There has been an interesting vogue for these recently: what happens if the ingenious author was to be dumped into Alagaesia? So, let's place an average teenager in the medieval fantasy world of Alagaesia, and see what happens!
I have my own fair share of conceit (most writers do, deep down), but if I was to be dumped into Alagaesia, one of my few advantages would be that I would probably be a handsome devil; and even this would wear off quickly.
This is, I hasten to add, not a normal state of affairs in my everyday life. My talents have not, thus far, included attracting ladies. However, when compared to the competition from a medieval fantasy world, this quickly changes.
My teeth would, by and large, be intact. I have a minimum of insect bites; all my limbs are in working condition, unsullied by heavy suits of armour, sword blows, or farming accidents (and, come to think of it, I haven't hacked any of them off yet); my diet has been reasonably healthy and uninterrupted by famine; my face has been spared the ravages of sun, wind, rain, insects, and general mother nature (in contrast, a reasonably well off British traveler, riding through pre Revolutionary France, apparently met a girl who he took to be very old-heavily wrinkled, wispy hair, the works- whereas she was in fact 25 years old) and, while it lasts, my supply of deodorant would be pretty impressive in a small peasant village (like, let us say, Carvahall.) In addition, my ability to read and write would be reasonably impressive, although my handwriting is frankly god-awful.
However, from here, my advantages stop. This is when, you might say, the crunch comes.
Of course, my ultimate outcome depends heavily on where I get "dropped". However, as probability dictates that I am unlikely to land where the characters are, or where any really special magic users are (Elves spring to mind), there is the possibility that I get dropped into the middle of the Hadarac, or the Beors, or even into the ocean. In all those cases, I most likely die. However, supposing I get placed in the Empire or Surda-relatively hospitable areas-and speak the tongues, I will still be pretty badly off.
Like most modern teenagers, I do not live a particularly active life. I do sport and exercise somewhat reluctantly, travel mostly by bus, car and aeroplane, and whereas a squire would have spent his days at least in part practicing with extremely heavy wooden swords, and a peasant lad would have carried out extremely hard manual labour with heavy farm tools, I spend much of the time in school, revising, computer gaming, or writing stories. Some teenagers do a lot more-but can they keep up with a peasant used to farm work, and thus possessing Popeye style arm muscles? Even some city slicking clerk will at least walk everywhere, giving him something of an advantage over the author. The author has, in addition, no experience or useable knowledge of wilderness survival. As such, the prospects of my doing anything involving hard work drop dramatically, especially fighting; medieval swords are lighter than sometimes depicted, but are still heavy, and require years to master, preferably trained from childhood. A crossbow may be an improvement (point and shoot)-but I couldn't reliably maintain it, due to lack of knowledge. As far as the "good guys" go, the highest ranking I could hope for is (if I was to scour the books for months) become some senior secretary of some sort, and even that would be handicapped by my handwriting. And, after a few years, my talent at that would be gone, as my eyes would have been burned up from staring at documents in candle light.
But no, I hear you cry-magic! Surely I can dose myself up with enough magical heat to blast a hole through the earth's crust, and compensate for all my physical difficulties in that way! But, alas, no.
Firstly, this is Awilla the Hun we're talking about here. Not some overpowered author wish fulfillment avatar who swash buckles his way past all the characters before snogging Arya. Me. The author. The author who, as he writes, has sod all magical talent at his command, no dragon to deal them out, and isn't going to get any if he's dropped in. This, for the purposes of magic learning, leaves me scavenging whatever knowledge I can out of the Inheritance Cycle, and trying to get power by self help. This will not be easy. Firstly, the likelihood of my being randomly dumped into Alagaesia, whilst conveniently having the right books at my side is vanishingly, vanishingly low, and I don't know them well enough to do it off by heart. Secondly, the books (as I recall), give a somewhat incomplete picture of learning magic, and don't cover every last vital exercise. Thirdly, after a few years of being carried around in rucksacks and suchlike, these books are getting slightly battered. Imagine, then, the consequences of them being hefted through a medieval world where they can easily get torn, damp, burned by campfires, shot through by the arrows of ambushers, and all the hazards of walking around in the warzone that is Alagaesia (does the Empire still practice book burnings)! This would leave me with no source to work from. Finally, perhaps most importantly, I suspect that obtaining the correct sort of mental focus to use magic, even in a world where it is physically possible, requires a dragon or years of hard training, neither of which are going to be practical for the author.
As we can see, the author doing anything useful for plot purposes (apart from fishing some obscure treatise on magic out of the library) is a non starter. If he doesn't want to get killed, that is. He doesn't, by the way.
Moreover, there is also the general impact of living in the medieval hellhole that is Alagaesia, but could be equally applied to many fantasy worlds out there. There is no air conditioning, no central heating, travelling around takes weeks and months. (We get upset about crossing the Atlantic in an economy class jet-imagine having to do the same in a stinking, double decker bus sized boat hold, with maggot ridden food and hundreds of other people, whilst crashing through storms and trying to keep your supplies intact! Or, for that matter, riding on horseback, in a saddle that rips your arse to ruin, in the freezing cold or blazing heat, on awful roads, with the constant danger of highwaymen.) Our hero has also left behind his friends, his family, whatever he had to live for in Earth, and for what? A place where he knows no one, where he has little in common with any of the inhabitants, and about which he knows hardly anything! (After all, Paolini has stripped his human civilizations practically bare of detail-"literary reconnaissance" is therefore going to be virtually useless.) Here, no one has heard of electricity, and books (no printing) are fantastically expensive. A peasant's hovel-and not the nonsensically huge houses they have in Carvahall (at least, for peasants), but an actual little hut-contains a family, and their animals, and all their grandparents and fire and infants, throughout the winter. Even a luxurious Castle is going to be cold in winter and hot in summer, and the beds could have lice. Yes, the author may bring a few gadgets along, but they only have limited battery life. Awilla the Hun, then, is going to find himself friendless, alone, uncomfortable and utterly, utterly miserable, cursing himself for ever having started this bizarre thought experiment.
(I know that it's not good manners to mention your own work, but it bears comparison. In Life of Alagaesianus, the Roman Legionaries are over three thousand crack infantrymen, all strong professional soldiers used to manual labour, awful weather and brutal hand to hand combat, with only a handful of senior officers having even experienced central heating. They would have few emotional attachments outside their Legion, and those who have wives and children would be used to leaving them for long periods of time-or would have them with them in the baggage train. In addition, more than a few would know practical trades, such as farming, building, even thievery, which are quite beyond this author.)
So, we have ruled out magic, fighting and fraternizing with the heroes (why would the associate with a wimpy secretary?), and outlined the incredible discomforts and inconveniences of the world. What kind of story have we got left? The answer: a story, not of a classic hero, but of merely struggling to survive against the worst sort of odds, and somehow coming out on top, even getting home! If anyone can make a tale out of that, I'd love to read it. Sadly, this little piece is unlikely to stop the various suethors of this site from placing themselves in Eragon's bosom, juicing themselves up with magic, swordsmanship and enough dragons to sink a battleship, and then letting rip on a world that resembles (say) modern America without electricity.