree in most of your points except one:
You can put OC alicorns in Slice of Life. But never, EVER introduce them for the first time there. For example, here is a story about an universe where Celestia and Luna died, but managed to ascend a hooful of alicorns. It's up to them to save the world. And here, you can see a normal day for them after everything has been solved.
Slice of Life is a nice genre. I think that's a good adjetive for it. It doesn't imply a lot, but it means something positive. You're not going to have grimdark stories or complex plots in SoL. They're just...nice little stories (Or maybe not so little)
I've been writing a slice of life story lately. Since it's AU, though, I've managed to become terribly lost in the world-building part of it. Woop-di-doo.
I think I'm just going to ignore it for now. The characters need some focus.
Nice post, Eakin.
Well, of course not, ponies don't normally wear clothes.
2791625 Actually, a fic with 20 OC alicorns would be much, much better than a fic with just one.
2819970
That's the point.
You people all thought I was kidding, but I'm totally doing this.
It'll be called The Alicorns of Sixth Street.
Holy carp.
That bit about Alicorns being larger-than-life walking metaphors kicked into place something about my own (pre-Twilicorn mode) Alicorn headcanon.
Not only that, it suggested a general thrust for the plot including the pre-Twilicorn alicorn OC who's been lurking around the back of my head.
Whaat.
3520049
Alicorn OC's are okay but they just don't fit in slice of life stories.
One rule I try to maintain is that I avoid thinking in right and wrong. There are events that can be interpreted in any way so trying to put them into a category is pointless. They should make impact on the story and change the main characters.
Also with the characters themselves I try to think in attributes that lead to certain actions which in turn lead to certain consequences. I don't try to make 'flaws' but just realism while using the fantasy element of it as much as possible. The same attribute can lead to either good or bad results.
I disagree with your opinion on setting. Setting with slice-of-life is just as important because it sets the tone. In a story tone is the most important thing, at least I think it is.