by Anne R. Allen
“I don’t do realism. Sometimes people will mention that something I’ve written doesn’t seem realistic and I always picture them looking at a Chagall and thinking the same thing. You can say, “I don’t like what you do, or I don’t like Chagall, or I don’t like Picasso” but saying that these things are not realistic is irrelevant.”
So says James Patterson, the world’s best-selling author
I’m not a huge fan of Patterson’s dark fiction, but his writing advice is spot-on. I agree wholeheartedly about realism.
Art Isn’t About Realism
If you want realism, read the newspaper. Look at a photograph. Listen to a podcast.
Artists don’t aim for realism. Art is about commenting on reality, not copying it.
Ignorant people will always look at a Picasso and say “my kid paints better than that,” and you’ll hear the non-arty spouse at an art show praise the only painting done in a photorealistic style. “Now that looks like a real horse.” Of course, she’d like a photo of the horse even more.
Those are not the people whose opinions matter when you’re creating fiction.
Personally, I love art that points out the absurdity of life. If I couldn’t laugh at all this human silliness, I’d jump off some bridge. Absurd humor is a chill pill for me.
The first time I saw Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I laughed till I cried. I felt as if I’d come home and those wild British comics were my long-lost family.
Is it realistic for a giant foot to come out of the clouds and step on guy with flowers growing out of his head? While somebody farts? Not even a little bit.
But often when we have lovely thoughts and plans growing in our heads, a giant something comes out of the Universe and stomps out our lovely hopes and dreams.
Everybody has experienced it and that makes that opening scene utterly believable.
This is where we need to be clear in our goals: aim for believability, not realism.
Believability vs. Realism
It’s not realistic for an abused, neglected orphan who lives in a cupboard to be accepted by an unknown boarding school, or for the acceptance letter to be delivered by an owl. But it is believable in Harry Potter’s world.
But if later a letter were to be delivered by a pterodactyl, or Batman’s butler, that wouldn’t be believable in Potter world. Ms. Rowling would have had some ’splaining to do.
Fantasy novels have their own rules of believability, and authors need to follow their own rules carefully.
We also need to consider genre. In a noir mystery, the detective invariably gets hit on the head a lot. But he never gets a concussion or has any permanent damage. Is that realistic? Nope. But it is believable to readers of that genre? Of course. They expect it. Realism has nothing to do with the value of noir mysteries.
In fact, if you think over your favorite novels, you’ll probably find very little “realism.” Is it realistic for an abandoned little girl to raise herself in a southern swamp? A real child would be dead within days. But Where the Crawdads Sing has been at the top of the bestseller lists for years.
What all those readers find believable is the indomitability of the human spirit, and the will to survive and thrive. No matter how you feel about the book’s overall merit, it has caught the hearts of millions of readers, many of whom say it’s their favorite book ever.
Use Realistic Details as a Condiment, not the Main Course
Another thing that made Crawdads believable was Delia Owens’ encyclopedic knowledge of those swamps. She added just enough vivid detail to make the story feel real.
But she didn’t hit the reader over the head with those realistic details. She never allowed them to get in the way of the emotional arc of the book.
She obviously understood that a novelist needs to use realistic details to season a story, not overwhelm it.
Some authors, aiming for realism, will over-research, and feel compelled to add every bit of their new knowledge into the story.
I was once in a workshop with a woman who had researched all aspects of Victorian women’s clothing. Her heroine took so many pages to get dressed, we’d all forgotten what she was getting dressed for.
And we didn’t care.
Never let “realism” dominate the story.
Gritty Realism Has its Place
Of course, some novels do need to be realistic, especially if they’re written to bring attention to a problem. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle had such realistic scenes of Chicago slaughterhouses that people rose up to do something about the abuse of workers and animals. It led to the Meat Inspection Act.
That meant the realism had a purpose. Sinclair put the reader through horrific scenes to make an important point.
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest showed realistic scenes of 1950s psychiatry, including over-use of electroshock therapy and lobotomy. The book was one of the strong instigators of the deinstitutionalizing of mental patients in the US.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was one of the toughest books I ever made myself read. I know she wrote it after being a guest lecturer at a university in the American south where I had a good friend who worked for the University press. My friend knew Atwood and warned me that the new book would be based on the horrors of the misogyny she’d observed in the deep south. Because the book is so close to the reality of that society (now more than ever) it came across as too realistic for me. But I hung on because it was so brilliant.
But Atwood didn’t write it to be fun entertainment. She wrote it to wake people up.
Most People Read to Escape
Fantasy author EB Dawson says:
“I am not a big fan of storytellers who make their viewers/readers feel like they have lived through horrible things JUST for entertainment purposes. Let’s not forget that stories have a real impact on people’s hearts and minds.”
The real world is full of horror, cruelty, and chaos. Good fiction takes us out of that world and into one that is ordered and sane. It can portray the cruel, horrifying, and chaotic, but fictional characters can overcome those things, bring the world to order, and help us fight our own fears.
My own favorite genre is classic mysteries, because the evildoer is always caught and when the story ends, all is right with the world. I’ve heard the classic mystery compared to listening to Mozart. There’s always a satisfying resolution.
Is it realistic that a bunch of suspects would sit around a drawing room hanging on every word of a ridiculously narcissistic Belgian detective, knowing somebody in the room is a murderer? Not to me. I’d escape that place as fast as I could.
But who cares? It’s a classic mystery and we’re about to hear the brilliant M. Poirot tell us who the bad guy is and then we’ll all be safe.
Can anybody be safe in a truly realistic world? Hey, you could find a bear rummaging through your kitchen, or a SWAT team with the wrong address could burst into your bedroom, or a meteor could fall on your house.
But if you put those things in your novel, you don’t have to make them so realistic we can smell the bear poop. Unless you really want to advocate for hungry bears, police reform, or better meteor detection.
But if you make the scene absurd and unrealistic, it can help us laugh at our fears.
Beware “Realism Police”
There will always be a few customer reviews that will complain that your work isn’t “realistic” — probably written by one of those guys who thinks his kid can paint better than Picasso. Or the people who have criticized James Patterson. You need to keep Patterson’s advice in mind. The criticism is irrelevant.
Think of it like a review that says your book is bad because there are no great white sharks. It may be absolutely true your book lacks great white sharks, but unless you have a great white shark on your cover that promises something you don’t deliver, who cares?
The biggest mistake I’ve made in my published novels was adding too much realism to a scene about a tummy tuck in No Place Like Home. Three different reviewers have called me out on it.
Why did I do it? A guy in my critique group insisted I describe it like his wife’s tummy tuck, even though I’d known many people who’d had less gruesome liposuction surgeries.
I fell for the “realism police.”
If you’re in a critique group or you use beta readers, you’ve probably run into them, too. The gun people will insist that you spend three paragraphs describing the gun that the bad guy is aiming at your heroine while she’s hanging off the balcony.
The medical people will tell you that nobody could survive that fall without breaking a leg. And the weather police will tell you it couldn’t have been raining that day, because it never rains in LA in September. And the costume police will say her shoes would have fallen off during the dangling, so she wouldn’t be able to run away once she jumps.
Don’t listen. Your reader doesn’t care.
Also Ignore People Who Demand Stereotyping
There are some people who think every character in a book must behave according to their own preconceived notions. In our book How to be a Writer in the E-Age, Catherine Ryan Hyde (a 3-million-copy seller and counting) talks about the critique group who kept telling her that her character “wouldn’t” behave in the way she described.
“No truck driver would read Proust” is one of her favorites. The hero of her bestseller Electric God, optioned for film by Nicholas Cage, was the one who read Proust.
The truth is you are allowed to have interesting characters that don’t fit the boring stereotypes in a reader’s head. Most readers appreciate originality.
In fact, anyone who says that “all ____ are ____” is displaying bigotry. Their idea of what is “realistic” is simply what fits with their own narrow-minded prejudices.
Ignore them. They probably don’t even buy fiction. Aim to please your readers, not the realism police.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) December 4, 2022
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What about you, scriveners? Do you aim for realism in your books? How do you define realism? Do you get clueless comments and reviews that complain that your books aren’t realistic?
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Featured image: Chagall’s Lovers and Flowers 1949
Amen & amen again. Thanks for this, Anne. I particularly appreciate your point about aptly smattering research into one’s fiction. I once heard an editor say something like, “research is the support undergarment in a novel. Without it the work is a flop, but nobody wants to see the undergarments.”
CS–I love to think of the research as a panty-girdle! Definitely don’t want that showing.
Anne—great post needed to be said! Gah! Spare us from the literal. They should stick to counting the number of eggs in a dozen.
Ruth–Counting the number of eggs in a dozen is a marvelous phrase! Yeah, the literal-minded don’t read fiction anyway.
Mostly with my settings. My current “hot mess” of a novel, I use a house, a barn, a forest, generic desert plains (like the American Southwest) and a large campsite for the minimum sense of realism used in the story. Everything else trips the paranormal/fantasy light fantastic, while being sprinkled hither and thither with a taste of believability. Personally, it helps me keep my writing grounded. I think it hearkens back to when I would have problems reading pure fantasy and not quite relating to what the author was trying to accomplish. A touch of realism is good for a fiction story in those particular genres where world bending is acceptable. Too much, at least for me, is a turn off.
GB–Yes, we need those bits of recognizable realism to ground us in the story. Even fantasy.
Nice piece you brought with you today, Anne. Realism, hmmm… I wrote a series based on true crimes I was involved in. (Investigating, not committing that is.) As they are primarily police procedurals, I wrote them realistically and have been called out by a few readers who say they don’t seem realistic. “No way that could happen,” they said. My reply is sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Happy Sunday to you and to Ruth.
Garry–Of course I’m not talking about true crime here. People do read that for realism. Amazing that people could think that actual reality wasn’t “realistic” enough. Truth is indeed stranger (and sometimes funnier) than fiction.
A friend of mine once said that she doesn’t read fiction because it’s nothing more than lying. But I pointed out to her that a lot of fiction is truth because it distills deeper truths from reality. Good fiction contains much truth, which is probably why it attracts so many readers (aside from the entertainment value).
Sally–You say it well. Fiction can tell the truth, and nonfiction can tell lies. I remember the quote usually attributed Mark Twain, but Disraeli said it first: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I’m writing historical fiction for the first time, in a novella. I’ve gathered info from books and websites and I’m still gathering. I’m trying to remember not to overwhelm the reader with details about the time and place. Looks like I should remember this too.
Rich–I once tried historical fiction and gave up before I wrote a word. The research was overwhelming. So I relate. But as you say, you don’t want to overwhelm the reader with what you’ve learned, but sprinkle it in to ground the story in its setting.
And of course using fiction to scatter stereotypes is valuable in and of itself–writes me.
Thank you for this interesting and helpful article, Anne.
Leanne–Some people are more comfortable with stereotypes, but I think it’s more interesting when characters surprise you.
And if you let them, the characters will guide you through the story – they become three-dimensional themselves, and they won’t let you write them into a situation that is out of character for them. I don’t know how that happens, but it does, and when it happens, we writers are wise to listen to them.
An interesting article that makes some good points but I think it has a serious misunderstanding of great photography and also a misunderstanding that realism may also be art.
JR–Of course the photographic arts are a different thing, and I didn’t mean to disparage them.
I love this post, Anne, and I needed it. Depending on who I had for a developmental editor, I have received some dings that something wasn’t realistic. One of the editors told me “no one has landlines any more”. I said to myself, “What?” I have a landline and so do a lot of people and I live in the very modern world and the state of California. Some people’s views of the world sometimes are just not the same as mine. Plus, I don’t think the reader would give a rat’s arse if my character answered her cell phone or her landline in the story.
Patricia–Haha! I have a landline too. So do most of my neighbors (also in California.) In fact I think a landline would add to our knowledge of a character. It might be an indication of age and personality.
Great post, Anne! I have a Dev Editor who’s very good at asking me about this in my drafts (“would/could he really do that?”). And a recent beta reader asked me if the traveling couple my hero bumps into on a trip would really be reading a Fodor’s guidebook vs. looking at their phone in today’s world. Which gave me the opportunity to alter the travelers to be old hippies holding books and wearing tie-dye T-shirts, which improved the character description.
And BTW—as someone who lived in L.A. for 20+ years—yes, it does rain in September. But never in August. 😉
Harald–I live in SoCal too, and I know it can rain in September. I was talking about people who get dogmatic about realism, even when what they’re saying isn’t true. Love the old hippies reading Fodors!
I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘suspension of disbelief’. If your writing is good enough to suspend my disbelief, then you’ve succeeded. Beware of people forcing you to do one thing and not another, they’re the real enemies of writing. Things are not black and white in writing (excuse the color metaphor), and one thing and not another. I write more realism because I can; I prefer it to writing pure fantasy. I don’t like it when an author says or demands even, that I read their work as believable. Bullshit! My brain doesn’t work like that, and probably why I don’t read romance or ‘porn’. It’s not believable and therefore isn’t possible.
Quote: “The real world is full of horror, cruelty, and chaos. Good fiction takes us out of that world and into one that is ordered and sane. It can portray the cruel, horrifying, and chaotic, but fictional characters can overcome those things, bring the world to order, and help us fight our own fears.” Good fiction is not mandated by God. It isn’t even doomed to take us out of the horror, cruelty, and chaos of real life. For some people, that may be catharsis, but for others, there is no law that says ‘good’ fiction must take us out of that world and into one that is ‘ordered and sane’. Fictional characters that overcome horror, cruelty, and chaos are not realistic (most of the time) if pre-selection has chosen them to use non-earthly means to overcome it. I am not interested in writing those kinds of characters. Most writers who write characters that overcome these things often use a thing called ‘magical realism’, imbuing their characters with ‘magical’ powers in order to overcome (e.g., good vs evil). The ‘good’ person overcomes the ‘evil’ person but does so only with the help of a magical power. ‘Goodness’ is seen as a magical power.
I’m not saying don’t use ‘magical realism’ (comics do that), what I am saying is that I prefer to read stories about characters who fail to overcome horror, cruelty, and chaos without recourse to a ‘magical power’ to do it. That’s fantasy that isn’t believable. I prefer characters to use their intelligence to overcome these things and not (as a reader) be lulled into a false sense of security because the character has had the ‘weapon’ to defeat these things all along (e.g., a magical hammer, unearthly passion, money, a huge penis). Realism does have a place in fiction, as you pointed out, I think. That’s called worldbuilding. If the backdrop for the story is London, then readers expect to find London in the story. Especially if it’s historical fiction. If it’s not, then it’s alt-history, right? If it’s science fiction, then London wouldn’t (necessarily) resemble historical or present-day London. The author’s originality would appear in the creating of a London that doesn’t exist (or might in an alt-universe) but be believable. Hard work. The author must create everything from scratch. But even in Star Trek there are chairs, tables, alcohol, etc., everything the characters ‘need’ to exist in a Star Trek universe. Even the fanciful, yet Star Trek has achieved great success.
I could go on, but I won’t. It just seemed to me that you were presenting an overly ‘biased’ view of realism in an almost religious way, and that bothered me. Hench the long-winded response.
RM–Thanks for the thoughtful response. But I think you misread that paragraph. I didn’t say “Good fiction must…” I said it does. I was just describing what novels do. Even with sad endings, novels order the world in a certain way. I’m certainly not religious, and I hardly ever tell God what to do. 🙂
(Not that He’d listen …) 🙂
There are limits, I think, to what liberties a writer may take. I have been totally put off and actually angry at one writer who is publishing a series of books about Jews in Regency England that are simply totally unrealistic. For example, a young man sent to Eton (misspelled in the novel) would immediately be “outed” as Jewish because of his circumcision. A family trying to hid being Jewish in order to become members of the highest social class and being blackmailed as a result: again impossible for too many reasons to enumerate. Reading reviews that praise the novels make me grind my teeth. When dealing with some issues, e.g. prejudice and social structure, being accurate is crucial.
lmadden–I studied history and art history and historical inaccuracy makes me furious. I’m not advocating that at all. You want accurate details. That’s what makes your story believable. Just not so many details they get in the way of the story.
Another caution: not to apply modern mores and cultural tropes to historical times and characters.
Sally–One of my pet peeves. That can land a book in my “did not finish” pile.
That all ‘good fiction’ puts the reader in an ordered and sane world lets out novels from Vanity Fair to Fahrenheit 451 to Wolf Hall and thousands in between. I just do not agree that we have to write ordered worlds that always end with evil overcome. Sometimes evil simply is not overcome.
About including details, my readers like that I spend time describing the weapons and armor and that I am meticulous with the history. Not only do my readers care, they demand it. Of course, that may be something that has to do with genre.
I agree that in some genres, for example Regency Romance, my chosen genre, accuracy is essential. Readers know a whole lot and they respond negatively to inaccuracies, some times even minutiae. On the other hand, I just finished reading Shrines of Gaiety. As an afterward, Kate Atkinson describes the factual origins of the novel and also reveals a few details that are not accurate. She admits that she is “forestalling critics.” I’ve seen similar disclaimers in a few novels over the years. I think readers want authors to play fair. If you need to change a date or put a historic character somewhere they weren’t admitting it lets the reader suspend the disbelief in concert with the writer.
lmadden–I love Kate Atkinson! Very smart. Cover your butt if you’re messing with history.
But I am not in any way advocating for historical inaccuracy. Just telling writers not to let details take over the story. 5 pages describing a reticule would definitely turn off a Romance reader. They wouldn’t care if it was realistic or not.
JR–Tragedy has its own order. At least that’s what Aristotle wrote. It allows catharsis. “A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.” That’s what I mean by order. Not a HEA ending.
Historical novels need meticulous details. Just not too many. 🙂
There’s nothing realistic about a tribe of Great Apes adopting an orphaned child. Most likely, they’d eat him or kill him. But Burroughs made it believable by having a female ape who had just lost her own offspring adopt the hairless white child. Clarence Mulford made Hopalong Cassidy believable, but avoided the danger of realism in the most practical way: he was never in the Old West. He wrote the first story in Maine and all the rest were from his homes in the East.
As for my own bows to realism, I try to make my characters’ actions realistic for the person they are. A brilliant and observant man will not be taken by surprise by an assassination attempt by life-long enemies just because they arrive under a white flag.
Fred Waiss–Hopalong Cassidy was born in Maine! I love it. I grew up in Waterville. 🙂 I loved those TV cowboy shows. I didn’t want to be a cowboy, though. I wanted to be a cat burglar. I loved to climb things. I agree about Tarzan. Not realistic. But believable in the context of the story.
I have changed some things for the purpose of story. I won’t go into my complaints about almost every man in 14th Scotland being named William (only a slight exaggeration) so I have changed a few names or a few dates. I always include historical notes with explanations of the origins of the story and any liberties I have taken. I think, however, it is a mistake to try to make rules about ‘good fiction’ because there will *always* be someone or a lot of someone who come along shouting “what about X, Y, and Z”. I don’t like arguing with Anne because she is very knowledgeable and much of what she says is right, but I just can’t agree that all ‘good’ fiction has a happy outcome.
JR–Every man in 14th century Scotland was named William? My Scots ancestors were named William too! Does make a problem in a novel. 🙁
I’m not advocating for happy endings! I’m talking about order. As I said before: tragedy has its own order. It allows catharsis. Aristotle said “A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.” That’s what I mean by order. Not a HEA ending.
“My own favorite genre is classic mysteries, because the evildoer is always caught and when the story ends, all is right with the world.” Classic mysteries are also my favorite genre to read and to write. In a world where justice is not always served, I love stories that remind us that we shouldn’t give up the fight.
Kay–A woman after my own heart. They “remind us that we shouldn’t give up the fight”. Exactly. Very well put!
This: “But often when we have lovely thoughts and plans growing in our heads, a giant something comes out of the Universe and stomps out our lovely hopes and dreams.
Everybody has experienced it and that makes that opening scene utterly believable.”
Oh my goodness, Anne – you’ve made me see something I sensed but didn’t quite ‘get’ – does this ever make things clear to me about why I liked Monty P so much! For that alone, this post was worth reading. But lots here to think on. I am (I admit) one of those medical people who are taken out of a story when something medical doesn’t ring true. Can’t help that – I’m sure police feel the same. Thankfully not all readers do. I also love what you said about classic mysteries – oh, that delightful ending that gives us order from chaos! It’s good for the soul, isn’t it?
In my second novel are a few scenes involving a town police sergeant. I consulted with an officer on my local force to make sure that I was presenting the material correctly, just so the scenes rang true. It is important to get stuff like that right. But of course, Anne’s point here is not to make the story so realistic that there’s no story. We want a beginning, a middle, and an end, in a logical sequence that rarely happens in real life – it does leave room for believability in the absurd.
Ain’t it fun?
Melodie–I’m a big fan of accurate detail. It’s what makes a story believable. I just don’t think realism has to take over the story. (It never does with your books. 🙂 ) Is Rowena walking through a wall into another time and place realistic? Nope. But is it believable in the context of your story? Absolutely. Would somebody really rip her bodice as many times as Rowena? Probably not. But it’s a bodice, not an anachronistic t-shirt, so it’s believable within the story.
I think, too, that whether it is realistic depends a bit on the reader. A middle aged woman might not understand why a teenage boy did something dangerous that he absolutely did not need to do, but a teen reader might see that as a realistic response to boredom.
Julia–Good point! And it also depends on genre. As I said, gumshoes who get hit on the head a lot are believable in noir mysteries, but would not be in a medical thriller.
Golly, Anne, you sure get a lot of comments; probably has something to do with your great posts. Do you think a story about a pig running for POTUS against a piggish fellow is beyond the reality pale? (BTW, I’m back at it, in the midst of revision, hope to get it finished and out there in the “real world” in a couple of months.
Steve–Randy Wurst lives?! I’m so glad. Your story of a pig running for office becomes more believable every day! Good to hear you’re doing well.
This advice is something I really need to keep in mind. I’ve been setting my mysteries in Braga, Portugal, and I always try to supply details that give a reader a real sense of the place. But sometimes I’m not sure where to draw the line – it’s tempting to provide too many – so this is a helpful reminder.
Elizabeth–Portugal would be a fun setting! When your setting becomes one of the characters in a novel, you do want enough details that a reader can do some virtual travelling, so you may want to add more details than usual.
Anne, hope you’re keeping well.
Another great post! I’ve gotten very lax with commenting lately but wanted to thank you for this one.
Researching is my favourite part of writing and to get over my need to share every single intriguing thing I’ve learned on a specific topic, I plonk it all down in the first draft then cut the bulk of it out in subsequent drafts.
I particularly like the section, ‘Most People Read to Escape’. Who wants realism when we’re surrounded by it all day long?
A reader in a short story writing community questioned my use of the word ‘adorn’ for a character saying it sounded more like a poet and not a guy who takes good care of his horse. It took me a long while to come up with a diplomatic reply.
Joy–It is annoying when people think they know more about what your character would say than the author does, isn’t it?
You know what you can do with your research? Put it in a blog or newsletter. That way you create buzz for your new book and get to use all that good material.
Thanks for commenting. I always appreciate your comments.
Superb advice, Anne. Isn’t the ratio something like 60 pages of research = 1-2 paragraphs? The writer may need to know how or why x, y, z happens to create believability, but the reader doesn’t. My new psychological thriller goes on preorder today, in which the MC uncovers a gut-wrenching reality. So, I balanced those hard truths with some of the most hilarious scenes I’ve ever written. Otherwise, the book wouldn’t be a fun, action-packed escape from reality. Balance is key, IMO.
Sue–Congrats on the launch of your new book! I know you do meticulous research for your true crime books, so I’ll bet your thriller has all the right details. I hadn’t heard that 60 pages = 1-2 paragraphs statistic, but it sounds about right.
How fun that you could put some humor scenes into the thriller. You’re right that people want fun as well as action. Balance is the magic word.
Good stuff here, as usual. I’m researching the lifestyles of the people of Jerusalem during Jesus’s time for my historical novel, and finding a lot of satisfaction in “sprinkling in” a lot of the factual, realistic details to make my characters come alive in a real place. But whenever I wonder if my character would do this or that – a real person of that day, about whom we know very little – I remind myself that this is fiction. The realistic details must feed the impetus of the story line, not the other way around. My critique group, to whom I feed a chapter a month, is invaluable in their feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes I have too much narrative. Most of the time, I need more dialog. It’s putting me through my paces, but I’m having a blast.
Sally–Your book sounds fascinating. Historical fiction does need those realistic details. Lovely that you have a critique group who “get” your fiction and know what works and what doesn’t. I think dialog is more difficult with historical fiction. Especially when they’re speaking ancient languages. Obviously if you were really going for realism, they’d be speaking in languages like Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin, but I don’t think your readers would appreciate that. 🙂
What’s been fun about this project is that my critique group says that the story sounds like “right now,” not in the modern sense but in the sense that everybody lives in modern times. It is “right now” for my characters. I am cautious to avoid anachronistic terms and references, but for the sake of making it readable, I refer to time by “am” and “pm” and “o’clock” and distances in “miles.” I will ultimately include a glossary for more unfamiliar terms and probably some notes on certain aspects. At this point, I’m including a few Hebrew or Aramaic words – described in context – to add to the atmosphere.
You may be familiar with the work of novelists who wrote historical fiction of Biblical times – “Ben Hur” by Lew Wallace in 1866 and 20th Century authors like Lloyd C. Douglas (“The Robe”), Mika Waltari (“The Egyptian”), and Taylor Caldwell (“Dear and Glorious Physician”). That style has always appealed to me as a reader. I feel like I am there with the main character (or inside his head).
Sally–Oh, I loved all those books! Especially Ben Hur (and I didn’t like the movie as much, because they had to leave so much out.) I also devoured Quo Vadis and I, Claudius. Big historical sagas like those really take you time travelling.
I disagree. I like actual realism. Granted there may be fantastic elements, but they should have a realistic set of knock-on effects. A romantic character who is better than real people is fine, but he should carry out his superior deeds in a realistic manner. The less unreality in a story that is not essential to the plot, the better. I love Superman comics, but I do wish they were more realistic. And, yes, believability and verisimilitude are important. But so is realism.
I know most people don’t care and get butthurt when you criticize fiction for a lack of realism, but frankly I think particle physics and economics are more interesting than most fiction. I often prefer reading nonfiction to reading/watching the schlock that gets shat out by the popular media. I get irritated when guns don’t work right in films, because I know how guns work. I get irritated when people get instantly knocked out easily and also never suffer brain damage or death from such blows.
I don’t ‘suspend my disbelief’. If you introduce fantastic elements I want them to be consistent, coherent, and interact with the environment in realistic ways, not just believable ones.
Ricky–Why read or write fiction if you don’t love it? Nonfiction pays much better. 🙂 Keep reading those particle physics books! You may come up with a scientific breakthrough humanity is waiting for. I believe we’re drawn to the intellectual pursuits that allow us to be our best selves.
I love this. It is so true.
Yes, the research for historical fiction is immense. I’ve written 2 historical fiction novels. I am pleased to say that some of the reviewers for both say that they thought they are well researched.
Sally, I totally agree. One critiquer commented about one of my historical novels, set in Roman Briton. She said that modern readers would be disturbed, if not put off by marriage at the tender age of thirteen. But that was not uncommon at that time, and through the medieval period.
You cannot alter historical facts because a few readers might be disturbed by it.
VM–I heartily agree that you can’t alter historical facts because people might be offended by it. There are people banning books because they contain unpleasant facts about slavery and the holocaust. We can’t give in to the “permanently offended” community by attempting to erase history. As they say, people who don’t study history are likely to repeat it.
Sometimes people think they know more about YOU than you do, which is a weird mix of funny and frustrating. (This generally ends up with unwarranted advice: “You should do this” or “You must do that.”) Who died and put them in charge, anyway?
More than once I’ve experienced my last name re-spelled, both before and after marriage, even though I’ve provided the correct spelling in print. The funniest instance of that was an automated sales flier mailed to a friend of mine whose sales-and-service business was Arlington Lawn Mower: “Dear Mr. Arlington L. Mower …”
That kind of material sends my friends at Typo Squad into hysterics.
Sally–I love Mr. Arlington L. Mower! That could make a great name in a novel. A guy keeps getting mail addressed to Mr. Mower, so he applies for a credit card, then uses the fake identity to commit crimes. Who could prosecute a lawn mower?
I so much agree about the people who think they know you–or your characters–better than you do. “Oh, your MC would never do that!” Oh, really? When did this become your book?
There are readers who *want* to smell the bear poops and like their fiction gritty. The point of some fiction is that the world is not necessarily a nice place where the good guys come out on top. I agree that sort of fiction is not everyone’s cup of tea. It obviously is not yours, which is fair enough. However, people who write stories where the good guys do not come out on top in the end are not doing it wrong. A lot of those novels do sell well.
JR–Absolutely! That’s why I have a whole section that says this exactly. It has a subheader that says “Gritty Realism Has its Place”.