How to Bring Reality into a Fiction Story

To make fiction stories more realistic, it's important to know how to blend both facts and fictional elements without breaking the illusion for the reader. In this article, I'll share tips that I've found helpful to do this.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• The desire to create a realistic fictional story

1. Be Very Careful in Getting Important Facts Correct
   
   This may take some research if you're not sure about details of a certain time period or the main character's career field for example, but always make the assumption that your readers are intelligent and curious rather than people who are going to read your story without caring about details.
   
   If you write online, sometimes you'll get feedback in this area on things you may not have thought about. One of my early short stories involved a plane crash, and a pilot happened to read and review the story. He was nice enough to point out some details I had gotten wrong and needed to change--in the area of print, it's possible he would've stopped reading. I learned from that experience.

2. Realize that You Don't Have to Tell Readers Everything You Know About the Fictional Setting
   
   When you're watching a good movie, does someone suddenly stop the action and dialogue to give you several minutes of nothing but background information between scenes? Why then do it to a reader in your short story or novel?
   
   Weaving and revealing information gradually can be a lot of fun as a writer, but it takes practice. Sometimes writers try to be put too much information in dialogue in the beginning.
   
   One big mistake (which is rarely this drastic) is having a character say something that doesn't make sense or sound natural when analyzed:
   
   "So, this is such a great day in 2930 B.C., isn't it?"
   
   Giving readers information indirectly keeps them interested and also keeps the pace of the story from being erratic, especially if your goal is creating a page-turner.

3. Be Consistent Even With Your Fictional Elements
   
   If you're going to bend the rules on something, know how you've changed it and place some sort of limitation to it as a boundary. If you keep changing your boundaries when a character runs into a problem they seem can't solve otherwise, you need to look over the story again. Otherwise there's a possibility of breaking the illusion and losing the reader's interest.

Tips & Warnings

• When doing your research, try to go back to as direct of a source as possible. If you're doing a story set in the 1920s, try to find 1920s material first before referring to later sources. You'll get richer details that way.
• With sci-fi stories, do some study with the related science before beginning the story. This will solve a lot of problems before you run into them.

Resources

• Web Writer Central
• Fictional Character Development Template
• More How-to Articles by Patricia Gilliam
• Writer's Reference Directory--Updated
• Patricia Gilliam's Article Blog and Portfolio
• The Hannaria Series: Out of the Gray by Patricia Gilliam (2009)

[PABechko]

on 10/15/2008 On the money tips.

[RENorton]

on 9/30/2008 Excellent piece! Helps make your fictional stories and characters more believable. This is a very informative and helpful article. Thanks for sharing these tips!