The edges of reality

[Colleen Thomas]

When i write, i try to provide realism, within the context of the story. So if I am doing a period piece, I study the priod. If I am doing a fantasy piece, I make sure I am consistant with reguards to the world and I try, within limits to mek the combat sequences as true to life as I can. In my sci-fi too, I work for a realistic enviornment for my characters to interract in.

I'm not feeling the greatest, and the words just aren't coming, so I decided to just find a story to read today. Everything I opened seemed to just aggravate me and I was about to write it all off as just feeling bad, when the threme that was annyoying me in the works suddenly stood out. The all dance on the very edge of the realistic. So much suspension of disbelief is needed to give them a chance.

I know, as authors, we strive for suspension of that disebelief, but I got to wondering, how close to the edges can you come, before your skill isn't enough? Do you know? Or is it something you simply have to feel your way through with each different work?

For me, I think it's a feel thing, more than a know thing. I can sometimes feel I am at the outer reaches of what I can write away. I was just wondering how you guys deal with it?

 

[impressive]

I've never created a fantasy world, but I felt I pushed the boundaries of that "suspension of disbelief" in Erotique ... where the sex toys were "haunted" by memories of past users. Bel & I pushed the limits in our gender-swap piece Switch, too.

 

[Recidiva]

I think for everyone it's a little different, but it does start to feel like manipulation and it makes me crabby.

I think it has to do with whether or not it's determined to be real for the character, or just a thin pretext for the author/artist to do something they want to do, and they couldn't be creative enough to put it into place, they just grafted it onto any vehicle they thought would carry it a few pages.

 

[neonlyte]

Truth is occassionally so strange it reads as fiction, unbelievable fiction.

The project I'm currently working on brings together a range of very 'odd' events and places. All of the events happened and all of the places exist, weaving a credible story between them, without causing the reader to suspend belief, is hard but enjoyable work.

For my 'nude day' story I'm taking the opposite tact, a completely unbelievable situation strung together by the human emotions readers are familiar with, will be interesting to see how it is received.

 

[rgraham666]

I go by feel as well.

It helps that I spend a lot of time thinking about the story before I start to write. I can catch a lot of inconsistencies before that.

And the world becomes very real to me. Which I believe helps the realism. It's where the characters live and so they don't find it an odd place. This helps the reader suspend belief.

My $0.02.

 

[3113]

On the one hand, good writing requires verisimiltude, otherwise the reader can't suspend their disbelief (always reminding ourselves that the amount of disbelief they can suspend for Harry Potter is different than the amount they can suspend for Lord of the Rings or "Brokeback Mountain").

HOWEVER, I think we writers can get obsessed with making things real to the point where we lose sight of the fact that we are creating ART, not reality, FICTION, not fact. When this happens we start bogging the story down with factual information. We mention the lice and the rats and the open sores and sewers even when they're not relevant to moving the story along. We frontload long passages of historical information about the kind of fish in the rivers, the methods of dying cloth, the way horses were trained in order to convince the reader that they are there!

Such things can be well written, fascinating, and of use to the reader....but only IF it doesn't bring the story to a stop.

Worse of all, we tack on tragic endings in the mistaken belief that happier ones are fantastic, and only sad ones can ever be "realitistic."

All stories dance on the edge of reality...even novelized masterpieces like In Cold Blood which tells about real people, places and events. You don't record the sounds of the street and play them back and say: "This is my symphony." You don't show the evening news clips and say, "This is my movie." You take those sounds/video clips and arrange them into something new and meaningful to create that music/movie, that art.

That's what people picking up a story want--at whatever level they want it at. As light and far from the edge as Harry Potter or as heavy and near to that edge as In Cold Blood. What the story needs, you give it. That's the only law.

 

[JackHarrison]

When i write, i try to provide realism, within the context of the story. So if I am doing a period piece, I study the priod. If I am doing a fantasy piece, I make sure I am consistant with reguards to the world and I try, within limits to mek the combat sequences as true to life as I can. In my sci-fi too, I work for a realistic enviornment for my characters to interract in.

I'm not feeling the greatest, and the words just aren't coming, so I decided to just find a story to read today. Everything I opened seemed to just aggravate me and I was about to write it all off as just feeling bad, when the threme that was annyoying me in the works suddenly stood out. The all dance on the very edge of the realistic. So much suspension of disbelief is needed to give them a chance.

I know, as authors, we strive for suspension of that disebelief, but I got to wondering, how close to the edges can you come, before your skill isn't enough? Do you know? Or is it something you simply have to feel your way through with each different work?

For me, I think it's a feel thing, more than a know thing. I can sometimes feel I am at the outer reaches of what I can write away. I was just wondering how you guys deal with it?

You do sci-fi? Neat. I love that stuff.

 

[oggbashan]

What you are experiencing is possibly not a consistent failure of the authors, but a reflection of your own mood.

Sometimes no author can get me to suspend disbelief, nor a film director, nor a playwright.

I have to be in receptive mode to get into the story, even by classic authors I enjoy.

When I feel like that - I read non-fiction, particularly history of the 'I was there' school. Personal accounts of events can take you there even if the writing isn't perfect.

Og

 

[Liar]

I test all I write on the auditorium of---moi. It doesn't always have to be waterproof and correct, but if it's plausible enough for me to not lose my focus on empathy for the characters and plot, then it's close enough to the real deal to do the job.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Some clever person once told me that it was less important that my characters' actions seem realistic in the abstract - "Is it realistic for a person to do X?" - that for me to write them so that it is realistic for that specific person. It was excellent advice and has been very useful to me.

I'd add to that thought that worlds work something like that as well. Some worlds we expect to be quite realistic, whereas others we expect to have strange and unusual events. I think that part of what makes a fantasy world work is internal consistancy - i.e., it doesn't have to have the same rules as our world, but it has to have rules and they need to fit together - and part of it is building the right reader expectation. Part of one's style and setting is the communication to the reader of the rules that will be in effect. If I begin with a gritty, realistic, carefully detailed series of technical manuevers on the part of a pilot, then my audience expects high realism and close attention to detail. If, on the other hand, I'm Roald Dahl and choose to start James and the Giant Peach with the statement that the protagonist's parents were eaten by a rampaging rhinoceros in broad daylight in the middle of the shopping district, I'm telling my readers that realistic probability is not to be taken seriously.

The works that grate on me are the ones that mismatch that issue - that tell me that they're going to be serious and factual and are inaccurate, or that promise to be playful and a touch surreal and turn out to be pedestrian.

Shanglan

 

[CharleyH]

When i write, i try to provide realism, within the context of the story. So if I am doing a period piece, I study the priod. If I am doing a fantasy piece, I make sure I am consistant with reguards to the world and I try, within limits to mek the combat sequences as true to life as I can. In my sci-fi too, I work for a realistic enviornment for my characters to interract in.

I'm not feeling the greatest, and the words just aren't coming, so I decided to just find a story to read today. Everything I opened seemed to just aggravate me and I was about to write it all off as just feeling bad, when the threme that was annyoying me in the works suddenly stood out. The all dance on the very edge of the realistic. So much suspension of disbelief is needed to give them a chance.

I know, as authors, we strive for suspension of that disebelief, but I got to wondering, how close to the edges can you come, before your skill isn't enough? Do you know? Or is it something you simply have to feel your way through with each different work?

For me, I think it's a feel thing, more than a know thing. I can sometimes feel I am at the outer reaches of what I can write away. I was just wondering how you guys deal with it?

Good question. I write about something I know, normally a lot about what I know, but every once in a while I diverge into parody, or sci-fi - and yet? it's all still based on something I know and O is turning lights off as dinner is ready. I will try - try (no promise) to get back to this thread. Great question, Colly!

 

[gauchecritic]

The key phrase is 'within the context'.

People falling out of aeroplanes and surviving, people forming vigilante groups to victimise others of different colour, three people, one after the other diving into sub zero waters to save one other, people working in holes two feet high using home made explosives to blast free coal. There are lots of incredible things that happen in reality and if it wasn't for the fact of their existence you would be hard pressed to suspend your disbelief of them.

I like hard science fiction; The Roads Must Roll, The Dosadi Experiment, Who, Mission of Gravity, but I also very much enjoy sweeping grand scifi where the worlds are sketchy and the machinery only pencilled in; Do Androids.., The Ship Who... series most of the Foundation books.

I think the word is 'perspective'.

I personally don't want to read about machines and inventions, I want to read about the people that they affect and how they work with them.

And sometimes reading isn't what I want to do.

 

[R. Richard]

The best scifi operates from what is called "one big lie." The author is allowed one big lie. He/she can create a situation, up to and including an entire universe. However, once the one big lie is used, the rest has to be consistent. If you want faster than light travel, fine. However, you then have to deal with the relativistic effects in a realistic fashion.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

What you are experiencing is possibly not a consistent failure of the authors, but a reflection of your own mood.

Sometimes no author can get me to suspend disbelief, nor a film director, nor a playwright.

I have to be in receptive mode to get into the story, even by classic authors I enjoy.

When I feel like that - I read non-fiction, particularly history of the 'I was there' school. Personal accounts of events can take you there even if the writing isn't perfect.

Og

I think in this case, the original problem was just me. I've been naucous and feeling very sick all day and it probably wasn't a good time to try and read.

I'll go back and look at some of thse when I am in a good mood and see.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Truth is occassionally so strange it reads as fiction, unbelievable fiction.

The project I'm currently working on brings together a range of very 'odd' events and places. All of the events happened and all of the places exist, weaving a credible story between them, without causing the reader to suspend belief, is hard but enjoyable work.

For my 'nude day' story I'm taking the opposite tact, a completely unbelievable situation strung together by the human emotions readers are familiar with, will be interesting to see how it is received.

Oh hell! Now you've got me hooked... (cant believe I'm saying this!) when does the Nude Day contest start?!?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I grew up on sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books. I have only three requirements for any kind of fantasy:

(1) It not be cliche. The whole purpose of fantasy is to break cliches, or why even bother with it? Personally, I'm sick to death of sexy vampires and Lord Ravenscroft's incredible swordsmanship.

(2) The characters' actions must make sense in the context of the story. All stories are about human beings, and they'd better act like human beings. The farther they get from human, the less patienbce I have with the, and the more they lurch into the realm of cliche. Harry Potter is interesting not for his magical abilities, but for the problems they present to his very human feelings and emotions.

(3) No deus ex machina. Miracles aren't allowed.

I lost interest in Superman when it occurred to me that, yes, maybe he can lift an entire skyscraper and fly it around on one finger, but there's no way he's going to be able to counterbalance it with the mass of his body, If they'd told me that he had to power to increase his mass, I might have been happy, but not even Supes can change the laws of physics. He would have fallen right over.

By the way-- Rule # 3 applies to any sort of fiction. Not just fantasy. I don't want to see any sort of stoiry where the plot's resolved by some miracle. That's not how stories work.

 

[Aurora Black]

(3) No deus ex machina. Miracles aren't allowed.

God, I love that term. Try and guess why. I dare you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I don't know. I think there's suspension of disbelief and then there's pushing reality's boundaries or some other way of distinguishing. Essentially there are stories with "it just works okay" explanations and then there's stories where they take what you think you know about how a reality works and twists it in a nice corkscrew. Phillip K Dick was pretty good at the latter and Douglas Adams in his own way made it work too. Heck, even "it just works" can work like in Kafka or the other surreal writers.

I suppose what I really mean is there is reality bending and suspension of disbelief that results from good writing and which doesn't. The former you can forgive easily because it's the point. Wandering into a Kafka or a Bradbury story and hit with the premise that the main character was somehow turned into a bug in the middle of the night or that everyone on the Earth somehow woke with the knowledge that the world was going to end, you go "sounds good and then?" Something by a worse writer, especially about something not integral to the plot or seemingly unintended or just badly thought out like getting out of a snake pit because a character revealed a sudden aptitude for magics without warning and without setup halfway through a book and you're more likely to throw a book at a wall.

I love the former types of books a whole ton and have an obsession for the surreal in many cases and in my writing toy almost exclusively in fantasy worlds or at least unreal portions of this one. Thus realism plays a lot less part for me than it usually does, but nonetheless I know the feeling Colly alludes to. The point where the demands for suspension run into problems and one just goes gah. That point is probably farther for me than most but there are still times (usually when the characters go against their established personalities) when you just want to throttle the book and its author.

 

[Aurora Black]

Nice to see I didn't kill this one.