hey guys it's shaylen and i'm here today with another writing video today I've got a really fun craft video for you guys on a topic I'm really excited to discuss and that is reality in fiction and manipulating reality this is I think a really cool topic but it's also not one that I see discuss that often just ever like I don't think I ever had like a lecture on this in university that I can remember but this is something that I like to play around with a lot in my work but I think it's really interesting and I also think it's really important so I just wanted to talk about it today a lot of this is like my own thoughts and kind of just things that I've picked up so this videos kind of synthesized from like a lot of things I've picked up but it's not actually coming from like anything I was explicitly taught these are mostly real terms but like I've taken liberties to make this fit together into a theory that makes sense to me if you know of like articles or books or texts or anything on this like please leave them below I've never encountered one but I find this topic super interesting so if you know other resources on this like I'd love to check it out basically reality and fiction is just how close the story is to quote-unquote regular reality for like a very drastic example the difference between a contemporary book and a fantasy book these books are existing in different planes of reality but there's a lot of gray area in between that can be like really fun to play with like what is reality is like debatable and iffy like not everyone experiences reality the same not everyone's perception of what is real is the same obviously there are things that come down to like perception but for example like there are people who believe in ghosts and there are people who don't believe in ghosts what is reality like I can't even really define so I guess like you're always probably just comparing to like your personal experience of what reality all this said I'm gonna start by talking about like some different planes of reality this is like a scale kind of sliding scale but some of them are like first one is what I call grounded realism and this is like if on a scale of realistic to unrealistic ten being completely unrealistic this is like a zero so to me grounded realism is basically realism where there's actually like added and sis on how realistic it is it's not sensationalized in any way nothing is manipulated for drama it is as realistic as a piece of fiction can be there's an emphasis on things like mundane life or the mundanity of life nothing is cut or shined up for the sake of the narrative a great example I just read the book oh I would grab it but it's in the middle of my stack right here real life by Brandon Taylor which I would call grounded realism there's like an emphasis on the pain of day-to-day life and like the pain of being alive and there are a lot of descriptions of like mate of day-to-day things mundane things daily tasks these little small details so I would call that link grounded realism and the difference between grandeur realism to realism can be very subtle I thought I'd draw the distinction here because then moving on we have realism so this is just like realistic fiction contemporary fiction in a realistic fiction I think sometimes the events are more dramatic more coincidental more sensational then maybe they are in real life but it's not to the point that we notice it it's at a point that we have come to accept is acceptable in fiction and that fiction to still be called realistic ideally everything feels believable and possible it does really test your suspension of disbelief but it doesn't mean that it's not pretty DUP a little more heightened a little you can manipulate the events a little bit to make for a better story but we would still call it realistic sometimes like what you would read in like a romance novel or even like a thriller novel is a little outside the bounds of what would normally happen but we can still call it realism then we have high realism this is a term that I had a fiction professor who introduced me to this and I found it really interesting and I love this term so high realism is basically everything could happen we're in our reality but it's heightened I like to think of this as reality with the saturation turned up everything is pushed a little it's a little more intense or a little more vivid or just a little more of something I love this plane of reality I play around in this a lot am i writing I think it's such a fun spot to be it's still realistic people will probably call it realistic it's pushed a little to that next point of intensity or strangeness while still being in realism so I find this really really cool so now we're getting into non realism now we have surrealism surrealism is really hard to define this is the definition that I found when I googled it surrealism in literature can be defined as an artistic attempt to bridge together reality and the imagination surrealist seek to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by creating unreal or bizarre stories full of juxtapositions I'm gonna make my own definition of surrealism because that one ain't for me folks to me surrealism is when you're in an altered or strange reality so I liked it to give it as reality shifted a couple degrees it could include maybe magical elements but it could just be tonal it's our world kind of but something is weird or off or altered or strange or uncomfortable and sometimes this is subtle and sometimes it's more overt depending on maybe how many degrees you've shifted reality you know like there are things that don't act as we know them to act people maybe don't act always how we would expect or know people to act definitionally it's supposed to be that the focus is on like the subconscious mind that's not necessarily how I'm using it for the sake of this video or what I think of it I kind of think of surreal fiction as being reality but off so after that we have magical realism or fabuloso as I'm aware of the term magical realism originates in the Latin American tradition and so it's only supposed to be used by people who are like writing informed by that heritage and that's a term to use if your writing is not informed by that heritage is fabulous 'm is what I've heard however I've also seen fabulous I'm just defined differently like I've seen it defined as like a subset of magical realism we're like the world is blending with like myth or fable or something so I don't really know what the students here are but I have heard I've been told that I should be using the term fabulous and so I'm going to use fabulous them if I slip up and say magical realism it's because I feel like that's the more common term fabulous omits basically where we're in reality but we have magical elements that are integrated as if part of reality they're usually not acknowledged as magical so like the magic isn't part of a system it's not like in a fantasy where like you have a magical system in fabulous um it's like here's reality with added in magical elements but we treat them as if they're just a part of reality so like magic is kind of seen as ordinary characters might do or encounter or engage with magical things and not acknowledge that it's magical it's kind of like reality but the rules of reality are shifted a little to kind of like accommodate or like mold around some unreal or magical elements the magics not explained usually like there's no system or reason behind it typically but it's often symbolic and again it's similar to surrealism it can be very subtle or it can be very overt and I will say I think the line between Fabio's amande surrealism is like so fine sometimes and hard to draw like if you just google the two things like I did when I was prepping for this video and read the definitions your brain will mount unless you're smarter than me but if you're on the same stupid brain level of me you'll be like what maybe this isn't the official difference but I'm gonna draw the difference here as so realism is where reality is a few degrees off and magical realism is where we're in reality but it has magical elements but I think like you could probably combine them my brain is melting hope all right so now let's gonna do the fantasy so we've got low fantasy often confused with fabulous lambi cuz on paper they look this very similar but in application they're really really different this is where we have magical elements in a realistic setting just like with fabulous them but the magical elements are addressed as magical um rather than being absorbed by realism there's like a magical system or society that exists within our regular reality rather than just being a part of it inherently I don't know maybe you could say that things like paranormal or like supernatural or maybe like there's magic within our reality it is addressed as other but it doesn't have a system and low fantasy R it does have a system would be a way to define the difference between those dollars so again the line between this and fabulous them can be really hard to draw and understand for some people because on paper they look super similar they're both magical elements within reality but how it's handled is super different so a way to explain this you could have a low fantasy book about werewolves urban fantasy is like usually a type of low fantasy so you can have a book about werewolves and there would be like a system to that and it would be acknowledges other words maybe you were writing a fabulous story where the main character turns into a wolf at the end and like runs away into the woods that would be fabulous them how the logic is handled is a little different the fabula doesn't need to justify it logically it only needs to justify it symbolically whereas the low fantasy does need to create its own like system of logic and then finally we've got high fantasy on the far end where I think this one's pretty easy high fantasy is like it's just explicitly not of our world it's in a different world maybe in between low fantasy and I can't see there's like alternate reality maybe but what's the difference between alternate reality and surreal at them raise your hand if your brain hurts I need to take just like five seconds to myself for how many years I thought this made sense to me let's are talking about it now that we've talked about that what can affect realism how do you shift where your story is first of all it's just concept obviously like if your concept involves magical elements it's gonna put you on a different plane of realism second of all is world building again like how you handle the world building can can affect the level of realism how systematic you make the magical elements and the way you handled the internal logic can shift it from something like fabulous into something like low fantasy so how you set up your rule and how you set up those systems also writing style okay guess what I have written stuff that is like fabulous before I really like I really like doing them but I've also written a lot of stuff that's realism or maybe like high realism pretty much every single workshop I ever had in university someone at some point or the professor refer to my piece as being magical realism even when it wasn't even when there was like nothing unrealistic about it even like the most like realistic stories I've written still get labeled as being magical realism because I realized it's my writing style I just have this like over-the-top writing style that's like pretty floral and magical kind of that everything I write even if it's realistic gets seen as unrealistic so that made me realize that writing style itself can play a large part you want your writing style to kind of be in tune and synchronous with the level of reality you know like heightening your imagery to that next plane of weirdness can kind of shift how people interpret reality even the details you choose so for a great example a little while ago um I was out for a walk in my neighborhood people paint the telephone poles it's just like a thing I don't know some of them have like clouds some of them have birds some of them have like pride flags some of them have like cute sands so I was walking by one of these signposts it's normal to have the Suncoast be like jazzed up a little and someone had nailed a doll I took a picture of it I will insert it if I still have it if I could find it had nailed a creepy doll to the signpost and I was like that's freaky that's the kind of detail where if you read it in a story it would start to push it into like high realism or surrealism just from the detail choice because it's not a detail that feels realistic even though like it happened in reality I know sometimes reality feels unrealistic especially when it gets hyper specific so yeah imagery and details are a great cue and a great way to cue the reader to how realistic of the story is especially if you're in that zone that gray area where it's like kinda realistic but not like this surrealism high realism a great way to cue the reader and also like welcome the reader into that plane of reality is by choosing details and imagery that reflect that names also can be a great cue on this is a rule I like to follow for myself the weirder the story and the weirder the reality the we're the names so if I want the story to be a little unbelievable I pick really your name's like I'll choose like more whimsical names for like a more whimsical story or I'll choose names that like aren't actually names like naming the characters like a color or an inanimate object something that kind of is a cue like oh maybe we're not in reality cuz all the characters names are not necessarily like normal that's a good way to instantly cue the reader I think especially if it's a pattern um and also just like the characters personalities and actions sometimes you get into surreal fiction and people don't act how people act and I think this is interesting because I think there's almost a blip people act realistically in realism and they start to act less realistically in high realism and they can act less realistically in surrealism or fabulous and then a low fantasy they act real again and then they have to act realistically again there's like this blip in the middle where reality is shifting because you know there's that difference in low fantasy we're actually in reality but with a separate magical system so people have to act more realistically for like our suspension of disbelief but it's something like surrealism all of reality is shifted so sometimes people act weird and they don't act as you'd expect them to act so heightened or strange character actions or even personalities like weird character traits artworks can be a cue to that tone also affecting tone and atmosphere I've got a video it's kind of old but I stand by the points on tone and atmosphere that you would check out you know if it's gonna be unreal and strange and freaky like you can elicit that through just the top all of those things can act independently all the things I just listed of the inclusion of actual magic it's more than just here's an unrealistic elements like I threw in a vampire all of these things can create surrealism or alter reality independent of that so what's key is that it's consistent and that it you know what the level of reality is doing know where you want your story to be in terms of reality and what that's doing for the story non reality has to contribute something for example if people act unrealistically unintentionally it feels like bad writing but if people act unrealistically in a way that's done with consistency and intention then it can just become a part of the story's reality and it can become really really fascinating similarly if something happens that is unbelievable or illogical in an otherwise realistic story then again it feels like a plot hole or you can't suspend your disbelief but if it's done consistently and attention and intentionally within the plane of reality of the story so we can accommodate that and it doesn't feel jarring it feels purposeful and it adds to what story's trying to accomplish one book that plays with reality and really fascinating ways you too can have a body like mine by Alexander Kleman this book plays with I'd say surrealism reality is a little off and a fascinating way people don't really act how people act but because it's done intentionally and consistently it really is effective here another good example um I've got it's in the pile I'm not gonna get it because it's in the pile my year rest of relaxation by it doesn't wash back that's a book that I would say plays around in kind of multiple ways with high realism and surrealism because we have this like surreal concept about a woman trying to sleep for a year but the story approaches it as if it were realism because of the dream reach home and it feels kind of high realism I don't know exactly where I'd place it I didn't really pick out examples for this because for this video because sometimes it's hard to place books can play with this really complexly and it can just be really complex and I don't want to like have this scale that I've created and try to put books on the scale because I don't know if I can accurately do that I think it's too debatable no what you're intending with your own work so that's all I have to say on reality in fiction hope that this was insightful or interesting or whatever because I find this topic really fun thanks so much for watching if you have any questions you can always something to ask on tumblr and I will see you in another video [Music]