And the peasants rejoiced. Or revolted. Or whatever.

[mrissa]

One of the many nice things about peasant uprisings, as plot points go, is that the peasants are everywhere. You don't have to do a particular lot of maneuvering to get your protagonist near potentially-uprisable peasants. They're around. There's a reason they call them commoners. Your characters walk into a bar. Peasants! They buy some fruit. Peasants! They go to have their shoes re-soled. Peasants! They want to hire a fishing boat. Peasants!

Unless you're in that one period of Hungarian history, of course, in which case Aristocrats! but other than that.

That being the case, why don't more authors write peasant uprisings for me? They make me so happy, and they're easy. It's not like you have to sit around for very long thinking really hard about what on earth the peasants might find to get angry over; there's plenty. You don't have to draw the long family trees with the million crossed branches, because they're peasants; no one cares if they're actually their own fifth cousin twice removed, especially not them. In fact, there's a lot of stupid stuff you don't have to bother with in a peasant uprising. And blood is compulsory. Rhetoric may even be compulsory, too. So by then you have your choice about whether you want to bother with love and whether you want them consecutive or concurrent, but the point is, you already have blood and rhetoric, so you're good to go.

I'm not saying it has to be every book. I'm just saying, for your plot development needs, please consider the peasant uprising. It's fun! It's fresh! It's versatile! It's got barricades! Haven't you always wanted barricades?

I thought so.

Comments

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Funny, I love a good peasant uprising but I always think they're too complicated to write. When I was reading a lot about 1848 I wrote many chapters of a peasant-uprising novel, only I had this character to start with who was not peasanty enough so then I had to figure out how she would have learned to read and everything and then I wanted to work out the entire political structure and the new concept of meritocracy, sort of a NCO/commissioned officer deal and I got so busy nailing down the details that I stopped writing.

I guess you would say that I should just have forgotten about my NCO and had five hundred farmers with pitchforks. I might revisit that, actualy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I want more 1848. Any particular books standing out in your memory?

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

I read Hobsbawm's The age of revolution: europe, 1789-1848 and I liked it a lot, but he is a man with an agenda--communism in this case--so be careful to read for that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But I wouldn't say that you should have forgotten about your NCO. You can have both! It's not always easy, but sometimes it's worthwhile!