You might have friends who want to read your book before you’re ready to publish it. They’re allies, yes, because they want to do anything they can to help you. Some of your friends and allies don’t know how to help your fiction succeed. They want to help you make the story realistic, a thing that doesn’t have a primary place in fiction.
It’s not that the fantastic realm is the only place to tell a story. When you’re writing historical fiction, as I have, your bedrock is places where people lived on the planet we occupy. On the other hand, your story might be in another time that unfolded in a world where magic rules. Your well-meaning readers want your book to behave like the world that they know, so the name of the pocket watch or whether telephone calls are too expensive—those become things they can tell you about.
And often your well-meaners can’t talk to you about dramatic arc, or plot reversals, or the way foreshadowing just made them want to read more. They can’t sift out the inventory-taking backstories from the essential elements backstories. A well-meaner just wants to understand as fast as they can, even when the book tries to slow down and show deeper meanings. There are 17 books in some novel series. They don’t all need to be there, but there’s no struggle in reading them because realism is never questioned.
It’s the less-likely tale that has a chance of being more interesting. We should be writing about extraordinary characters in our fiction. Stan Lee and Marvel proved that, and let’s give a nod to DC Comics too. Something you’ve never seen before is interesting in a way that makes you want to absorb the drama. Realism is for reports, when you want to make it the point of the book. I wrote nonfiction before I wrote and then developed and edited fiction. We had to prove every point in nonfiction to complete it.
And still, in that proving that made up realism, we had room to report what nobody could ever remember seeing before. Our proof came second-hand from witnesses and experts with experience some people never had.
Nonfiction makes you work to prove. Fiction makes you work to feel. Get your well-meaners to tell you about their feelings — because that’s what draws readers and builds fans.
