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I prefer writing to real life . . . A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft. —Harlan Coben, American writer
You ain't just whistling Dixie, boy. Another thing about fiction vs. real life is that few characters are truly stupid in books. At least the books I read (and write) tend to have fairly intelligent people interacting with intelligent people. It's not that way in real life. Oh, maybe the antagonist has a fatal flaw, but how often are fictional antagonists stupid? Arrogant? Often. Cruel? Sometimes. Dumb as a sack of rocks? Not usually. In a well-written story, the antagonist is not truly evil, but simply has a different view of the world and different goals, and probably ones that have terrible unintended consequences. The antagonist is the protagonist in his own story.
In what other ways are fiction and real life different? And which wins on each point?
Discussion (24)
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I completely agree.
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It's probably why I have spent the last seven years writing twenty-eight volumes in a fantasy series.
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In real life you have to live out the real boring parts to get to the more meaningful parts. Fiction just gives you the highlights.
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In real life there is no verisimilitude. Project managers confound success with convoluted schemes to shift blame for the failure their schemes create. Governments focus on anything but citizens' well-being, even baldly undermining it to land even a small grift. Studios and publishers hire writers that can't write because they meet "social objectives" from the casting couch to DEI. The James Gunn/DCU story has achieved fantastic levels of anti-verisimilitude, and Spidey out-earned Supergirl's entire run on strictly its preview revenue. My life is chock full of episodes that can't be used in fiction owing to the lack of verisimilitude. So it goes.
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