How can you make an unrealistic setup as realistic as possible?
Seems like a broad question, but hear me out. A while ago, I asked how you could verify information, which was mostly reserved about things that actually exist and/or happen in the real world. This question is reserved for things that absolutely don't exist or happen in the real world at all, and I want to know how you account for these. Example:
The main character in my story is a young woman in her mid-twenties. A lot of bizarre things happen in the story, which make the MC question her own sanity and her own memories. Memory erasure (or suppression, rather) is a thing in this world (as the MC finds out over the story) and over time, it becomes clear that the MC is missing part of her life. Her body also feels weird and alien to her in the beginning and she simply can't explain why.
Turns out she was missing two years from her life and actually went through a whole pregnancy without realizing it. The two years were relatively normal, the pregnancy was also normal, she simply doesn't remember it happening. In her mind, the two year gap is simply "bridged" by a hazy day, so the latest day she can remember before the mind erasure and the earliest day she can remember after the mind erasure seem to have taken place back to back.
Obviously, it's not a realistic setup, but I want to portray her reactions as realistically as possible given this unrealistic setup, and I want to hint at it in a way that makes sense. I asked questions like:
- How would a woman in such a situation feel? How would she notice the difference in her body when the memory gap was closed relatively seamlessly?
- What signs could there be to make her realize something is missing, or that her body changed massively in a time period she can't even remember?
That's it for my example. The real question is, what do you do in these cases, were research is pretty much impossible? How can you handle an unrealistic setup in a realistic way, when you don't know what the real world consequences would be if the unrealistic setup was possible in the real world?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/37366. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
Any "what if" scenario is where your creativity must come to bear. It is for you, as a writer, to consider the questions you ask. The first step is indeed asking the questions. Then you find an answer that seems good to you.
An important element is being internally consistent. The rules of your fantasy are your playground, but they cannot contradict each other.
Now, to answer big questions, I find two things make the task easier:
- Break the large question into smaller questions
- Create more of the world than goes onto the page.
For your example, while your character does't know what happened during those two years, nor that two years are missing, you should know what happened. Has she made some new acquaintance? Has she bought new clothes that are now in her wardrobe? Got rid of something that she now can't find? Has her clothes size changed? What about her friends? What about technology / fashion - has it moved on? What about newspapers / calendar / anything that lists the date?
And so on. Ask questions, and they will guide you. Some of those questions would lend you information that would end up on the page, others would merely inform your writing, without ever showing up. Knowing more, considering possibilities and implications, is what allows you to make your world both interesting and internally consistent. And if it is internally consistent.
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Indirect Research.
It is difficult to investigate compound events; so break them into two events and invent your way out of the rest. One of your events is amnesia, the other is childbirth.
Research the effects of amnesia: It is virtually impossible for anybody to lose two years and think it was a day; they would have to be 100% utterly alone before they disappeared for that to happen. Nobody missed them, they did nothing with anybody, nobody noticed they were gone? I can't even come up with plausible magic for that, it would be too powerful. So if it is true two years seems like a day to her, then her parents, friends, coworkers, siblings, lovers and servants (bartenders, shop keeps, barrista at her coffee shop) can tell her different: "Oh my god! Karen! Where have you been? Do your parents know you're back? Why?! Because we all thought you got kidnapped and probably killed you idiot!"
Second is the effects of childbirth: I think you are glossing over a rather traumatic health event. For pregnancy you can do a lot of research on how that affects a woman's body; particularly breasts and their vagina. For example, 7 Ways Your Vagina Might Change After You Give Birth. e.g. 79% of births cause tearing of the vagina, sometimes severe enough to require surgery.
Nearly all births cause some loosening of the vagina; which women may notice because tampons no longer stay in the vagina as they once did. Some women opt for elective surgery to repair this.
Birth can damage the pelvic floor and produce urinary incontinence (peeing yourself for mild exercise like jumping, laughing, or even walking).
Related to all of the above, some women for years after a birth find orgasms feel weaker, or difficult to achieve at all. Orgasm particularly is powerful rhythmic contractions of muscles in the pelvic floor and vagina that may have been torn and damaged by childbirth; and looseness in their vagina due to childbirth can reduce a woman's pleasure in intercourse or self-stimulation.
By Indirect Research I mean research the components of something you cannot find, and interpolate between them. Also, better imagine the effects of your plot on others besides your MC. Think of how many people you know that might notice if you vanished for two years and then came back. For a typical person in the modern world, that number will be well into the dozens; especially for younger people (that interact with more people than the retired or elderly).
Edit in response to @storbror comment: I did not even consider that she lived through a pregnancy with everybody around her knowing it except for her. A simple calendar on the wall (or Internet) would tell me two years had passed since the last day I remembered. Pile on top of that noticeable changes in my breasts, vagina, tummy, possible stretch marks and in general my own body due to pregnancy. Combine that with changes and newness in other things, like TV shows I like, movies I haven't seen, politics, personnel and decor changes in stores, I know for certain I have lost two years no matter what my memory says.
Thus in my mind this would not make me question my sanity. I would believe I'd been hypnotized or suffered a stroke or amnesia or some other emotional or physical trauma (which I did, it is just a magical version of it).
Thus, the scenario of "I just forgot about a pregnancy and everybody around me forgot" seems so implausible it would definitely break all suspension of disbelief for me, as a reader. The villain would have to be powerful enough to erase or change this specific memory from a hundred minds, not miss anybody, but not powerful enough to erase or change my memory of who I used to be, or counter the physical effects of my pregnancy. That is just too "deus ex machina" to believe.
A girl searching for two lost years is easier to devise: A girl sexually abused by her stepfather runs away at 16, does restaurant work, uses drugs, etc. At 18 she is abducted traveling between cities, say from Seattle to Los Angeles; and wakes up in an alley in LA --- 20 years old, not remembering the abduction or what happened to her in-between. Then she has no friends to notice she went missing, no friends to notice she is back, and although the calender and other global changes will still quickly reveal she has lost two years, it is more plausible she will not immediately notice bodily changes between 18 and 20.
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