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

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

BUT - once you elevate a peasant above the faceless masses, he/she ceases to be a peasant. Said character becomes significant. And you have to somehow describe how and why said non-peasant is acting against centuries of breeding and training... so you end up with a non-peasant anyway.

Peasants can NOT be individuals with names and histories and families, and their ambition must be limited to successfully hiding an extra pig from the King's Tax Collectors - lest they get ATTITUDE and are NOTICED by their liege lords and slammed into yon dungeon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That word: I do not think it means what you think it means.

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Are you perhaps referring to the "As Paris Hilton is to Royalty, I am to peasantry" mode of the word?

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean, actually. You can write the story of someone who happens to be a peasant (who doesn't die) who doesn't do anything much, while perhaps someone else is making big changes. That's a big story, you know, peasant in a time and place where peasantry is changing. F'rinstance.