Fantasy vs Being Realistic

[Androxine Vortex]

I fear that my exposure to video games and film is going to hurt my stories. Yes I'm sure that a good plot with engaging characters will make just about any story work but I'm afraid that my portrayal of things will make my readers question its credibility. For instance most video games have you repeatedly hack and slash your sword against another person until they die (not to mention that its fine hitting them anywhere on the body because its all equally effective) and while that's all good fun and all I don't want these influences to make my work inaccurate. True, fantasy let's you bend the rules but I want to be somewhat realistic.


I'm not trying to make my stories one hundred percent historically accurate but want it to be believable. I want to describe scenes where heavily armored knights fight each other but I don't want to say anything that wouldn't be plausible for someone wearing heavy armor in combat. It feels a little intimidating to be honest because now I feel I need to know so many facts about everything I write. I guess this question is aimed more toward members here who are published but how do you approach something like this? What have you done to make sure your novels were fantasy in nature but believable and realistic? Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[Caged Maiden]

Just a note about realistic portrayals. I'm not published but I strive for absolute authenticity. IN fact, I find that facts drive plots more often than my ideas getting researched. For instance, I recently researched what technically "twilight" is, as in what time of day exactly. I was really interested upon doing a small amount of research: Twilight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Who knew it was so interesting? SO now that I know a little more about a mundane thing, I'll find a place to put it in in an interesting way.

Whilst doing other research for another project, I read a medieval account of rats eating dead bodies and I found it interesting that they started at the bottom, eating the soles of a man's feet first... So in a scene where a body is lying in the road, I put in rat-eaten feet rather than eye-plucking ravens.

I think there's a lot of ways you can be really interesting and do a minimal amount of research. However, when you have limited life experiences to back up your stories, it can get tricky. In swordplay, for instance, I feel like I can hold my own (with a pen, not a sword) because I've taken fencing lessons and with a minimal amount of research I was able to put together what I feel was a good duel. However, there aren't many opportunities to watch mounted knights clash on a battlefield.

I'd say if large-scale combats are the places you feel you need more authenticity, you should do more research. Read historical war novels, maybe even watch History Channel for some accounts. Those for me often yield the best results. There's no reason you can't take a soldier's journal from the Civil War and spin it into a medieval setting, taking the emotional state of the warrior into account and substitute details that fit into your novel.

For me, I write what I know and what I've lived. I try to substitute and invent relatively little because I know I'm awful at being convincing when I assume details. I'm fortunate to have been a Ren Faire actor for several years, where I knew jousters (and members of their support and medical staff) and got to train with the military guild. I've also been a fencer and archer with the SCA for several years and have done a fair amount of research for my own purposes and Art competitions. If you want to talk to someone who's worn armor, fought in tournaments, jousted, fired a bow from horseback, etc. they are out there. You could always contact your local SCA group and interview a history buff who wears armor and fights on the weekends. Many of those people are fountains of knowledge with decades of research under their belts and they strive for historical accuracy.

Also, if you have a specific question, like: "How well trained is a war horse", "how would a duel play out with a rapier against a bastard sword", "what kind of bow and equipment would a mounted archer have", etc. You could always post it to research questions. The scribes here are really great about answering specific questions, and like me, you might luck out and find an expert in a given field who will chat with you and answer all your questions or read through a chapter for you and nit-pick the details for accuracy. I was stuck on a seafaring scene for a year, afraid to write it because life aboard a ship is actually a difficult thing to research. But I found an expert here who helped me immensely and answered all the little nagging questions I had. It was really really helpful and boosted my confidence when I confirmed I was on the right path with the assumptions I'd made.

Hope this helps you. I'll link my sword fight in case you might find it helpful. My ultimate advice would be to do more research, draw on experts for the details you don't know, and find someone who will read the written work and scan for implausibility. http://mythicscribes.com/forums/challenges/2546-mfma-tournament-battles.html here's my duel in case it inspires you. If you think I might be able to help answer any questions, please feel free to chat me any time or send a PM. I'm not on every day anymore, but I pop in a few times a week and always am happy to help. Gotta give back when you've received as much help as I have from this site!

Best Wishes.

 

[FatCat]

Your idea is terrible, your plot is lacking. You have no legitimate story-telling ability. Prove me wrong.

 

[Zero Angel]

I fear that my exposure to video games and film is going to hurt my stories. Yes I'm sure that a good plot with engaging characters will make just about any story work but I'm afraid that my portrayal of things will make my readers question its credibility. For instance most video games have you repeatedly hack and slash your sword against another person until they die (not to mention that its fine hitting them anywhere on the body because its all equally effective) and while that's all good fun and all I don't want these influences to make my work inaccurate. True, fantasy let's you bend the rules but I want to be somewhat realistic.


I'm not trying to make my stories one hundred percent historically accurate but want it to be believable. I want to describe scenes where heavily armored knights fight each other but I don't want to say anything that wouldn't be plausible for someone wearing heavy armor in combat. It feels a little intimidating to be honest because now I feel I need to know so many facts about everything I write. I guess this question is aimed more toward members here who are published but how do you approach something like this? What have you done to make sure your novels were fantasy in nature but believable and realistic? Thanks for any help you can provide!

So one easy way of doing this (and the route I sorta' go) is to have each creature's magickal energy envelop them in a sort of field (force field if you're sci-fi) so that attacks diminish the energy of the field and powerful attacks can reach the body. This way, they can be shot 9872349872398239875239823 times and slashed 156494298424 times.

Another thing you can do is have them all be very fast healers (maybe not Wolverine style, but significantly faster than normal humans)

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Just a note about realistic portrayals. I'm not published but I strive for absolute authenticity. IN fact, I find that facts drive plots more often than my ideas getting researched. For instance, I recently researched what technically "twilight" is, as in what time of day exactly. I was really interested upon doing a small amount of research: Twilight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Who knew it was so interesting? SO now that I know a little more about a mundane thing, I'll find a place to put it in in an interesting way.

I'm going to propose sort of the opposite, which is to say, good stories only need a veneer of authenticity. Things need to seem plausible to the audience, not perfectly realistic. Not one person in a thousand knows how rats actually devour corpses, so in the main it's less important to make sure your rats are devouring corpses accurately than it is to provide an emotional experience to the audience.

This isn't to denigrate the usefulness of research; the last thing you want is putting in something blatantly unrealistic that will allow the nitpickers something to latch onto. But when it comes down to a fight between facts and story, story should win every time.

 

[saellys]

I agree with Benjamin. When I read a book, I can suspend a whole lot of disbelief as long as an aspect of the story is internally consistent and artfully written. "But ____ would never ____!" doesn't even factor into my consideration.

Research as much as you can, but consider it a jumping-off point rather than confinement. You might find fun facts like Maiden posted that will make your story that much more interesting, or you might go a completely different direction and justify it within the context of your world even though it's physically impossible or totally incorrect in ours.

 

[Lucas]

I fear that my exposure to video games and film is going to hurt my stories. Yes I'm sure that a good plot with engaging characters will make just about any story work but I'm afraid that my portrayal of things will make my readers question its credibility. For instance most video games have you repeatedly hack and slash your sword against another person until they die (not to mention that its fine hitting them anywhere on the body because its all equally effective) and while that's all good fun and all I don't want these influences to make my work inaccurate. True, fantasy let's you bend the rules but I want to be somewhat realistic.


I'm not trying to make my stories one hundred percent historically accurate but want it to be believable. I want to describe scenes where heavily armored knights fight each other but I don't want to say anything that wouldn't be plausible for someone wearing heavy armor in combat. It feels a little intimidating to be honest because now I feel I need to know so many facts about everything I write. I guess this question is aimed more toward members here who are published but how do you approach something like this? What have you done to make sure your novels were fantasy in nature but believable and realistic? Thanks for any help you can provide!

Absolute authenticity is actually not that entertaining, sadly. Most brawls end within less than a minute. Battles are seldom heroic, and often contain a lot of shit and vomiting. Moreover, organised battles were pretty slow in the real world. Braveheart's recollection of the "Battle of Stirling" was basically the opposite of the real battle at Stirling Bridge.

 

[Chilari]

Bear in mind that video games are a different kind of medium with a different aim. The way the stories are set up in video games is to enable the player to do as much within the story as possible, and thus it twists events around to give the player more to do. An RPG game world is not really dynamic, it doesn't react to the events that go on around it. Shopkeepers still buy your loot, NPCs still wander back and forth, whether you're just starting out, half way thorugh the main quest or the world-saving hero. A story world should be dynamic. The innkeeper your protagonists chat to in chapter 1 might have decided to flee the approaching orc army by chapter 4, be one of hundreds of penniless refugees in a strange city in chapter 9 and have a job in another inn as a server by chapter 12, while his inn first becomes a free stop over for those fleeing the approaching orc army, then an army base occupied by a general, then an orc army base, then get burned down by the human army as it seeks to drive the orcs back, and finally the site of a mass grave of those who fell pushing the orcs back. In a computer game, odds are the same innkeeper is there in the same inn all the time, selling the same stuff with the only difference being whether the patrons are human or orc, because he's not there as a story element, but rather as a player convenience, somewhere a player can sell loot, buy food or get a night's rest.

I think if you focus on allowing the world to be dynamic, a lot of the video game influences will simply disappear. And for the rest, don't treat health like hitpoints and research those bits you're not sure about.

 

[brokethepoint]

I love it when I see a nugget of info that is spot on.

Realism does not have to be boring, an author can be boring. A story full of unrealistic battles and people with ungodly powers can be just as boring. It is an authors job to spin an entertaining tale whether it be realistic or fantastic.

You can find people that will tell you that you shouldn't do this or that, but my advice is to write the story that you want to tell. If you write it well and like the book that you put together then you can look back with satisfaction that you accomplished exactly what you wanted to.

 

[Penpilot]

It depends on the story you're telling. There are different expectations for say a Bugs bunny cartoon vs. say Game of Thrones. Look at the Lord of the Rings movies. The heroes wade through Orcs like nothing, when in real life all it would take is one good orchish bear bug for two seconds while the other orcs all take a jab to end the fight. The author sets the rules for the world and as long as they seem reasonable for the word the author sets up and the author remains consistent, IMHO things will be fine.

 

[Zero Angel]

It depends on the story you're telling. There are different expectations for say a Bugs bunny cartoon vs. say Game of Thrones. Look at the Lord of the Rings movies. The heroes wade through Orcs like nothing, when in real life all it would take is one good orchish bear bug for two seconds while the other orcs all take a jab to end the fight. The author sets the rules for the world and as long as they seem reasonable for the word the author sets up and the author remains consistent, IMHO things will be fine.

Selfishness and bravery from orcs?! Inconceivable!

 

[Androxine Vortex]

Thanks everyone for your help. I think my main problem is approaching things like, I have a character riding a horse. He has to travel a great distance but I don't want the horse to run with exaggerated speed and not need food or rest. I don't want characters to be fighting each other and the way I describe it isn't going to be inaccurate. Things like this, as a member here posted about lord of the rings, I'm sure lord of the rings is full of inaccuracies. The reason I don't think we notice is because the story is so well done and whatever mistakes there might be, they are not blatantly obvious. I know I can always ask the members here in the research section for questions about swords and sailing or hunting and so on but sometimes I feel like I need to be a an expert in everything I talk about which I know probably sound silly but I just stress out about these things.


I know this parts technically would belong in research but since we are on the subject if anyone has any good links to articles concerning medieval armor capabilities (movement would be nice) or combat strategies and techniques that would be fantastic. I'll research when I have some free time, a resource I don't have much opportunity for these days

 

[Lucas]

The key is then to make what is happening inside the minds of characters interesting.

 

[Caged Maiden]

yeah a retort to Ben's comment. I wasn't advocating researching things down to the letter, just that in the course of living, I've learned a few interesting things which I try to write into books to give something to the reader that's not the common thing. For instance, I'm not saying all rats would eat a man's feet first, but rather than choosing eye-plucking ravens to signify how long the body had been there, I chose to go a different route and do something different that too is accurate. That was more my point than researching everything like a Master's thesis.

I think by doing a few unusual things that are accurate, you can hide some other inconsistencies within your stories. I may have said it poorly the first time. You cannot assume readers are well-researched, but you must assume they're intelligent and will respond well to whatever you write that leaves them thinking.

My rat example wasn't meant as some kind of expertise on corpse consumption, but as an example of one place I chose to deviate from the popular path and instead try to leave an impression with a reader. When I'm not knowledgeable about a subject, for example warfare, I tend to gloss over the things that I can't do well and instead focus on some things I can do better.

As far as your armor and movement questions, there are a lot of variables. Weather, terrain, kind of armor, materials, etc. So if, say, you have foot soldiers in leather and chain, they'll be able to go BLANK number of miles a day. Whereas, light cavalry will have another movement rate and wagons will be slowest of all usually. One thing to remember about armies is that in most of history, they traveled with their own support. Meaning, if you're moving 5k men, you'll need perhaps 2k support people. Women who wash their clothes, smiths to repair things, cooks, tinkers, seamstresses, loads of people to drive supplies and tend animals. ETC. ETC. In the civil war, women were given 2/3 the rations of soldiers and children got a half ration. Many of the soldiers had their wives, children, nephews, etc. traveling with them on extended campaigns.

However, if you're moving raiding-type army, like the Mongols, you need significantly less. They pillaged wherever they went and took what they needed from villages and towns they sacked. So an army of only fighting men was much more possible in that scenario. Of course, I don't know your ultimate goal, but I think you should probably draw some comparison between your situation and some in our own history and then research a little bout how they did it. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to find something similar and take what details you need from our own history. Of course, if you don't ever explain the "how" of it all, most readers will not care unless your setup is completely implausible like an extended siege with no support persons and no supplies... that would be difficult to explain.

SO anyways, I apologize if my earlier posting made it sound like you shouldn't write unless you're willing to delve deep into research. I was merely trying to say that rather than talking about the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day workings of your army, their supplies, their movement rates, etc. You simply gloss over it, pick a couple well-researched points to make and let the story be something more important than the "how" of it all. If you want to research how one fights in armor, there are plenty of people around who have done it, several on this site. If you want to know more about specific questions, ask them, because it's hard to come up with a link that's one-size fits all. We don't know what specifically you're looking for. I recently read a book about historical archery (written in like 1894). I compressed my research into a 10 page research paper and had more than enough in-depth research on how to make traditional arrows. SO I wouldn't tell someone to read the whole book, I'd tell them to read my research paper on the subject. If you have a specific question, we can probably point out some good links, but for general big-picture question like how do different types of armor affect movement rates... well that's hard to answer. It helps to know what you mean by different armor types. Are you talking about how heavy the materials are, do they have support people to do maintenance? Are we looking at like German mercenaries who had steel breastplates and mostly just cloth covering the rest of their bodies? Full steel plate armor on heavy horses? There are just too many variables to be specific.

I'd mention a few tidbits here and there to bolster the plausibility and then gloss over the rest you can't (or don't want to) explain.

 

[Addison]

In my opinion it's crucial to have some percentage of realism in your fantasy. A solid foundation for the story and something to support the illusion of reality you're presenting. How much depends on what exactly you want to feel realistic to the reader. If you want to show just how heavy and difficult it is to wield an axe, I suggest you go to a historian, anthropologist or weapons maker who can let you try one. Safely of course. You don't have to live a full experience but it's a good idea to have done some type of research into the subject.

 

[Chime85]

Oddly enough, I also tend to strive for realistic context in my stories. While I do not gather inspiration from video games (I'm very surprised at this, as some can be fantastic!) I do however try to add a sense of logic within my stories.

There are two main ways to work this out (with a level of disbelief. As writers, we are all allowed a margin of this). The first, is by extensive research. If for example, I wished to know how a bullet worked, I would prefer to google this fact, rather than try it out for my good self. Depending on your point of view, you may wish to research points from the shooter, or the shootee.

Another method, I like to call trial by, well, trial. I seriously recommend this for the lesser points in your story. I mean wish to describe the touch and smell of grass, you go to a fiend and do exactly that (with a notebook, otherwise it's pointless!!) Just don't do what I did. I wanted to describe the freezing cold, so I saved icecubes + bathtub.......not doing twice!!!!!!

x

 

[Caged Maiden]

haha the bullet thing was funny. I had a boyfriend in high school (he was a bit older than me) and one day I laid on his arm, cuddling close. He hissed and sat up. Not the reaction I was looking for. He said, "Ow, you're on my bullet."

I was a bit shocked and asked, "What?"

It was then that he pinched the skin of his bicep, bringing a bullet to the surface, right under the skin. Turns out he was shot in the back and the bullet ricocheted through his armpit and ended up in his bicep. He nearly bled to death and they rushed him to surgery, but they left the bullet in to prevent further blood loss. So again, throughout my life, I've racked up a whole load of experiences and I draw a lot from the people I've known and the places I've been as inspiration to add realism to little segments of my stories. To me, those little gems are the best parts and while I don't often write about saving the world, I do human interaction pretty well because of the people I've known. I put the bullet thing into a scene once, where a guy is trying to dig a bullet out of a wounded comrade and he says, "If they're not lodged in vital tissue, sometimes we leave them and allow the body to heal around them."

I love realism in books, if for nothing else than recalling the very colorful life I've led. I guess that's why I'm more drawn to the gray scale characters and plotlines. I don't often write true goodness and true badness, but a mixture of flawed characters trying to do the right thing and self-driven characters who stop at nothing to see their own goals realized. Thanks chime for admitting you've frozen yourself in the name of research. I too have done experiments once in a while, if for nothing else than to see how I would react to certain things and therefore how my characters would. While a fully concocted world and magic and stuff can be very well done, I feel like there's an obvious element missing from a lot of beginning writers' work. You can see that they've never been to mountains by how they describe them or have never feared for their lives by how their characters react. I think too often people give stock responses to things and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when stories become too predictable. That's why I love a bit of weirdness once in a while, something unexpected or an observation that gets me thinking, "wow, this is something only a person who was really there would notice." I mentioned this before in my rant about The Kiterunner. In the first half of the novel, the author really drew me in. Painted a picture that fully immersed me in a realistic, convincing world. The whole second half was disillusioning and disappointing, as if written by a completely different person. It was like Dorothy went back to Kansas' black-and-whiteness, turned off the magic and just closed her eyes.

Whatever else I strive to do, it's to keep that magic, that wonder and colorfulness turned on throughout the story.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

...I have a character riding a horse. He has to travel a great distance but I don't want the horse to run with exaggerated speed and not need food or rest...Things like this, as a member here posted about lord of the rings, I'm sure lord of the rings is full of inaccuracies.

Let's take a look at your example here. Is there anything other than the riding that takes place during this period that is important to your story? If so then you're right to consider how to portray the event with plausibility. If nothing of importance occurs then you don't need to even show the ride taking place.

Since you mentioned a long horse ride and LOTR I'll use an example with both. When Gandalf speeds away from Rohan on Shadowfax (sp?) headed to Gondor, it's a three day ride. We see them speeding away at a dead gallop but then thats it. Next we know, they're in Gondor. We didn't need to know about the nights the slept in the open or what the horse ate on the way...the details here were unimportant to the story.

Sometimes details get in the way.

*I don't recall how it was written as its been a long time since I read the books. My memory of the scene comes from the movie Return of the King. However, the example holds true.

 

[CupofJoe]

Since you mentioned a long horse ride and LOTR I'll use an example with both. When Gandalf speeds away from Rohan on Shadowfax (sp?) headed to Gondor, it's a three day ride. We see them speeding away at a dead gallop but then thats it. Next we know, they're in Gondor. We didn't need to know about the nights the slept in the open or what the horse ate on the way...the details here were unimportant to the story.

And it is stated several times before that in the books and in the films [even in the radio play] that Shadowfax is the finest horse since the dawn of time [or some such hyperbole]. That horse is not your standard mount...

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Yes. However, at least one of the riders is a normal being... a hobbit. Therefore, at least he'd need rest.

My point was only meant to illustrate there are many story details that can be skipped over if they don't add anything relevant or important to the story...like that ride from Rohan to Gondor.