This week: Stranger Than Fiction Edited by: Jeff  
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"Adventure is worthwhile in itself."
— Amelia Earhart
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of the regular editors of the official Action/Adventure Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 400 newsletters across the site in that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me directly or submit feedback in the comment box at the bottom of this newsletter. |
Stranger Than Fiction
The phrase, "the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction," to me, recalls all the amazing stories I've heard of remarkable things happening to people in the real world. Mothers who have an adrenaline rush that allows them to lift a car off their pinned child. Or the amazing coincidence (divine intervention, if you prefer) that happens when high school sweethearts, living a half a world away from where they grew up, manage to find each other on the crowded subway in some foreign country and end up living happily ever after. If you look hard enough at the world and the people in it, there are some truly remarkable things that happen... and absolutely no way they would fly in fiction.
Why is that? In a medium where you are making up everything else — characters, locations, conversations, murder mystery plot points, etc. — why can't you make up these amazing twists of fate and coincidences that happen to everyday people in their everyday lives without being accused of making things too unrealistic? After all, if a slot machine in Vegas can hit the jackpot twice in a row, why can't your character be the one who pulls the lever on that one-armed bandit? Why is it that fictional characters and their authors are criticized and met with disbelief when they portray the very events that happen to some people every day in real life?
My theory is that it doesn't work specifically because the author has made up everything else. In the real world, these coincidences are one moment in a sea of other non-fabricated moments. But in fiction, these coincidences are one moment in a sea of other invented moments. Since you're making up the rest of the world, it seems contrived or convenient if your character suddenly stumbles across a miraculous occurrence because the author controls every other aspect of that world. If a mother suddenly finds the adrenaline-fueled strength to lift a car off her infant child in a story, readers often see it as the writer's choice which can give the impression that it's a overly-convenient, or contrived solution to the problem.
The best way I know to counteract this problem is to avoid doing anything that benefits the protagonist during his or her time of need. When the best possible thing happens to the protagonist at the best possible time, that feels fake. What helps add a sense of authenticity to fiction is when the best possible thing that can happen comes at the worst possible time, or when the worst possible thing that can happen comes at the point when the protagonist needs something good in his or her life. If something beneficial happens to the protagonist right when he or she needs it, there's a high probability that the reader will see it as an unearned and therefore unsatisfying resolution to a problem. Real life has the luxury of being mostly real so that the few instances of happy coincidence are seen as rare occurrences. But a fictional creation like a story is mostly fabricated so that yet another happy coincidence is seen as a common occurrence and cheap compared to a resolution that the character has to earn.
When writing your stories, remember that you need to properly set up every one of your payoffs. You need to make your character earn each of their accomplishments, even if it requires more setup, explanation, and/or work than a similar situation happening in real life. Fiction plays by a different set of rules than real life because with fiction, everything is fabricated. When amazing things happen in real life, people accept them because they don't happen every day. And because of that, the truth can indeed sometimes be stranger than fiction.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
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Action/Adventure: December 10, 2025 Issue [#13491]
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