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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3327
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3327
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm writing a fantasy story about whether a teacher should be fired or not over teaching competency; most of the story revolves around the politics and the procedural process of the decision.

So much of fantasy seems to be about exceptionally high stakes, starting with the end of the world and going down to the loss of love or the loss of a loved one. Losing your job sounds pretty low stakes compared to those. How do you dramatize the mundane?

Our real lives are filled with what feel like high stakes questions (can I get the committee to vote my way? can I afford that extra car payment? should I take six weeks off to go to Clarion? etc.), but they don't always translate well to drama on the page.

When I was editing fiction for the California Quarterly, I used to get a lot of what I referred to as "suburban angst." These were stories about people whose lives were comfortable in all ways (and often upper middle class) who were agonizing over whether they would become their country club's president, or if their kids were achieving well enough in school, or if they should buy the red BMW or the black one. They bored the hell out of me because the characters didn't have any real problems. Now I'm interested in writing fantasy about these lower stake problems, and I'm trying to figure out how to do them well with fantasy elements, or at least better than the stuff I saw at the California Quarterly.

_ **Note:** This question was contributed by [James Van Pelt](http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/)._

Original score: 10