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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18133
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

For me, it all comes down to emotional reality, which can have very little to do with the externals of the scene. When I watch a big Hollywood blockbuster where the lone hero takes on an enormous CGI army with just his trusty sword, it leaves me completely cold, because nothing makes that big army feel emotionally real to me.

On the other hand, to use one of my favorite examples, the key moment in Nabakov's _Lolita_ is when the otherwise unrepentant narrator experiences a brief moment of clarity and unselfish remorse. It doesn't matter that it's entirely internal, or that his awareness of what he has done wrong is so dim and incomplete, the emotional reality of this character as utterly self-indulgent has been so well established that this little breakthrough comes across as a major event. Similarly, in _Remains of the Day_, the story of a missed love affair between an emotionally repressed butler and a housekeeper, the tiniest expressions of affection feel earthshaking, because of the emotional realism of their context.

In your story, it doesn't matter what the actual obstacles are to Steve, they must feel real and decisive to him, and possess emotional reality for the reader. His overcoming of those barriers must involve some price with real emotional weight.

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