February 7th, 2020
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.
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Love both these posts, RR! Essentials for fiction writers!
February 10th, 2020 at 12:08 pmaw, thanks, Emily!
February 12th, 2020 at 3:46 pmI think 99.9% of the time it IS an inherent good. I really loved Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion, which is partly about this women’s organization that hosts summits etc. I’ve never been a part of that world so I took everything in the book at face value. But then I loaned the book to a friend who has worked at similar real organizations and took issues with how unrealistic it all was in the book. That made me like the book quite a bit less. Because…and here’s the part that makes realism an inherent good…if the author can’t be trusted on one thing, then can you trust the author on anything else? I think what you’re trying to say (and the point I agree with 100%) is that if you’re writing realistic fiction then you want to make the reader believe the made up world is real. And if it doesn’t feel real because you haven’t done your homework or you’ve taken too many liberties fictionalizing things then…poof! you’ve ruined the illusion.
February 22nd, 2020 at 11:05 pmI agree about sustaining the illusion, and just generally being believable across the board–if believable is what the book is supposed to be. I think my concern is to make sure I’m not elevating realism above other forms of fiction–there’s lot of ways to write a great novel, including ones that in no way resemble anyone’s lived reality, but if I DO want to create an extension of lived reality in a book, I want to do an excellent job. That was my somewhat murky point there…
February 24th, 2020 at 2:35 pmLeave a Reply