Márquez and the Ordinary Miracle

Magical Realism

I’ve been lost in Macondo this week, revisiting Gabriel García Márquez. What strikes me most about his work is not the “magic,” but the way he treats that magic with total indifference. If a woman ascends to heaven while hanging out the laundry, Márquez focuses more on the quality of the sheets than the miracle itself.

This is the secret to making the extraordinary believable: ground it in the ordinary. If you want the reader to accept something impossible, you must surround it with the scent of coffee, the dampness of a floor, or the annoyance of a fly. Wonder is most effective when it is served on a plain wooden plate.

The Monroe Minute
Write one sentence where something impossible happens, followed immediately by a sentence about a boring, daily chore.

Until the next page,
Sloane S. Monroe

Sloane Shay Monroe

I don’t write to idealize love, but to explore it honestly, with emotional precision and depth.