Performing Acceptable Breaks From Reality, Part II
'Of course, it depends how realistic you're actually trying to be.'
--Stu
Fiction, by its nature, does its job by stepping away from reality as we know it. Sometimes, it simply presents a more distilled version of life as we know it, with the key conflicts and meaningful moments of a fictional life plucked out and highlighted for the reader. Other genres go radically further, and imagine worlds where time and space play differently, where magic is mundane, or where humans have never existed.
No matter how fantastic or how ordinary the setting, however, it needs to maintain a level of internal consistency to be real to the reader. Once we've established the rules of the world, they must be adhered to throughout the narrative, or we'll lose the illusion. Of course, this typically means we'll happily accept fictional events that defy the known laws of physics if we know it's normal for that world.
To actually pull this off, we need to be fully aware of the rules of the game in our created setting. Realise that these will constrain your characters at some point-- if a fall from a helicopter into the ocean pulverises the bad guy's internal organs, there had better be a solid explanation why the hero doesn't meet the same fate. (Ideally, the groundwork for any such lucky escapes will be laid in advance; alternately, consider the possibility of your hero being wrong, getting seriously injured, or even dying in the course of the narrative).
The key is to use the genre-acceptable break from reality consciously, rather than slapping it in because everybody else is doing it. Also, working in a fantastic or exaggeration-filled genre doesn't require you to use all over-the-top tropes all the time. A little realism can be refreshing or add some extra tension to the storyline.
--Stu
Fiction, by its nature, does its job by stepping away from reality as we know it. Sometimes, it simply presents a more distilled version of life as we know it, with the key conflicts and meaningful moments of a fictional life plucked out and highlighted for the reader. Other genres go radically further, and imagine worlds where time and space play differently, where magic is mundane, or where humans have never existed.
No matter how fantastic or how ordinary the setting, however, it needs to maintain a level of internal consistency to be real to the reader. Once we've established the rules of the world, they must be adhered to throughout the narrative, or we'll lose the illusion. Of course, this typically means we'll happily accept fictional events that defy the known laws of physics if we know it's normal for that world.
To actually pull this off, we need to be fully aware of the rules of the game in our created setting. Realise that these will constrain your characters at some point-- if a fall from a helicopter into the ocean pulverises the bad guy's internal organs, there had better be a solid explanation why the hero doesn't meet the same fate. (Ideally, the groundwork for any such lucky escapes will be laid in advance; alternately, consider the possibility of your hero being wrong, getting seriously injured, or even dying in the course of the narrative).
The key is to use the genre-acceptable break from reality consciously, rather than slapping it in because everybody else is doing it. Also, working in a fantastic or exaggeration-filled genre doesn't require you to use all over-the-top tropes all the time. A little realism can be refreshing or add some extra tension to the storyline.
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