Before and after
(Wrote notes on this last night, didn't get around to posting 'til now.)
A lot of stories are about Great Deeds and Grand Adventures. Nothing wrong with that, certainly. But sometimes I'm more interested in the part before the Great Deeds begin (as with the story I'm editing now, which we'll be publishing in a few weeks), or after the Grand Adventures are over (as with Jo Walton's "Relentlessly Mundane"). (Come to think of it, Jo's "On the Wall" is also a before-things start story.) I guess a lot of what appeals to me about such stories is that they look at things from an unusual angle. If the Hero or Heroine is a solid character and not a cardboard cutout, they must have come from somewhere. They've got family, they've got friends, they've got a history. They've got a society and culture and context; background that shaped who they are. Sometimes it's enough to let that come out subtly during the Heroic Adventures, but sometimes it's nice to shift the focus and look directly at those side bits.
Like my notion of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead as a view of Hamlet from the wings of the stage. Or a roleplaying game I was in during college, when at the end of the long adventure, we discovered that our characters were really just spear-carriers in the story of reuniting the real heros, my character's parents. A lovely little paradigm shift there.
I could go on—this ties in nicely with some stuff I was just writing in email about perspective, and how hard it is to get when you're up close. But I think I'd better stop before I get pulled over by the Rambling Police.