A Little Bit of Realism

Last time I gave you a definition of the word "Novel" and then took a piece out of that definition and expounded on it. I'm going to do another piece of that definition,

Definition:
Novel: a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.


I think the best part about books is how they help us escape from the reality around us. Though, our reality is a good place to live, because if you always have your head in the clouds, you'll miss all the wonderful things. However, it's really nice to "get away to another world" every once in a while. And books help us do that. Movies sort of do that, too, but not quite as well as books. Or at least, well-written books. 

This being said, the fiction part of it is why we right. Even in Historical Fiction there's a dramatic amount of that that is fiction, stuff that never happened in History that we know of. Usually, the writer makes a fictional character  to be in a historical event. Fiction is everywhere.  

Our brains are programmed into thinking up fictional and theoretical situations. Stories come naturally, even to the worst of writers. Ever been a little kid, and your parents or teacher asked what happened to that cookie? Crumbs are all over your face and clothes, and yet, you still are able to come with a fictional story of how the dog jumped up and ate the cookie, tackled you and go crumbs on you, and then took off to eat the cookie. 

But then what happens if ALL that you write about is fictitious? With no degree of realism? Everything you wrote was all made up in a jumble of aliens, non-existent planets where the Aliens have zero emotion and walk around like robots. And on the other non-existent planet is robots that have feelings that no humans has ever experienced. Both the Aliens and the Robots work together to conquer another non-existent planet, and then get fried by a star. But no one get hurts. Because the Aliens and Robots are immune to the star's poisonous rays of radiation. 

I wouldn't enjoy reading or writing that book. It's all fantasy jammed onto paper that says nothing about "novel" other than making a certain word count. 

What's the story missing? 
Why does it sound so stupid? (Or maybe to you, it sounds awesome...)

Because it's all made up. It's missing the element of realism that we all want in a book. So aliens don't have emotions at all. Seem plausible. But then when that baby of that mother Alien dies, will she just turn her back on it and walk away, like nothing happened? All created things have emotions. Even animals. They just don't show it in the same way we do. Ever been around a dog that just lost his best dog friend? The two dogs have grown up together, and now his best friend is gone. What does the living dog do? It will act depressed. It's easy to see how sad the dog is. Soon after, if that dog doesn't snap out of it, then it will die, too. So if that alien loses her baby, she's going to feeling something. She won't show it like humans do, but she'll have to have something. Maybe in that, you make the first alien ever to show emotions. This, then would be the start of a long war between the Emotions and the Emotionless. We just added an element of realism.

Why can't we just have a totally ridiculous story with no realism in it? Isn't that "fiction"? Yes, it is "fiction", but it makes it awful to read if we can't relate to the story, even if all we related it a little bit. You readers will want to be able to relate. Don't make it where the reader can relate to the entire story, then that defeats the point of being to "escape". Add all the fiction you want.

"Unicorns, dragons, and elves live in a forest where they have been protected by the fairies for as long as anyone can remember. Then one day, all the fairies are taken out by a mysterious gas that kills them all. This gas isn't gas, but cigarette smoke from a very lost man who is hurting deeply. He stumbles into the forest accidentally, not knowing that he just killed all the fairies. The forest irrupts into mayhem and no one knows what to do, so they go on an evil killing spree. And that's how Unicorns, dragons, and elves came to not like humans. This is why they hide from us all the time."

That doesn't qualify for literature, by the way, but it explains why those fictional characters never show themselves. It seems realistic enough for a human to accidentally stumble upon them, and because he broken the magical force that was protecting them, all their enemies got in. Good excuse for them all to be mad at the human now. It's fictitious, and has a little bit of realism in it.

Don't add too much realism, where it isn't an "escape" for the reader. And don't add not enough realism where the reader can't relate.

I think I repeated myself several times... *shrugs*