Controversy Time

[rolanni]

This subject has come up in three different conversations, under three different guises in the past 24 hours, so I thought I'd bring it here and see what y'all think.

What, exactly, is with the need to have stories be "realistic"?  I mean -- a news story, that has to be "realistic," because you're reporting facts; events that actually happened, words that were actually spoken, actions that were actually taken or not taken. 

A fictional story, though -- note the use of the word fictional, as in science fiction -- that can be any dern thing the author wants it to be, provided she can bring it off.  Back when I was learning how to write, there was this thing that readers brought to a story called, "The willing suspension of disbelief," which is that piece of human consciousness that says, "Tell me a story."

It's not my job as a science fiction writer to teach piloting, or math, or genetics, or, heck, the fine art of gambling.  It's my job to tell the best dern story I can, right now, and if I do it right, and don't jostle the elbow of that  willing suspension of disbelief, then the story will deliver an emotional punch far different, and (IMNSHO) far deeper than that delivered by a "factual" story.

To recap -- I don't care if the premise of "The Cold Equations" is "realistically" flawed, or if the "realistic" math "proves" that that 98 pounds of extra cargo wouldn't make a bit of difference in the med ship reaching its port.  What I care about is the melant'i play -- the working out of the relationships; the exploration of human error, and necessity.

What about you?  Does a story have to be "realistic" in terms of what we know now in order to engage your interest and your heart?  Why or why not?

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I think a story has to be "realistic" in terms of what the characters do. That means "realistic" to _them_. Doesn't have to be what I would do in that situation...

As far as other values of "realistic" -- well, how many selkies have _you_ seen off the stern and rockbound coast of Washington County?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I think a story has to be "realistic" in terms of what the characters do. That means "realistic" to _them_.

Of course. The story has to be internally consistent and what the characters do have to make sense to themselves and, through them, to the reader.

how many selkies have _you_ seen off the stern and rockbound coast of Washington County?

Who can tell? To be sure, I'd either have to see them coming out or going into the water, yes? Otherwise, a fisherman on the street, or a seal on a rock...could be exactly what they seem -- or not.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

I'm a strong believer in the "willing suspension of disbelief" when reading. I don't see how anyone can read science fiction, or even more, fantasy, without doing that. Maybe "realistic" isn't the right word. "Believeable" I think is a better word. "Believeable" in the context of can the author make me believe that this is an appropriate action/tool/result/whatever in the universe/setting of this story/book.

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

You hit the nail on the head. Too many people have confused "Believable" with "Realistic".

And they've forgotten that often Reality isn't Believable OR Realistic.

Doc

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I can sort of sympathize with people who see realistic flaws in science fiction, in that if (for instance) someone writes something that I absolutely know to be false in my areas of expertise, it jerks me out of the spell of the story (telling me, for instance, that you're using turpentine to clean your watercolor brushes). Though the subset of human beings who could be irritated that way by the level of math/science typical to a science fiction story is much narrower than people who know that you shouldn't microwave foil, they do exist.

Nevertheless, I think fixating on those details is a bad thing, so if an author makes a logical error but the characters are still compelling, I forgive them and see what they do with the story. But I'm easy-going that way. :)

[sraun]

I can do willing suspension of disbelief - usually. There are some things that will snap me out of it.

One of them is in the first Pern book - Lessa Jumps back 250 (or some such) number of years, in one swell foop. And just barely survives the experience. The assembled Weyrs then time jump forward with her, in many smaller jumps. There's a two page chapter I have to skip every time - because McAffrey blew basic arithmetic! If you do the math - which I do automatically - they've only done enough jumps to be about half-way to their destination, and they're almost there - they're resting before doing their last jump forward, and it's going to be only about half the length of the jumps they've been doing. Not good.

So, I can forgive a lot - but it is possible to snap my disbelief suspenders. The farther the story is from modern day, the harder they are to snap. And there are things that will bother me about a story after it's finished that won't bother me in the middle of it - these make me less likely to re-experience (read or watch) the story, but usually don't interfere with the initial enjoyment.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Sophisticated readers want to believe in the story, is how I see it. They want to be able to play too.

It's like, if a story is set on the streets where I live, I'm going to be punched out if someone puts a hotel where the park is that I walk the dogs in every day; if they do their research and put the park in, and the characters have a scene in it, I get that frisson of truth...and perhaps I can even enjoy the story the more because next time I walk the dogs, I can imagine the scene as I pass by.

Problem is, when readers are really experienced readers, and smart, it takes a whole lot more to convince them.

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. I guess one of the things I've been thinking about recently is how broken the Star Wars universe feels to me. It's really nothing to do with the authors. It's just that I cannot believe anymore than in a galaxy with thousands of inhabited planets, where people live by the billions of trillions, that main characters could be familiar with the obscure little things about the other side of the galaxy that they do. To know who local rulers, smugglers, prominent citizens, on hundreds of worlds, is just more than I can imagine. Let alone things like being able to give very small ships unique but generic names. The stories are intensely personal, about individuals affecting galaxies, but it feels as if it's the story of how the deployment of one soldier to Iraq managed to change the entire war. If you want to write at the "thousands of planets" scale, I think Asimov's Foundation series does it a lot better.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Speaking only for myself, to me "realistic" doesn't mean that a fantasy story has to step off the pages into our own world and be able to survive there without artificial respiration. "Realism" in fantasy means inner consistency - the world has to be "Real" to its characters, and if that is managed competently within the story, that's fine with me.

As for science fiction... let me share a titbit for you from back when Mary Doria Russell was writing the Jesuits-in-space books. She had a correspondence with no less than Arthur C Clakke about something that luminary thought it necessary to point out to her as being "unrealistic" in her novels. She wrote back that she was using a FTL drive for her ships, which made every other attempt at realism rather, well, futile - since she couldn't prove or justify the physics behind the thing her story depended on. She got back a reply, "Mary 1, Art 0".

In other words, make it "true". "Real" will follow at its own pace. ANd if anyone else has a problem with that, they can always go read "Da Vinci's Code"...

[shadowhelm.livejournal.com]

For me, the story has to make sense. It has to have a premise and a set of rules that can't be broken unless that's what the story is about, the breaking of those rules.

I can accept magic and magic systems if they don't violate their own rules and I can even accept alternate history. Come to think of it, I can accept quite a bit if the story is good.

[pimpcook.livejournal.com]

For me, "realistic" means to not constantly stress my willing suspension of disbelief with something that couldn't happen according to the "rules" which the author seems to have set down.
For example, if you have a character who has never fired a gun or swung a sword in their life snapping off shots on the run and mowing down trained military forces or cutting down soldiers by the dozens, that is unrealistic. Technically, by our laws of physics, it could happen. I just don't believe it.
Now, if the author has provided some REASON, such as supernaturally enhanced reflexes or a spell where time is slowed down for them, whatever, then I find that to be much more realistic.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Does a story have to be "realistic" in terms of what we know now in order to engage your interest and your heart?

I think the key words here are "in order to engage your interest and your heart." To me, this is what fiction is about.

Good science fiction is driven both by interesting extrapolation and by engaging characterization. It seems to me that lots of people, lately, are getting hung up on precisely what "extrapolation" means; they get hot under the collar about which sorts of extrapolation are and aren't acceptable or, for the purposes of this discussion, realistic. This speaks to an interest in the quality of the science in science fiction. But it doesn't speak to the quality of the fiction in a broader sense. And, personally, I think they're emphasizing the wrong thing or, at least, they're concentrating on only one half of the equation, which makes for an imabalanced perspective. If the extrapolation—no matter what kind—is interesting and internally consistent (which many respondents here have mentioned), then it'll work for me.

The point that another respondent made—about how once you accept FTL travel, other stuff is, at the very least, permissable—is to the point of the question, too. If we can imagine it, we can write about it. In fact, I think we should write about it, about how it affects history and society and personal relationships. Whether or not something is "realistic" or "believable" is totally subjective; everyone's metric is different. Scaling our stories according to someone else's idea of what is and isn't realistic is just deadly. It's a recipe for failure. One must write to one's own standard; either the markets will buy the story or they won't, but you as a writer have told the story you need to tell.

So I guess my thinking is, if a writer can make her argument convincingly to me (for whatever measure of "convincing" I may need), I'll be engaged. And as a writer, I'll do the best I can to sell the realism of my work, but that means making my story internally consistent, which is how realism stands or falls in fiction. If I do my job, then my work will be invisible to the reader and the story will work on its own merits.

Some people aren't going to buy FTL drive or interspecies communication or Jurassic Park-level genetic manipulation. They won't buy your fiction no matter what. Those who are willing to suspend their disbelief will go on the ride with you for as long as you can sustain their attention.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I think characters need to not be so blatantly stupid that I'm thrown out of the story, but otherwise, almost anything is game. My problem with "The Cold Equations" isn't the science -- I'm willing to buy that that's how that universe works -- but that given the science, it would be that easy to sneak onto a spaceship. There'd be guards and a lock on the door at the least, surely -- and people would have some knowledge of the consequences, too, because they would be a big deal. (Also, in a story that's specifically exploring the fact that numbers don't have any give, I'm more likely to care that the numbers used in fact do have give, than if those numbers that are used in a story about space pirates, say.)

Otherwise, yeah, I don't care about complete realism and get impatient with folks that do. I want just enough to give me the illusion it's real -- how much is enough varies by story, but no story is going to be completely realistic.

Then, too, it's not like I really understand how a car or airplane works. My characters can use things that work in ways they and I don't fully understand, too.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

To me, realism in fiction is internal consistency. I want to be able to believe in what is happening in the story, because the characters would act in that way. Someone above used the analogy of "Star Wars" as being unbelievable because you wouldn't know what was happening across the galaxy. That is not my issue with "Star Wars". It is the internal inconsistency of the characters. Specifically, Padme, who is such a strong, independent character in Episodes I and II, but becomes a total wimp in Episode III. When did she have the brain transplant?

It might be important to note that I am not a fan of science-driven science fiction, with a handful of exceptions. I find long scientific explanations make a story drag. I end of dropping the book and picking up something else. When I want a lot of math, I read a textbook. I also find it a bit ridiculous to assume that we know everything there is to know about physics or anything else, for that matter. Science is changing all the time, and what we "know" today is a far cry from what our great-grandparents "knew".

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I know people who can't read or watch sf/f in any form because it's not 'realistic.' I define realism differently, I guess - more in line with a number of the comments above. Internal consistency, believeable interaction between characters, etc.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

When I think of a story as being "realistic" I think that, positing the existence of a world as described by the author, this story could happen there. It may not be realistic for OUR world, but it is realistic for A world.

If, on the other hand, the author posits a world sufficiently similar to our own that certain things should be expected to hold true, then they darn well better. Authors are not allowed to view the moonlight streaming through the ship's ports while they're in faster-than-light travel, for example. (See definition of "faster than light") They may not stipulate a lower-than-standard-Earth gravity, and how that makes their hero faster/stronger than the natives, then go on to say that the natives are able to overpower all other Earthlings, because they are a warlike culture with much training at arms. Gravity affects everyone. That's why it's a law, not merely a guideline. :-)

It sort of depends ...

[bonkabonka.livejournal.com]

The Cold Equations is a wonderful bit of speculation that I have to work really, really hard to enjoy. The emotion imbued in that piece is most excellent but the notion that some space-shipping agency would deliberately operate with zero margin for error makes me tear my hair every time I go back and reread it. It's useful to explore the consequences, but it'd never, ever happen IRL because of exactly the situation explored in the story.

There's a quote, something along the lines of: "Anyone can build a bridge, it takes an engineer to build one that only just barely stands up." It makes me chuckle because it's notionally true. Engineers have to balance the margin of safety with the cost of building or operating their design. Thus, Godwin's story frustrates me because of the difficulty in suppressing my training.

When I was back in college, I went to see Twister with some friends at the dollar theater. After the show, we were following a fairly rugged looking individual out (a farmer's son from western Kansas if I had to hazard a guess) who was going on and on about how unrealistic the movie was. Admittedly, I thought some of the special effects were a bit overblown, bit I hurried up somewhat to be sure I caught his reason - "The wheat and the corn were ripe at the same time."

I guess it's all in what you're familiar with. :)

realistic?

[(Anonymous)]

No I do not look for realistic facts in fiction. I look for a great story with characters that I love and care about or at the least I am interested in their welfare and their story.

When someone tells me the story was not realistic, I say, "Did you not notice, it is fiction? an expression of imagination?"

I love your books because I love the characters and cannot wait to find out what they are doing next.

Thanks for many hours of great reading.

Helen Bassett

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I read a lot of science fiction. Obviously, that requires a certain amount of non-reality in the stories.

I don't need realism. I do need what happens in the story to make sense to me. The characters have to behave in a way that seems consistent both with themselves and with the environment they're in. Things that obviously don't make sense tend to make it hard from me to be drawn into the story. What kind of things do that depends on the story in question. If the story is supposedly set in the future of our world, and the science in it is explained, the explanation had better not violate science as we know it without giving a reason. I don't go around trying to pick holes in the science in fiction, but if the holes are so big that they try to swallow me up while I'm reading, that's likely to be a problem for me. If the story takes place in a historical setting, the characters should have attitudes that are appropriate to their time, not ours. Stories set in the present and supposedly in our world need to be more realistic than stories set in imaginary places. If the story is about some subject that I know a lot about, it usually needs to be more realistic to work for me. If there are birds in a story, for example, it distacts me when they do things that are totally inappropriate for the species in question. (A vulture nest in a tree for example, when they're really cavity nesters.) Whatever the setting, I need to be able to believe that the characters would do the things they do. If the story is told well, and I care about what happens to the characters, that's going to make me more foregiving of things that don't make sense. Besides liking stories where I care about the characters, I like stories that make me think about something, whether it be possiblities for the future or the ways that people interact or something else. If thinking about the ideas in the story makes the story fall apart, that doesn't work for me.