an essay on realism and fantasy in story telling roleplaying

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I wrote this essay for a different RPG site and I thought I should post it here too. It was aimed more at writing fiction but it applies very well for writing good adventures and creating an enjoyable world to RP in. Of course this is all my own humble opinion. Anyways,  Enjoy it, critique it, tear it apart.
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Fiction and fantasy have often been considered part of the "escapist" genre, something read to bring the reader out of his world and into a believable fictional world. The impossible is meant to seem believable and the unimaginable real. Magic and monsters become as real to the reader as the easy chair they sit in while reading.

Because of the tendency of escapist fiction to portray the fantastic as everyday, there exists some controversy as to how much "realism" should be incorporated into the story.

In this short essay, I argue that realism plays an intricate part in any good fiction, escapist or not. Any good story requires that the author incorporate a significant amount of both internal and external realism in order to draw the reader into the story.

The goal of any fiction, but especially escapist fiction, is to draw the reader out of his own reality and into the reality created by the author. The story must be compelling enough for the fantastic to appear normal and the best way to make the fantastic mundane is actually to write realistically in every other facet of the story.

Internal and External Realism:

Realism can easily be divided into two separate categories as far as fiction is concerned, internal and external realism. The first type requires thorough editing and extreme creativity on behalf of the author for internal realism deals with consistency within the fictional world. It is the set of rules unique to that world that the author binds himself to follow. The second realism concerns those qualities that transcend the fictional universe, the qualities in common with our own reality.

Internal realism means creating a set of rules for the fantastic and adhering to it throughout the fiction. You can have dragons and monsters, magic and wizards, and the reader will believe you as long as you follow the rules you establish for your world. If magic has limits you need to enforce those limits, if monsters are common place you need to show how the proximity to monsters changes the society of your world. For example, recall how the Westland and the midlands differed in Terry Goodkinds sword of truth novels based on the presence or absence of magic. Also note how in those same books TG establishes an internal rule, magic could not be on the Westland side of the boundaries, so the sword of truth had to be retrieved from the midlands, as the story goes on you find out who it was taken from, where it was, and how it got there, and it never broke that rule that TG had established.

Breaking your own rules can be done, but you have to explain how and why your rules were broken otherwise your reader will feel cheated. For example, in Robert Jordan's world women channel Saidar and men channel saiden. That's the way it is and RJ had to leap through large logical hoops to remain consistent and internally realistic when he introduced Arangar and the other transgender forsaken. Had RJ simply had men channeling saidar without jumping through the hoops to justify his rules, readers would have been pretty annoyed (at least as much as when Mat was entirely left out of Path of Daggers  ).


Concerning internal realism, you need to be aware of being thorough in your writing. If you have a high fantasy world you need to be sure that your setting is consistent and makes logical sense in how it flows. How does magic, dragons, and sorcery affect the way your average Joe Shmoe citizen lives his life day to day? How is society affected by the presence of magical creatures in the woods next door? Readers will want to understand how that society works and runs with these differences from their own reality. If you are not careful in explaining how the world works with detail your readers will pick up the inconsistencies that you missed and they WILL call you on them.

Sometimes the internal realism is really obscure. For example, if the one power can be used to mine, travel, and heal then the world needs to have an explanation for why the one power is not used over traditional methods for these tasks. Face it; channeling a hole in the ground is much more efficient than using a shovel, so why do people still use shovels? RJ explains it quite well in his world by showing the fear and resentment towards channelers as well as the arrogance of Aes Sedai. Demonstrating the simple rarity of "magic" also helps.

The same thing happens with technology in sci-fi. For example, how can a given type of Tech affect society? Like nano-machines that can reorganize matter... if a society can make a Ferrari out of a pile of horse dung, why would they ever worry about money? How would the finances of a society work with this sort of technology?

An author must take the care to organize his world so that the setting is consistent within itself regardless of the level of the fantastic within that setting.

External realism on the other hand is dealing with the familiar in your world. However fantastic your world may be, you will want to have enough external realism to make sure your readers can relate to the story and be hooked into it. For example, most high fantasy books still have human or very humanesque races. Take wheel of time for instance, the characters are all human, they have two arms and two legs, walk upright, get sick and hurt like we do in our world. Their dimensions are even the same. This very basic external realism allows the reader to identify with the characters and be drawn into the story. It's an element of realism that anchors the reader into this fantastic world. But, because the characters are humans, the author must write their actions and the effects of those actions realistically. Perrin cannot fly, Min cannot fall from the top of the white tower without dying, and Galad cannot take a sword through his chest without being fatally wounded. These same characters will also only be able to behave in ways that humans would, they will feel pain where we feel pain, and they will commonly fear what we commonly fear.

External realism goes beyond simple body mechanics. Elements that the fictional world has in common with the real world must be kept consistent (if it is not, the reader had best be given a good explanation for breaking these rules as per internal realism, as I will discuss in a following paragraph). Things like people needing food, jobs, etc as well as towns needing government and a source of income or wealth. Fantasy worlds have economies and politics similar to our world and these must be kept realistic as well. One best selling author mentioned that his greatest pet peeve was the way in which authors created worlds with cities in places that make no sense for a city, places that have no source of water, commerce, or even food production.

Research is the key to external realism. If you wish your readers to be sucked into your world you had best research how that world works and how the elements you will be writing about will work in that world. If you have a military present in your story, research how a military of that tech level would work, learn about supply trains and chain of command. Another pet peeve of that author mentioned before is when a writer has an army of spearmen that fight like modern marines. Personally I recall an instance in a book where a Captain was bossing around a Major and it made me realize I was no longer experiencing a story; I was simply reading a book.

Again, if you write about something that exists in this world, go ahead and modify it so it fits in your world but research it so you too will know what aspects will remain constant in both worlds, because I guarantee you that your readers will spot it if you don't. For example, RJ includes many weapons that were used in historical earth yet he didn't bother to research how those weapons were actually used, and he isn't alone in this regard. The new movie about King Arthur is wracked with poor tactics and weaponry. Although not everyone will catch these inconsistencies, uber-geeks like me catch them and cringe. Does this make this fiction inherently bad? No, it only makes it worse than it need be with a short dose of research.

Can you break these rules as well? Of course! There is no rule in writing that you can't break; you just better break it well! If you have a human character fall 200 feet and live you had best explain to the reader why (He's Spiderman or gravity on this planet is 1/10th of our own, etc)! If the Sergeant is dressing down the Captain there had best be an explanation why or consequences for this breach of realism (The Sarge is the Cap's bets friend, the Cap is incompetent etc). If a character is drawing a sword from his back you need to explain how he/she manages this physically impossible feat (does he have a special sheath? Is the sword very short? Etc).

Basically, if it is the same in the fictional world as it is in our world, you had best be sure you are consistent and if you aren't then you better have a reason why!!

Conclusion:
If you want to write good fiction, you need to be able to draw your reader into your story. External realism hooks them into the story, internal realism keeps them there!


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Now please criticize or tear this apart! I cant write better without criticism!

[Irmo]

If a comment is allowed... I think there's a lot of people who confuse realism and reality. Realism isn't reality. It leans on it, is informed by it, but it's not reality. It's what people consider potentially real. For most on the board, it's entirely realistic that I am a football linebacker.  They know nothing that would make it improbable, let alone impossible. Fact is, I'm not. It's realistic that I'm good at darts. But I'm not. It's realistic that I know nothing about biotech - how many people do? Safe for those people who know that I hold a graduate degree in biomedical sciences, it's entirely realistic that I am just as ignorant about genetic modifications as the guy next door.

This has a profound impact on talking realism in simulated societies. The distinction you make between external and internal realism is at the bottom of a lot of misunderstandings concerning the relation between realism and fiction. I've seen people argue "people who insists on realism don't understand it's fantasy" and "you have to distinguish between historical and fantasy environments for RPGs. What they miss is that if you'd ask a member of the societies at issue, they'd answer questions about the supernatural, about monsters lurking in the woods etc. in quite a similar fashion. For them, they DO exist. The main difference is that in a fantasy environment, you can actually encounter a werewolf, whereas in the real world, you encounter huge wolves mad with rage from an injury, rabid etc..... That and the fact that you can pick and choose whether the "Scourge of God" and his devilish hordes from the east are Attila and his Huns or Orcs. But for the folks at the receiving end, the difference is semantics....

[Ashren Va'Hale]

thanks for the  commentary, and yes commentary and criticism is welcome!