Say you have a big book or a series of books--Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time et al, say, or Ringo's March to the Sea et al -- with background of a whole town full or battalion full of nameless faceless undescribed but enumerated-by-census characters.
The thousand pages of test implicitly creating such persons is the canon.
Some of them will necessarily, in service to the plot, die. Be consumed, as it were.
Thus the "fodder".
The surfer in Pournelle and Niven's Lucifer's Hammer who rides the tidal wave to a glorious uhm, whatever. There HAS to be tidal wave. People WILL be killed. One character personalizes the event.
canon ...
Say you have a big book or a series of books--Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time et al, say, or Ringo's March to the Sea et al -- with background of a whole town full or battalion full of nameless faceless undescribed but enumerated-by-census characters.
The thousand pages of test implicitly creating such persons is the canon.
Some of them will necessarily, in service to the plot, die. Be consumed, as it were.
Thus the "fodder".
The surfer in Pournelle and Niven's Lucifer's Hammer who rides the tidal wave to a glorious uhm, whatever. There HAS to be tidal wave. People WILL be killed. One character personalizes the event.