Who Actually Attends the Party

Many festivals in fiction center on the festivities: the food, games, drinks, and merriment, often overlooking the people partaking in those celebrations. Not completely, most writers can tell you who is celebrated and who are celebrants. They overlook the third group of people at most festivals, the attendants. Regardless of whether attendants are overlooked is for plot reasons or for the sake of pacing they fit into the festival ecosystem as well.

To highlight this ecosystem, I’ll use a wedding. The celebrated are the bride and groom, the center of the event. The wedding party and associated guests make up the celebrants; they showed up for the bride and groom. The associated staff would be the attendants, making sure everything runs smoothly for the bride and groom. Each of the roles play off of each other forming a web.

Our center, the bride and groom, are the celebrated. Noting down what it is they did, and why that spawned a festival is important. I would suggest that this is a generalized person, outside of religious, or historical figures. Meaning use titles rather than names when building these out. It will help keep the festival more flexible going forward, and allow for more variations of the formula. Which could be needed when it comes time to put the characters through the festival. Regardless of who or how, ensure that the celebrated are the center of the festival and the center of attention during the celebration.

Celebrants are often undefined or ill-defined. Our wedding party and guests form this portion of the ecosystem. Their primary role is to celebrate, or make it a party. While that may seem vague that’s often all that’s needed to fulfill their role. Depending on the celebration there may be divisions within this group; there almost always is. Our wedding example shows us two divisions. The wedding party, which itself is divided into bridesmaids and groomsmen, and the general guests. There are differences between the roles of each of these three groups in what they are supposed to do, how they are to act, and how they participate. The bridesmaids and groomsmen have more responsibilities, therefore more importance than the general guest. Which is something that we should be putting into our notes for future use.

Attendants are our invisible helpers that make everything work in many fictional festivals. Their work is important, making sure the punch bowl is full, everyone has snacks, and the music keeps playing when it’s supposed to. It is worth noting that not all festivals or celebrations will have attendants, paying people to make sure a party goes off smoothly without having them participate can get costly; meaning if they are there someone is paying them. That can be a sign of wealth of the host or importance of the festivities. Yet their appearance can also be a sign this is a more public event, and thus make the festivities feel less personable. Because of their role, and their somewhat ignorable status they tend to be the unseen, unheard members of a festival or celebration. Regardless of how they are seen or unseen they are a part of the festival ecosystem.

Not all of the roles can show up to every festival. Therefore it’s important to understand some of the generic interactions within this ecosystem. The celebrated will interact with the celebrants as they are both there for festivities. They will also have the most interaction with the attendants as they are directing the attendants to get everything just right for the celebrants. Celebrants will play their part, either being a simple guest or doing something more as their role within a role implies. Celebrants will interact with attendants, as they will need snacks and drinks or to put in some music requests. Generally speaking they will be looking to treat the attendants as forgettable. Which is why I believe most story tellers overlook the attendant. Combining this together creates an interaction web, that can be used as a guide for when our characters end up interacting with it.

It is important to note this web doesn’t exist solely during the festival, there are things such as RSVPing to an event, or sending thank you cards afterwards that are a part of this web. A notable example from reality is the British custom of Boxing Day. It was started as a way to give the attendants at the manor houses, who had spent all of Christmas preparing and managing the manor’s Christmas party, a day off to celebrate. Which should be reason enough to think about how this ecosystem spans through time as well as space.

Another note that has to be made; not every celebration will have all of these archetypes. When something is missing, the celebrants or celebrated will often pick up the role. Take a dinner party where the host has no attendants. If the celebrated is the host, then they will likely end up taking over some of the roles of attendants. The celebrants that help them may have different roles than a general guest. There may just be celebrants; take an office party where no one person is up for celebration, it’s just celebrating the year’s numbers. Now dividing up the celebrants is important as it will help determine how the party will function. Perhaps the top level works as the attendants, and the managers assist them so the line workers can be more center stage.

With an ecosystem outlined, characters will join it when any festival takes off. If a character is the celebrated, we need to feel that they are in the center of attention, that the festivities orbit them. If the character is a celebrant, the character and the reader should know what kind. With that understood writing so that the audience feels what the expectations and limits put on the character are. If our character ends up as an attendant, they will be working to make sure that the celebration goes well for the other two groups without impeding the festivities. That will often put a degree of pressure on them, especially when things start to go wrong. Regardless of group, there can be post-festivities obligations that need tending to, from thank you cards to planning another celebration, none of which can be ignored.

To pull in our ongoing festival, the Autumn Ball. As a ball there doesn’t have to be a celebrated person. It could be possible to create a ‘court’ for the ball, with an elected king, queen, dukes and duchesses. These would have some roles of some description. Could be in charge of picking the decorations, advertising the ball, or even picking the music. I will say each of the dukes and duchess have a segment of the ballroom, maybe an alcove they have to decorate, the king and queen will take the main ballroom itself, then all five couples will give a speech at some point during the night, also because this is a romance story they have to stick together. This set of requirements forces eyes on these couples and gives them a reason to be in the center of this festival. This then fulfills the role of the celebrated rather nicely. Moving on to the celebrants I think I’ll leave one group, the guest who is there to enjoy the party and keep eyes on our couples. I will also have an expectation that they would stick with their own date as well, in addition to being good guests, and generally having fun. Then we have the attendants. Since the college is putting this on for the students, some of those attending may be college staff. I like the idea of connecting this into the town or city surrounding the college as well. Meaning that this role would be held by the local non-college people. Because this is a night that has gotten tied into the culture. I would then plan for the non-college ball to be the following night. With our celebrated and celebrants encouraged to repay the kindness of these attendants the following night at the city’s ball. This would add a layer of symbiosis on to the festival weekend as neither group has to carry the entire burden of the event without getting something in return.

Now that I’ve established the ecosystem of the Autumn Ball a question has to be asked: “How would our hopeless couple fare in this ecosystem?” Perhaps in the first book, because all romance stories need to be trilogies these days, they are simply guests. Overwhelmed by the experience and refusing to admit they are falling in love on the dance floor. Then in book two there’s a tragic twist. Both of them are elected to be their year’s royalty; meaning they are now not celebrants but the celebrated. For the sake of drama both now have to spend the evening with someone else obviously who has a crush on our heroes, while the entire party watches their interactions. The following morning they then get to quietly slink off when tending to the town’s ball and realize they much prefer the other’s company rather than the pairing made by their classes. Book three they get elected king and queen, however I’ll save how they adapt this ball to their whims for the last Worldbuild Wednesday this month.

Each time they come back to the ecosystem they are put into a different spot, which allows for each trip through the festival to feel different. It won’t matter if the situation, setup, and pay off look similar, because the path though each will become drastically different. Which in turn will make each Autumn Ball memorable, even if the festival is formulaic. When one thinks about the festival as just a plot beat, or as something on the yearly calendar for these two, the want is to say “I did this in book one I can’t do it again in book two or three.” By using different roles in the ecosystem each time we come back to the festival it will be a whole new experience; Layering depth into the world and the story building up the believability of everything involved.

All said and done the way one thinks about the people attending a festival or celebration will have the largest impact on the festival or celebration. The characters will be the ones interacting with the festival through the roles they play. Meaning the roles within a festival become important, and how those roles interact with each other become important as well. These roles and their interaction will shape how the characters, and thus the audience, will see the festival. Therefore with your next festival take some time to think about how the people doing the celebrating interact and not just about the celebration itself. As many festivals can have the food, games, drink, and merriment, the best will have an ecosystem running though it.

This week is probably the most universally applicable as this framework is similar to how I build up societies. Meaning this is more than just a festival guide. Don’t tell the theme that they can get rather dramatic. This weekend will be the dispatch from my desk, see you all there. If you want to make sure you see it, as I don’t advertise the weekend ‘bonus’ content subscribe. Paying me gives you access to the queue of what’s coming out and the short stories I have published, provided I can put them up here behind the paywall.

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