A house without a cat is not a home. I’ve always believed this and it has more or less determined where I lived over the years.
Apartments are for people on the move, modern nomads. All through history there have been settlers and nomads. Settlers stay in one place, driving in roots and building their lives where they are. Nomads carry their lives with them wherever they go, either on their backs or in a suitcase. Settlers live in houses; nomads prefer apartments or condominiums. I am without doubt a settler for I have never actually lived in an apartment or a condo. Nomads also tend to move often, constantly seeking a better location in which to live; I am at present living in only my sixth (and with any luck, final) address. Next stop, shady acres.
As we go through life it dumps loads of crap on us from time to time. Digging ourselves out with or without the help of others helps to shape our lives and determine who we are. The same can be said of writing. A good story or novel is one in which the main character has a load of crap dumped on them and the shovels are all on the other side of the forest and well hidden. How well the character copes with the challenges and how digging themselves out from under changes them determines what is and what is not a good story. Good stories fundamentally change their main characters and leave them improved by the end of the tale. A professor once told me that what sets literature apart from other works is what they say about being human.
Just as all the twists and turns of life shape who we become, plot twists must determine who the main character becomes. The character must undergo some fundamental change by the end of the story. In quest fiction there is usually an object that must be recovered in order to save the day. Once this is accomplished, all will be well. While on the quest, various loads of crap will be dumped on the protagonist's head and shovels will be hidden along the way. By overcoming these obstacles the main character becomes stronger and better able to cope with future crap. At the end of the quest they are changed, improved in some way that ties in with the overall theme of the story.
Stories written for children usually contain some kind of lesson or moral. The main character discovers something about themself that makes them a better or more mature person by the end of the story. In other words, they learn something. Mark Twain was fabulous for creating characters who were basically ignorant of most of the everday facts the rest of us take for granted. By allowing them to learn and discover the things that everyone else already knows, he casts these widely held beliefs into doubt. Things that everyone knows are 'just so' are revealed to be anything but. In this way he makes the reader grow along with his main character.
In this sense nomads make better characters that settlers for they are used to change and able to adapt to new situations quickly. Settlers tend to like life to be predictable and get upset when it is not. Nomads accept an ever changing world and chafe at static societies. The conflict between the two lifestyles can and often does provide material for the writer. In real life, sttlers and nomads seldom get along all that well and one almost never changes into the other. In fiction however, one is free to extrapolate explore what happens when the two attempt to trade places.
Nomads are dismal failures as settlers and settlers are never happy on the move. Conflict and resolution are the building blocks of any good story. Forcing your main character into a lifestyle not their own and watching them cope can be instructive as well as entertaining Allowing for change is what makes a story work. If by the end of the story your main character has become something they are not however, the whole thing falls apart. People tend to change in little ways, not abandon their entire way of life to embrace another. No nomand will ever be happy settling down any more than a settler enjoys moving around all the time. In the end the sttler will always be left behind as the nomad moves on.
Love can conquer all and in fiction this is certainly true. Nomads and settlers fall in love all the time and one or the other takes up a lifestyle not their own. Most times it is the nomad that gives up their wanderlust and becomes a settler. Occasionally a settler will cast off their roots take up the open road but this happens much less often. Neither is happy in the other's world and the relationship usually breaks down in the end with Shane riding off into the sunset and the little kid calling out his name in vain.
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