This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
Nah, fiction needs unrealistic elements. You can have realism in fiction, but fiction is defined by its deviance from fact. If a movie were completely realistic, itd be a documentary.
This can’t be your honest take…
What’s wrong with it?
Well, it’s inaccurate. Fiction does not require unrealistic elements. There’s just scads of fiction out there—across multiple genres—that’s set in a real time and place, and doesn’t involve anything fantastical.
If it is entirely realistic it is no longer fiction. Ergo, fiction needs some degree of unreality. I don’t see how that’s controversial, haha.
It is possible to have a realistic story in fiction. For example, Mad Men is a tv series that’s pretty grounded in history but the characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research. It’s not a documentary, it’s fiction, but quite realistic.
I envision ‘realistic’ as a spectrum. If it is 100% realistic, it’s a documentary, if it’s 100% unrealistic, it’s probably a fantasy movie or something, and most works of fiction fall somewhere between.
Like, you understand this is my point, right? The plot is not real, and that’s what makes it fictional?
What you’re saying is sound and I agree the plot not being real is fiction; the only problem is you said fiction required unrealistic elements and most people see “unrealistic” as basically fantasy
See, I hear ‘fantasy’ and think of orks and fairies and shit, but I can think of many non-fantasy movies that have incredibly unrealistic aspects.
Like, idk, James Bond’s gizmos are completely unrealistic and break the laws of physics, but it’s not fantasy to me.
I’d argue James bond as a franchise is basically a hypermasculine fantasy and the gadgets are pretty much a tech fantasy within it. Breaking laws of physics is completely unrealistic, but the point I was making was that you don’t need to do any of these things- you could write a story about how you went to the gym and broke a treadmill (even though you didn’t) and it would be fiction. The bar to fiction is not that high.
Yes, it’s not a high bar at all. It just requires slight divergence with reality. Some degree of unreality, if you will.