Post-manifesto post
In my previous post, I laid down a lot of musts and shoulds about creating a realism that actually makes logical sense within itself, mainly for myself as I struggle with my new novel, but also for a lot of other writing I find frustrating and weird and that I want to be better. A few people seemed to agree with me on social media, and some to disagree, so ever self-conscious, I wanted to clarify:
I don’t think it’s an inherent good to set up this kind of fictional reality–I think for the sort of writing a lot of us want to do, where there are characters that feel like people we could meet, living lives that feel real to us in places it seems like we could go, it is necessary to do this sort of world-building infrastructure to make the fictional world make sense to a reader. Just like I don’t think the *point* of a city is roads and sewers, but we need them if we’re going to have a city, if you have a character who owns a house the author must create a logical sense of where they got the money to buy the house, and a character is 45 and claims to have a storied romantic past, they can’t be shown in a scene being completely floored when a date tries to kiss them. The world just needs to make sense enough to keep the reader from crinkling her nose and going “wait what?” and looking up from the book in bafflement (the reader is me in this scenario but also, the reader is everyone). This is the same reason copyeditors and proofreaders strive to eliminate grammatical and spelling errors from books–there’s no moral good in a lack of spelling errors, but if those are errors are going to distract from the story you actually want to tell, better not to have them!
ALSO there are loads of kinds of fiction in the world, which are not realism and don’t need these kind of “receipts and motivations” logics (but every book needs copyeditors and proofreaders!) Surrealism, magic realism, other fun dreamy landscapes where you don’t get as sunk into the practical details. And that’s fine. I didn’t say that in the previous post because I was mad (at me? yes–writing is hard) and also it’s my blog, I can do whatever I want.
So yes, ahem. That’s my deal, explained. As you were.
I don’t think it’s an inherent good to set up this kind of fictional reality–I think for the sort of writing a lot of us want to do, where there are characters that feel like people we could meet, living lives that feel real to us in places it seems like we could go, it is necessary to do this sort of world-building infrastructure to make the fictional world make sense to a reader. Just like I don’t think the *point* of a city is roads and sewers, but we need them if we’re going to have a city, if you have a character who owns a house the author must create a logical sense of where they got the money to buy the house, and a character is 45 and claims to have a storied romantic past, they can’t be shown in a scene being completely floored when a date tries to kiss them. The world just needs to make sense enough to keep the reader from crinkling her nose and going “wait what?” and looking up from the book in bafflement (the reader is me in this scenario but also, the reader is everyone). This is the same reason copyeditors and proofreaders strive to eliminate grammatical and spelling errors from books–there’s no moral good in a lack of spelling errors, but if those are errors are going to distract from the story you actually want to tell, better not to have them!
ALSO there are loads of kinds of fiction in the world, which are not realism and don’t need these kind of “receipts and motivations” logics (but every book needs copyeditors and proofreaders!) Surrealism, magic realism, other fun dreamy landscapes where you don’t get as sunk into the practical details. And that’s fine. I didn’t say that in the previous post because I was mad (at me? yes–writing is hard) and also it’s my blog, I can do whatever I want.
So yes, ahem. That’s my deal, explained. As you were.
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