An ordinary, relatable character with no special powers or status who gets pulled into extraordinary events - basically the audience's stand-in.
The everyman is a character archetype built on relatability rather than exceptionalism. This character has no special training, no magical bloodline, no genius intellect - they are aggressively normal, and that is the point. When an everyman gets thrown into extraordinary circumstances, the reader processes the events through the lens of someone who reacts the way they might. The archetype dates back to medieval morality plays (literally a character named Everyman) and remains one of the most effective tools for grounding fantastical stories in emotional reality.
The everyman is your secret weapon for reader identification. When you drop an ordinary person into an extraordinary world, readers do not need a backstory dump to understand the stakes - they feel them instinctively because they would be just as lost and overwhelmed. This makes the everyman especially useful in high-concept stories where you need the audience to keep up with complex worldbuilding.
Bilbo Baggins is the quintessential everyman - a comfortable homebody who loves meals and hates adventures, which makes his eventual bravery genuinely moving because it does not come from destiny. It comes from choice.
Mark Watney is technically a brilliant botanist and astronaut, but his voice is so relatable and his humor so grounded that he reads as an everyman. He wins through problem-solving and stubbornness, not heroic destiny.
The narrator is an everyman in the most literal sense - stripped of memory and context, he explores an impossible world with childlike wonder that mirrors the reader's own discovery of the setting.
John McClane became an action icon precisely because he is not one. He is a tired, barefoot cop who gets hurt, makes mistakes, and cannot believe this is happening to him.
Ordinary does not mean bland. Your everyman still needs a distinct personality, specific opinions, and a voice that belongs to them alone. Relatable is not the same as generic.
If your everyman turns out to be secretly special, you have written a chosen one with a slow reveal - not an everyman. Decide which story you are telling and commit to it.
Even an ordinary character needs agency. The everyman should make choices that matter, even if those choices come from fear, common sense, or stubbornness rather than training or talent.
Write a 400-word scene where an aggressively ordinary character - someone whose biggest concern that morning was a parking ticket or a grocery list - encounters something impossible. Focus entirely on their reaction. How does a normal person process something that should not exist? Avoid having them immediately accept it or become heroic. Let them be confused, scared, or annoyed first.