When Reality Is Too Unrealistic for Fiction

I’ve read plenty of books I’ve found unrealistic. Sure, they’re novels and therefore not reality, but there are just certain plot points I roll my eyes at and go, “Yeah, that would never happen.”

Like, I don’t know… say… everything about Fifty Shades of Grey.

Contrived setting, dialogue, plots and characters are something to be avoided at almost all cost. I say almost, because sometimes life itself gets unbelievable, prompting writers to go, “That did not just happen!” and then, “I wonder if that could fit into one of my books?”

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few absolute caricatures of real people. Like a best friend’s father who gets into angry arguments with her about whether or not there’s caffeine in Vitamin Water. In front of me. For five minutes straight.

Awkward!

Or there’s the time I was the only one in my four-apartment building for a month until the night someone moved in above me. I met his brother that evening, and then I met my new neighbor Josh the next day, upon which point he asked me out. Yet when I went to knock on his door at the agreed upon date and time (which was fine by me), he wasn’t there, leaving me to tape a note for him. Two hours later, I found a response on my own door saying what a nice idea the date sounded and how he’d love to meet me.  

Confused? I certainly was… until I figured out I had two neighbors move in the same day.

Oops!

Completely ridiculous, right? If I read that in a book, I would probably roll my eyes.

And speaking of unbelievable, I know some of my friends have thought I was taking creative license with stories about my workplace, where sexual harassment is overlooked, lying to customers is encouraged and raises/bonuses are withheld without any reason given even when the company had a banner year. Worse yet, I can’t even completely blame them for their skepticism when, the stories I tell really are so unprofessional as to be a bad joke.

Yet they’re still 100% true.

So what happens when you want to borrow from your stranger-than-fiction real life for your novels? It’s actually quite doable.

Have your characters admit how unrealistic their situation is. Make them wonder how they fell down such a rabbit hole, or let them joke about where they went wrong to be in such a mess.

When writers acknowledge how Ripley’s Believe It or Not it is, readers are much more likely to buy their tale.

Stranger Than Fiction: What If My Characters Weren’t Characters at All!?!

There’s this movie with Will Ferrell called Stranger Than Fiction.

I’d say it’s really good for a Will Ferrell movie except that it’s really good for any movie.

Plot, characters, acting, opportunities for introspection: This film has it all. And it’s original too! As far as I know, anyway.

The storyline follows Harold Crick, a thirty-something IRS agent who leads the most monotonous life ever until he’s assigned to Ana Pascal, a bakery-store owner who’s intentionally not filed her taxes properly for years. Naturally, the unlikely pair falls in love, but that’s not why Stranger Than Fiction is so brilliant.

It’s brilliant because of the backstory, which follows Karen Eiffel, a famous novelist who always kills her main characters off at the end of her books. And this time around, her main character is Harold Crick. Only she doesn’t know she’s writing about a real live person.

I own the movie. It’s good enough to watch repeatedly. But it always makes me wonder…

What if my characters were real?

When Karen Eiffel learns that she’s been essentially murdering real people – that she’s a serial killer – she’s horrified. As well she should be. And while I don’t normally kill off the good guys (if she was reading this, my darling mother would point out – with a disapproving air – the three exceptions to that rule), I do a lot of other horrid things to them.

I mean, in the Faerietales series, Sabrina gets terrorized mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically… and by multiple characters. If some poor young woman was really chained to an evil shrink’s couch being questioned at the end of an electric baton because I dictated it?

Than, pretty much, I’m a horrible human being.

The same applies to Kayla in the Dirty Politics series. Evans brought some of the torture on himself, but I still gave him a rotten backstory to explain why he went rogue. (I’m so sorry, Sarah!) And I’ll even admit I’d feel bad for putting Rod through what I did. It’s amusing if he’s just fictional; not so much if he was an actual human being.

When it comes to my historical and Christian fiction stories, I did some serious research for those two. They’re based off of too much verifiable documentation for me to blame my imagination.

But as for my fantasy and political thrillers? Well, I would like to take this moment to express my most sincere hope that reality really isn’t stranger than fiction.