What is Slice of Life?

Hello out there,

Have you ever heard of the “Slice of Life” genre?

Slice of Life, is an old term first coined by the French playwright Jean Jullien in the 1890’s. French people always come up with the coolest stuff.

“Tranche de Vie”

Slice of Life, in French!

It gained popularity in Japan in Anime, which is where I first heard the term.

Maybe you’ve seen it a few times but never actually looked it up.

So, what is it?

Slice of Life, is all about focusing on a single character’s life. Know that when you’re reading SoL you’re not exactly going to be getting a normal story. You’re going to see the mundane parts of their life and most importantly see how the character reacts to each situation.

You’re not always going to get insights into the character. In fact, the end of the story might be the character simply continuing on with their day.

This in itself can invoke emotion. You know that they are continuing with their life but you don’t know what happens because you’re not with them anymore.

A SoL book will be ground in reality and probably won’t be action packed, dramatic, or even  funny. It’ll likely have some or all of those aspects to it but not as a main part of the story.

I’d like to give you a small example of a scene from my book. 

The main character Adrian is feeling a bit adventurous and decides to try her hand at making pancakes for the first time. Enjoy!

07:15 Nov 20

As I stared at the instant pancake mix instructions, they seemed to make less and less sense to me. It probably didn’t help that I was distracted by my phone. I wonder if there’s a video on how to make instant pancakes? There was.

***

07:21 Nov 20

One video down, one mind prepped to add water and or milk and mix.

***

07:37 Nov 20

I had the oil, the skillet, and five burnt pancakes. About that time, Gyro came sashaying in. She plopped down on her butt and stared at me. I grabbed a bit of burnt pancake and tossed it at her. She delicately sniffed at it. After a few seconds, she jumped up about two feet in the air, landed, and promptly ran in place for about three seconds till she fell over. I somehow ended up on the ground too, but laughing.

***

07:45 Nov 20

The charge for laughing on the floor was three burnt pancakes. I felt it was worth it. I did, however, end up with five partially burnt pancakes, which I felt were probably good enough to eat. What do you do with the rest of this mix, though? You’re supposed to use a whole box, right?

***

07:51 Nov 20

When Mom came downstairs, the look on her face was… unique. I didn’t know what to make of it.

***

08:05 Nov 20

About ten minutes of clean-up later, I unwillingly observed as Mom made a fresh batch of pancakes.

“See, you wait till they start bubbling up and the sides are brown.”

She jiggled the spatula under it and flipped it over. It looked perfectly brown and had a sweet smell, unlike the burnt ones.

***

This is one of my more comedic scenes. Instead of being some huge comedic event with a big build up it’s just one of those little things that happen in life.

Right after this scene the next one jumps right into something completely different. Have a look.

08:12 Nov 20

Mom and I were eating breakfast when Dad came downstairs with his keys in his hand. “Mmmmm,” he said as he sniffed at the air.

He grabbed a pancake, ruffled my hair, and kissed mom on the cheek before he headed out the back door.

Mom put her head down.

I cautiously asked, “Mom?”

“We’ve been fighting…” her voice quivered.

I stopped eating, got up from my chair, and hugged her. Tears streamed down her face. I hated it when she cried—she always had this look on her face that made me hurt inside. I held on so I didn’t have to see it.

***

Immediate shift to sad. There are so many parts of the story that do this.

My aim is for people to get to see how a transgender kid lives their life. 

I sprinkled a lot of intrigue into the book. What’s it like losing “eidetic memory”? You’ll see how Adrian reacts to losing hers. What happens when your uncle is a crazy architect and puts a ton of secret rooms into the house? You’ll find out here. What are these weird visions that the main character is seeing? You’ll find out!

All of this is intriguing but the book runs at a slow pace so you won’t find all the answers in this book. The secret room is more of a metaphor in this case as parts of it will be revealed as the main character makes milestones in her gender transition.

The losing of her eidetic memory is taking a character from spectacular to something more normal and seeing how she reacts.

The visions are my own little special thing where you’ll only get one maybe two per book. They are out of order but will tell their own story. It’ll all connect at the end of the series.

I suppose SoL sort of follows the whole “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” theme.

Are there any examples of successful Slice of Life stories? Yes! Remember that series “Breaking Bad”? I’m having a hard time not calling that Slice of Life.

The story follows Mr. White, who after deciding to start selling meth works at building an empire. Its SoL in in that it showcases almost every aspect of his life. Breakfasts with family even when it didn’t advance the story much. Scenes where Mr. White and Jessie are just hanging out. While the scenes didn’t do much with all of them together they showed the comradery of the two. 

Vince Gilligan, the Writer/Director of the show, in an interview explained how he wanted to show the aspects of people’s lives that you don’t normally see in a series. Sounds like a SoL to me!

An example of a movie I think is SoL, is John Wick. It’s definitely an action movie but there is so much of the story that’s SoL. You are seeing every aspect of the character’s life as the story progresses. Losing his dog, digging up those hidden guns, getting a new dog, and even buying new clothes. The action is a big portion of the film but even in those scenes there’s a lot of instances between action where you see John do a bunch of mundane things. Sure those mundane things help him later on but they are there.

Maybe I’m stretching a bit with John Wick but Breaking bad is definitely a Slice of Life story. 

My first introduction into the “Slice of Life” style was Ellen Hayes The Saga of Tuck which I talked a bit about before. 

Her writing heavily influenced how I write. She disappeared and hasn’t written anything since 2013. When I searched deeper for her, I found out that the person maintaining her website said that they are doing it to keep her work alive, as a sort of memorial. They didn’t say she was dead but it was heavily implied. When I found that out last year I was a mess.

I hope you learned at least a little about this fascinating genre. It’s my absolute favorite and I think everyone should read at least one Slice of Life story.

I have a story teller meeting coming up so I’m going to do some review on that before I start.

I hope you have a wonderful day!
Katherine