Plot, characters, setting.

Wanted a fantasy setting. And pretty realistic charaters. And plot hardly matters. Any old plot should do. Just take someone else's, more or less. Had long ago thought of writing 5 stories which each had the same plot but yet, were completely utterly different, but that's probably taking the idea too extreme and belies my actual writing ignorance, maybe.

But anyway, on characters and setting, why would I want such escapism combined with such realism? And furthermore, characters in captivating fiction are almost always fantasy. But for it to not just be meaningless they have to have something real about them. Art is the lie which brings us closer to the truth. The dialogue, the characters in general, a lie which is not irrelevant to the real world, a lie which brings us closer to the truth.

Generally though, characters in successful (popular) books are irrelevant to reality. The more relevant they get, the more reading the work is usually just a chore.