Reality Bites

Last night, I talked to a dear friend, and because she and I did not live near each other for many years (though now we do and I will see her Friday), I had never really told her the story of some of the toxic familial relations on three of my kids' father's side. As I recounted what was said to me, what was emailed to me, what was DONE to my children and so on, it really sounded like a cariacture. If I WROTE a family situation like my poor children have with their father's family, no one would believe it.

I am editing a book--nonfiction. And I have my suspicions that one particularly toxic story is very much true. The details ring so "real" in some ways, that I don't believe it has been fictionalized for the purposes of telling a story to illustrate a point. But I wrote the author and said, "I think you have to change this . . . no one would believe it." NOT because I don't believe it . . . but because it's so toxic as to border on madness.

I read a PW review of a book this morning in which the reviewer said the characters "bordered on parody." I have read the book and found the characters charming.

That's the tricky thing with fiction. I have gotten into more mild arguments with critique partners, my editors, myself (nothing like arguing with yourself) over motivations and characters and so on . . . on this and this alone. The believability issue.

I think newer writers find this particularly galling. In other words, we ALL know people capabale of being yes, THAT horrid, and yes, THAT eccentric. But put them in a fictional world and it starts to stretch readers' minds as far as believability.

Now here's the other side. I have written about people who dismember family members and about mob princesses and bookies and realms that most people don't know too much about. Somehow, if you set the world up just right . . . that's okay. Readers believe it. Why?

Banality.

I have come to the conclusion watching the behaviors of people who are really just ugly at times . . . that many people's cruelties are banal. As if they are blithely unaware they are rude or mean. Do I REALLY think the snarky woman who finds a way to insult to me at cocktail parties has nothing better to do than think of insults on my mothering skills? If I repeated to her what she said now, months after the fact, she would likely say, "I never said that." Or . . . "I must have been kidding." Or, like the lady who moved out of the neighborhood, I have a sneaking suspicion that excuse would be, "I must have been drunk." Some people's cruelties are completely banal. They don't even think about them. They don't lose sleep. They just wander through life that way.

But in a fictional world, writers set up REASONS for dismemberment and cruelty. We very often even give serial killers motivations of some sort (look what Thomas Harris did when he RUINED the Hannibal Lechter franchise). Give reasons . . . and people will BELIEVE your fiction.

But real life? A lot more banal.

Thoughts? Have you ever realized you simply couldn't use perfectly good "material" because no one would believe it? And what do you think about the banality of real-life versus fictional life?