Fiction writing at its most basic level is writing that is not real.
People reach for works of fiction typically as a means of escapism. But unarguably, if that escapism is to be effective, it needs to be constructed of realistic elements.
When I say realistic, I’m not referring to what is generally accepted as reality within our society or on our planet, I’m talking about what is accepted as realistic within whatever time or world the author has created.
For a good story to really capture and hold you as the reader, it needs to be believable. Even in a world with dragons and faeries, you want the author to make you feel like whatever transpires could realistically happen within that realm.
In fantasy, as long as the protagonist doesn’t veer in a direction that becomes ludicrously unbelievable or does something inherently uncharacteristic, the parameters of probability are wide. But what about when a fictional story is set in the real world.
In order to become immersed the reader must be able to place themselves in the shoes of the protagonist, a feat that is achieved by utilizing what the author provides. Having characters that exhibit realistic and relatable reactions to circumstances is a fundamental part of keeping the reader on that ride.
As a byproduct of FOMO, I rarely give up on a story, even if it bores me to tears. I do, however, remember starting a book many years ago that lost me within the first couple of chapters, and here is why.
Picture the scene, a subway platform, a single mother with a toddler in a stroller on her way home after a long and exhausting day trip. The train arrives, she pushes the stroller on and returns to the platform to retrieve her bags. The train doors close and away it goes leaving her childless on the platform.
I’m going to skip over the fact that every parent knows the number one benefit of a stroller, aside from the entrapment of your offspring, is the stroller’s ability to carry your damn shopping bags.
Here’s the bigger flaw. The mother does not freak out.
She waits with an inhuman amount of patience for the next train. She gets off at the next station where she immediately finds a stranger waiting with her child. They have a conversation and go to a local coffee shop, where said mother decides to leave her child with the stranger while she uses the restroom, only to discover they are both gone when she returns.
The author’s aim was to have the reader relate to the protagonist mother, but my reaction was the opposite. If I found an unaccompanied child on an underground train, reunited the child with its mother only for the mother to bugger off again, I’d be inclined to leave with the kid in tow myself.
We’re about to do a deep dive into my trauma now so brace yourself.
I think it’s safe to say that every parent at some point will experience a recurring, worst case scenario type nightmare. For me it was finding myself transported somewhere random, normally driving or walking, and being hit with the realization that my young children were home alone.
The panic that consumed me was so intense it remained long after I awoke. In my dream the children were not in any immediate danger, typically they were fast asleep in their beds. Yet even without the potential for imminent danger, the thought of them awakening to find me gone was enough to bring on hysteria.
But that’s just a dream, no one knows how they would react in a real-life situation right? Some people handle emergency situations better than others, I know because I’m one of those people.
However, I have also had the misfortune of experiencing a situation that was far closer to my nightmare scenario than I would have liked.
Rewind many years and I find myself one December afternoon on a train platform with my mother and three youngest children. The eldest being eight years old, the youngest nearly six months. My arthritic mum was boarding a train to spend Christmas with family in London. She had bags of gifts and of course her suitcase. In was my job to get her and all of her belongings safely on the approaching train.
I had no stroller for the baby. We won’t get into the how’s and why’s of the circumstances that had transpired in the hour leading up to this event but suffice to say I had not anticipated my children being there that fateful day.
The train pulled in and I sat my children on a platform bench, thrust the baby into the arms of the eight-year-old and demanded they remain there. I proceeded to throw my poor mother, bags and cases on the train at superspeed, not because I was afraid the train would carry me away. It wasn’t my first rodeo, I’d sent her on her way via British Rail many times before without any problems. My sense of urgency was brought about by the fact that I had three young children on a freezing platform, one of which was shoeless (don’t ask) and I had my Christmas grocery shop to dash home for.
No sooner had my mother’s suitcase left my hand, flung hastily behind her seat, than I was sprinting off the train calling out goodbyes as I went.
Then it happened. The moment that brought every one of my absolute worst fears to life
I am halfway down the aisle when the beeps that signal the closing of the doors start, signaling the trains departure.
My “no, no, no’s,” increased in volume with every step. When I reached the tightly closed doors that separated me from my babies, full meltdown mode was activated.
I pulled the emergency cord, tried to prise the doors open, ran through carriages desperate to find a member of staff, all to no avail. Passengers joined in, running from carriage to carriage hitting emergency buttons, doing everything possible to prevent the train from departing.
One of my biggest regrets from that day, and I have many, is that I never got to thank the nameless stranger who stepped in to save me.
He stood next to me as I fought against the locking mechanism of the door, (which I was trying to Hulk smash my way through) hyperventilating and crying. He promised me that the train would not leave, reassured me that my children would be okay and that in no time at all they would be back in my arms. I would give anything to have the opportunity to let him know how the empathy he extended that day will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Eventually the doors did open, and I stumbled across the platform to my children who had remained completely oblivious to what had happened. Still sobbing, I snatched them up and dashed home where my amazing friend awaited my arrival with her car full of my groceries. She really did save Christmas that year.
I later discovered that the train, which was running late, was trying to make up for lost time and in doing so neglected to give passengers adequate time to board and disembark. One man had helped his brother on the train a few stations back and the train left with him still aboard, staff refusing to open the doors despite being told that the men’s eighty-year-old mother had been left alone in the car outside of the station.
My point, aside from the therapeutic trauma dump (thanks for that), is when faced with such a dire set of circumstances no parent is going to remain calm. To believe that any mother would stay composed and rational whilst watching a train depart carrying their unattended child is preposterous. To then place that same mother in a situation where she willingly walks away from the child she had lost less than an hour ago is possibly the most unrealistic scenario I have ever encountered, even worse than Rickon’s inability to run in zigzags.
And this is why it lost me. It left me believing the author had no idea what being a parent was and hadn’t bothered to conduct even basic research. More than that, it made me angry.
The key takeaways here are that accuracy and believability when depicting life is of paramount importance. Having relatable characters means creating settings and reactions that could plausibly happen in the real world regardless of whether that world is this one or an entirely constructed one.
You don’t have to address social issues, focus only on the ordinary, or encompass the mundane routines of life to ensure your writing is grounded in realism. You just need to inject a little authenticity into character responses to bring them to life and create a connection that resonates with the reader.