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Absolute Write, books, contemporary literature, google images search, Gritty realism, literature, Otherworldly, Real world, realistic portrayal, supernatural elements, writing
This month’s blog chain title is sort of inevitable, Otherworldly talks about things beyond our ken, creatures from other worlds or dimensions. Ghosties, ghoulies and long leggity beasties. It can also refer to alien worlds or wyrd dimensions. There is a lot if scope in this topic.
With all this Gritty Realism about, it is best to have a BIG gun to hand
A question I always ask myself is ‘how finely can you slice alternate dimensions?’ At what point can you say that a particular setting is ‘the real world’ rather than some alternate dimension where things are different?
The answer to that may seem easy – the ‘real world’ is where things happen exactly as they would in the real world. There are no supernatural elements, it is a contemporary setting and the writer has taken great pains to represent a realistic portrayal of the world as it is. This is certainly one possible argument and one which has a lot to support it. I imagine most people reading this will have no issues with this interpretation and to be honest, neither do I. However, I do have an alternative opinion I would like to present:
There no such thing as ‘reality’ in fiction.
Think about that for a while. Yes, writers have striven to represent reality in various different ways. We have had ever darker and grittier portrayals of various aspects of life, all with the aim of ‘showing things like they really are’. However, you have to ask how real that really is. Writers are first and foremost entertainers and entertainers have to entertain. As a result of this requirement, reality sometimes has to take a back seat or even be replaced by something claiming to be it. Just try to type ‘Gritty Realism’ into a Google images search and see what you get. The results may surprise you. It certainly gives an insight into what creative types beleive ‘realism’ is – guns, drugs and, bizarrely, Super Mario…
Douglas Adams put it rather well when he told us about Arthur Dent’s morning in one of his books… Readers do not want to hear about how a character brushes his teeth or how she combs her hair or any one of hundreds of minor acts everyone performs every day in the course of thier lives. They do not want that level of detail unless, and this is important, there is something unusual about that activity which may have a bearing on the plot. If, for example, a character picks up the wrong toothbrush and another character notices this and has paranoid thoughts about whether they really are who they claim to be.
Too much reality, therefore, is an impedence to entertainment. A writer should only be presenting to the reader the things that are relevant to the plot, interesting things that happen. The reality of many people is not interesting enough to portray in writing. Novels, films and TV shows use a ‘normal life’ as a contrast. Our hero begins the story in relative normalcy and then is quickly taken from there into whatever adventures the plot has in store for them. Ideally, you want to make these periods of normal life relatively short lest the reader gets bored waiting for the plot to happen and also insert the occasional little sting to hint at the things to come in order to keep them reading. Arthur Dent’s normal life lasts for approximately two paragraphs before a bulldozer tries to demolish his house and it is not many pages from there to a surreal conversation with Ford in the pub and teleportation onto one of the ships sent to destroy the earth.
And it does not end with sci fi and fantasy. Even in contemporary literature you never see a character undergoing a normal day. There is always some imperative to drive them forward such as a death in the family or a messy relationship which means that they are not undergoing the same sort of normal day the rest of us poor non-characters in literature endure. This is not only the case with literature but also with any narrative form such as TV, movies and theatre. Which leads me back to the original question – these ‘realistic portrayals’ are in fact nothing of the sort. Each universe presented is an alternate dimension to our ‘real’ one. The differences may be explicit (the earth being destroyed by an alien construction fleet) or subtle (the existence of fictional characters in a world otherwise identical to our own) but they are there. The presence of ‘gritty realism’ does not make your fictional world any more real and in fact may make the contrast ever more obvious by highlighting an issue such as drug abuse, rape or violence and exaggerating it for the purposes of entertainment.
So, it may be time to accept that while art may reflect life, it is always going to be a rather distorted reflection as we emphasise elements we consider to be ‘entertaining’ and devalue those which are considered mundane.
OK, chaps, this is a blog chain and so you have to do your duty by God, King and country by contributing to the other blogs on the list. If you don’t, then we will come round your house and kidnap you and put you in the Big Brother house or, worse, on X Factor. You can then experience all the Gritty Realism you like…
Participants and posts:
Ralph Pines: http://ralfast.wordpress.com (post link here)
randi.lee: http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com (post link
here)
Aranenvo: http://www.simonpclark.com (post link here)
pyrosama: http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com (post link here)
hilaryjacques: http://hillaryjacques.blogspot.com (post link here)
meowzbark: http://erlessard.wordpress.com (post link here)
slcboston: http://fleasof1000camels.blogspot.com (post link here)
areteus: https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com (post link
here)
bearilou: http://theglassopossum.wordpress.com (post link
here)
dolores haze: http://dianedooley.wordpress.com (post link
here)
SuzanneSeese: http://viewofsue.blogspot.com (post link here)
bmadsen: http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com (post link here)
Linda
Adams: http://garridon.wordpress.com (post link here)
Alynza: http://www.alynzasmith.blogspot.com (post link here)
Orion
mk3: http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (post link
here)
BBBurke: http://awritersprogression.blogspot.com (post link
here)
SRHowen: http://srhowen1.blogspot.com (post link here)
Damina Rucci:
http://thegraypen.wordpress.com (post link
here)
CJMichaels: http://christinajmichaels.blogspot.com (post link
here)
wonderactivist: http://luciesmoker.wordpress.com (post link here)
Lady Cat:
http://carolsrandomness.blogspot.ca (post link
here)
xcomplex: http://arielemerald.blogspot.com (post link
here)
debranneelliot: http://www.debragrayelliott.blogspot.com (post link here)
Lurking Musings 
All good points, although in the case of the “daily routine” it is only boring if nothing actually happens. But it can be a great set up for busting a reader’s expectations.
Which is my point. Mundanity serves as a contrast and in many books is a very short section at the beginning as character is established. And sometimes, in the case of characters with unusual routines, you can highlight the differences by showing what appears to be a normal routine then slipping in some weirdness (like a character performing their morning ablutions apparently the same as any human and then, instead of cleaning their teeth, taking out a file and using it to smooth their tusks).
Okay, I admit it — I like the photo of the woman with the gun.
I’ll tell her you said that… 🙂 The photo was taken at a live roleplay event I ran many years ago and the gun is actually a replica long flintlock rifle. I had a great deal of trouble finding a photo that typified ‘gritty realism’ or any of the concepts in this post – if you click the google search link you will see what seems to qualify according to google and it makes no sense to me. So, I trawled my personal collection of photography and found this one.
I should say that she does not normally dress like a bag lady who has been dragged through a hedge backwards… that was all the character she was playing in what was a post-apocalyptic setting.
It is a great rifle…
The ladies in that shot were always highly cute anyways though…
“So, it may be time to accept that while art may reflect life, it is always going to be a rather distorted reflection as we emphasise elements we consider to be ‘entertaining’ and devalue those which are considered mundane.”
I think we’re channeling similar thoughts. I just wrote (and am about to launch) a book about an artist who distorts reality in a painting–and brings out truth.
That sounds interesting… if you want some blog space to tell the world about it, feel free to contact me 🙂
It was actually The Simpsons which got me thinking this way a few years back. Because in that the characters largely remain the same but the world changes around them and they seem stuck in a recursive loop of time. Springfield mutates to fit the needs of the story (at one point having a mountain range nearby which is never mentioned again) and the characters are always the same age despite technology moving on to match real world tech… its a weird situation and it triggered thoughts about other situations.
Excellent post. That’s the beauty of fiction–it’s a great way to escape reality. One of my pet peeves in fiction is reading through paragraphs of mundane daily activities. If these small actions draw attention to themselves, then I think there’s something lacking in the scene. Who cares if a character is brushing their teeth, just so long as the dialogue/situation is compelling enough that the reader doesn’t even realize the character is having a hygienic moment. But if that’s ALL they’re doing, I think I’d rather brush my teeth than read further, lol!
Having said that, I will admit to being guilty of doing this when I began writing my first draft. My critique partners set me straight quick!
That is the purpose of editors and crit partners – to slap you when your ego does something stupid 🙂 I think everyone is guilty of such things and you don’t necessarily realise you are doing it until someone points it out to you and many have the opinion that ‘its ok if I do it, cos I do it really well’.
But yes, it is all about making it compelling and much of real life is not compelling. Writing has to focus on the interesting stuff that characters are doing but that leads to a distorted view that the characters are always doing this sort of thing – everytime you see Bob he is always defeating an alien invasion or undergoing a divorce or discovering ancient artificats buried in caves… but those occasions may only be a small proportion of Bob’s life. Most other days he is doing what every other person in the world does.
This is exactly what I have been trying to get across to some of the writers I work with. That not every moment needs to be documented and that even though those things do happen in real life that fiction by its name alone makes it not real life.
Very good post and I did have to do that google search. Amazing what it comes up with.
It did surprise me, yes. I sometimes think that google just randomises when it does not know what you want – hence the SuperMario picture…
A nice, thoughtful essay. Your point about the everyday bits of life that are left out of fiction is well-taken; I wrote a story to that effect once. A character tried, as a thought experiment, to argue that he and his redneck buddies were just characters in a story. The evidence? That none of them could remember doing those minor things like brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom days or weeks ago (does anyone, really?).
Good point… and one I feel should have come out in the Matrix more.. 🙂
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Your post got me thinking. I’m reading an older (19th century) book at the moment. I’m a couple of chapters in and nothing has happened yet. Lots of mundane details, but I’m wondering what the plot is going to be or if there’s even going to be one. It’s realistic, but certainly not gritty.
Hmmm… interesting. There has been a big change in what is accepted in literature in the modern day. I remember my English teacher telling me that there was a time that the longer a book was the better whereas now the trend is more for action immediately. No idea if that is true or not but is fits observed facts. There has been a change in attitudes to novels which may or may not be due to reader expectations…
Thank you for posting this! I think in reading fiction, the every day mundane goings on are boring because it keeps us from getting to the next plot element. What’s weird is when you switch to the visual world, television…viewers will tune in to reality TV to get their daily dose of the mundane. Snooky making a sandwich…really? Millions of viewers for that? LOL
I can only pray that our youth of tomorrow will outgrow reality television and start to pick up books again!
🙂
I have a whole bunch of extra blogging to do about reality TV at some point… if I can force myself to do it 🙂 it is often as scripted as any drama or comedy from what I have seen, again it is the illusion of reality rather than the actuality because reality is too boring for entertainment.
I don’t think the issue is TV as there is a lot of great writing on TV still. The issue is the growing dependence on reality TV formats. Hopefully, this trend will disappear as the public grow increasingly bored of the format. But more reading would be good too… good readers are needed to make good writers of the future.
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I definitely agree with your post, if only because you use Arthur Dent to make your point. But it’s true that even the most realistic art is only a slice of life. Without the full thing you can’t have reality.
Well, as we all know, the works of Adams are inviolable and infallible and win any philosophical argument hands down. I intend to attempt to prove black is white next. I cannot forsee any problems with this plan. 🙂
Though, to be fair, I only used that example because I happened to be reading Hitch-hikers Guide the Galaxy as a bit of light relief after the emotional trauma of Perdido Street Station. The blog post I wrote before this one for another site had examples from that in it…
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I agree. Some authors tend to dive too deep into the mundane of the real world, but that’s not why the reader is actually reading; they’re reading to discover other worlds. Not discover that other people do brush their teeth or watch TV in the morning.
A fascinating read/thanks for sharing. Also appreciate the insights on how and when to share mundane details, especially if it enhances the storyline.
It is all about the entertainment, really. If the audience cannot see the drama in the action then it is not appropriate. A lot of fantasy writers seem to think you have to detail everything in the world because it is different but even there you have to use moderation and keep it interesting….
You make some very valid points. Reality, especially when using the setting of the ‘real world’ has no place in fiction. 😉
Thanks. The real world has a place but only as a contrast, too much reality can be a bad thing.
For a moment, I thought this may be an interesting take on theoretical physics from your comment about slicing alternate dimensions. 🙂 But seriously, I do love your take on the subject of mundane reality and “distorted reflection.” Very insightful.
It almost was but the flow of it took me away from that idea and onto something else (what? You think I plan these things? You don’t think I just sit there with a blank screen and the title and splurge randomly? 🙂 ).
The distorted reflection idea has been with me for a while, I last used it when describing the way that the media influences society – something happens, the media reports it but slightly exaggerates it (a single incident of a mugging becomes ‘Teen hoodlum menace’) and this distorted reflection exacerbates the problem by changing the expectations of society.
This post is like a kick in the ass for me. I’m struggling with my first novel. I’ve been questioning myself too much and these words of yours have made a huge impact on my whole outlook as to how I will approach my blank pages. Thank you!
Thanks! I am glad to have helped in some small way 🙂
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