Realism

I love to read all varieties of fiction, but in my own writing, I strive for realism. No big mysteries, no magical worlds–just regular people doing pretty regular things. I try to put words in people’s mouths that no one would be shocked to overhear and give them emotions to which we can all relate or at least understand. Sometimes it’s very easy and requires almost no thought. Other times I agonize over the smallest of plot points, trying to separate myself from the story just enough to get some perspective.

As I’m planning out stories, I sometimes think, “Damn! Real life is boring.” It’s partly true. Most of us do the same things every day. We drive the same places, eat the same food, and even think the same thoughts. But, then I think about my own life. I live a very small life, yet so much has happened to me. I’m changing all the time. I’m very different even from the person I was at the beginning of this year. Real life provides a lot of drama, even from the undramatic like me.

So, you’ve got real life as you experience it, and it’s hard enough to get a grip on that enough to turn it into fiction. But, then you’ve got real life as you’ve seen it in books and art and movies. You’ve experienced the second almost as long as you’ve experienced the first, and they’re both very powerful. In fictionalized reality, like tv and movies, things happen very distinctly. People have big feelings and they act on them. There are resolutions and they are sharp. Emotion seems to follow some king of logic.

Many of us think in these terms. We try to apply movie logic to real life, and we end up frustrated and disappointed. Things really aren’t fair. You can have big feelings and they can go unrequited until they slowly fade away. People are depressed for reasons that don’t make any sense by movie standards, and they have good and bad days that, similarly, follow no logic. Things don’t separate so easily into good and bad or past and present. There’s just so much gray, and no matter how things turn out, you still have to wake up every morning and eat food and go to work and use the bathroom.

Knowing these two realities do not match, but not always being able to separate them, it’s hard to think of how to move forward in my own fiction.