Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Use of realism in a fictional setting

+0
−0

I am writing a fictional novel. It is set in many fictional places and the book will have it's own set of rules of physics. However, I feel that if I lose the sense of realism too much there will be no relation between the book and the reader and I will lose their attention. Will I still get a sense of relation and if not, can I get it through another method?

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/15890. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

3 answers

You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.

+0
−0

Realism has several components. Different ones dominate in different genres/settings and among individual readers.

  • (Real) setting accuracy: If you're describing a real place or a time in history, people who know something about that will respond based on how closely you match what they know. If there isn't a lot of noise and traffic on your mid-day NYC streets (and there isn't a plot element that explains that), for example, people aren't going to buy that.

  • Setting plausibility: This is the case you've identified. Basic errors of credibility -- e.g. routine snowstorms in terran tropical climes -- will be noticed by everybody and bother some. Others will be less obvious to some -- e.g. giant creatures that disregard the square-cube law -- but will be just as disruptive as the basic ones to the people who know. This also applies to consequences of plot points; people with medical knowledge may know that your pandemic isn't credible, scientists may know that your meteor strike wouldn't produce the effect you describe, and so on. You need to decide how important this is to your audience.

  • Behavior plausibility: Unless you do a lot of stage-setting to the contrary, people will generally expect your characters to act like people. Your readers have expectations about how "Joe Average Person" would behave in a given situation; that expectation may be reasonable or unreasonable, or uninformed because your characters are different, but this is what they'll be looking for. Seemingly-rational characters behaving irrationally, experts who don't seem to know the basics of their fields, and so on disturb some readers.

  • "Magic" plausibility: People are generally willing to go along with a fantastical setting if they think it's internally consistent. The sorcery in your story can be completely unrealistic (from our perspective) but realistic within your story. You do that by exposing the important rules of your world (ideally through illustration, not long exposition) and then staying consistent with that.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

+1
−0

The term you want is verisimilitude.

Basically, you want to avoid breaking the readers suspension of disbelief. This means that what happens must be consistent to the rules of what can happen that the reader has accepted for the setting. If the story is set in the real world, this is close, but not identical, to realism. You'd still be expected to adhere to genre conventions even if the story is set in the real world.

Even in fictional world the genre matters, for example in science fiction you are expected to warn the readers of the changed parts in advance, in fantasy having the setting consistent with itself is sufficient. In fact, regardless of genre the setting must be self-consistent, but usually it is not necessary to make specific effort because your own experience of how the real world works helps you.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15900. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

+0
−0

I think you will still have a sense of realism. As long as you explain the physics laws/magic laws/whatever differs before they take effect, the reader will know why/how things are happening. As long as your definitions are clear, detailed, and consistent with the effects, you should be fine.

Consider: Any novel that deals with magic has an unknown set of rules. Once those rules are explained to the reader, however, and if the magic follows those rules, things seem perfectly realistic within the novel.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

Sign up to answer this question »