How to Balance Realism and Creativity

Do you want your story to be realistic?

That’s a trick question, isn’t it? We want our stories to be realistic in some areas but not others. For example, our characters should experience genuine emotions, our plot events should progress logically, and our dialogue should flow naturally. However, we don’t want our stories to tediously replicate our daily lives of work, grocery shopping, and small talk about the weather.

A story that slavishly copies reality would contradict the purpose of fiction. Today, we’ll explore four areas in which our stories should create the illusion of reality, not reality itself.

Whether your story takes place in your hometown or an imaginary world, the events of your story should progress logically based on the in-world rules you’ve established. A world where people can travel through time isn’t “realistic,” but readers will accept it if you keep the rules of time travel consistent throughout your story.

Likewise, fictional plots are usually more structured than real-life events. How often does your everyday life follow a clear plot structure, with a Catalyst, Break into Two, All Is Lost, and Finale? Yet readers enjoy and expect this type of structure from most stories.

Every event in your story should serve a purpose. Realistic but unimportant occurrences, such as small talk or restaurant orders, can simply be summarized.

Certainly, your characters should behave like real people who have relatable goals, fears, and struggles. However, they shouldn’t display run-of-the-mill personalities with no notable traits. Instead, they should have distinctive, larger-than-life attributes that make them stand out in readers’ minds.

In Lindsay A. Franklin’s Weaver Trilogy, Tanwen En-Yestin is a distinctive character. She speaks with a unique accent, expresses big dreams, and makes impulsive decisions. Tanwen’s rambunctious personality makes her a vivid and enjoyable character.

This principle doesn’t mean your characters must be extreme caricatures. Rather, it means that their traits should be distinctive enough that they pop off the page.

Characters should experience the same emotions as real people—fear, joy, grief, longing, contentment, and so forth. On the other hand, stories usually contain more heightened emotions than an average day does.

If every waking moment sent you on an emotional rollercoaster, you’d probably be exhausted. By contrast, stories thrive on the highs and lows of emotion. You shouldn’t strive for melodrama, but your story should always give readers a reason to care.

In Stephanie Morrill’s Within These Lines, the characters confront the hardships of World War II. They experience a range of powerful emotions: anger over injustice, longing to be with a loved one, and despair over shattered dreams. Rightfully so, these emotions are much more intense than those experienced during an ordinary day at work.

Dialogue should flow naturally rather than being stilted. Just like real people, characters will speak differently based on their backstories, personalities, interests, and other factors.

However, real-life speech is usually littered with idle chatter. If you included every “realistic” hesitation and rabbit trail in your dialogue, it would be nearly impossible to read.

For this reason, your fictional conversations shouldn’t be so hyperrealistic that they become boring. Instead, each line of dialogue should advance the plot by revealing character, introducing conflict, and/or presenting new information.

Certainly, your plot points, characters, emotions, and dialogue should resemble reality to some degree. Creating the illusion of reality enables readers to fully experience your story. However, making your novel 100 percent realistic will most likely lead to audience boredom.

Your plot should contain a purposeful series of events that builds to a climax. Your characters should display distinctive personalities that stand out on the page. The emotions in your book should grip readers with their intensity. Finally, every line of dialogue should play a clear role in your story.

When your stories strike an optimal balance between realism and creativity, your story will offer readers a vacation from reality and a deeper understanding of it.

How does your story balance relatable aspects with creative license?

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