Plausibility in fantastical settings (two dissections for the price of one!)

[Feo Takahari]

Advance warning: one work I'm dissecting is aggressively political. I find it artistically interesting, so I'll be talking about it in artistic terms. If a political argument starts, I'll apologize to the mods and ask them to lock the thread.

The anime Paranoia Agent revolves around a spirit that appears to people who don't want to face the truth. It offers them whatever they need in order to continue denying reality, then hits them in the head with a baseball bat. Most of the characters don't really know what to make of this strange being, and they react to it in realistic ways appropriate to their personalities. (There's even a running subplot about the cops trying to track down what they think is a mundane criminal.)

For me, at least, Paranoia Agent seems plausible. It has a fantastical element, and it has humans who act normally around it.

The game Nothing to Hide takes place in a country where absolutely every public activity is logged online. Every word someone utters in a public place can be read on a Facebook-like site, every place they go can be seen through omnipresent surveillance cameras, and attempting to abuse cameras' blind spots results in immediate sedation with tranquilizer darts. This sounds like a recipe for pitch-black satire, and the game does make a lot of jokes about the implications of such massive surveillance, but by and large, it takes itself surprisingly seriously.

Unlike the game itself, I wasn't able to take Nothing to Hide seriously at all. Technologically, there's no reason the society in this game couldn't exist a hundred years hence. But it's implausible that such a society would evolve, so any points the game might want to make about the implications of government surveillance were pretty much lost on me. (I'm not sure how I would have taken it if it had gone for heavy comedy like Dr. Strangelove--it certainly couldn't have gone worse.)

What makes you not take a setting or a story seriously? What steps do you take to make your own settings believable, and how high a priority is it for you?

 

[Ophiucha]

Unless a setting is overtly comical or satirical, I generally prefer a believable setting and can be turned off by one that seems too disconnected.

The human element is essential, even if the characters aren't quite human themselves. Too many people wilfully going along with a dumb idea makes the setting seem highly contrived just to make a point. But a strong character who the audience can empathize with could make a world of Dali-esque surrealism believable.

A willingness on the author's part to not just say 'a wizard did it' without thinking critically about why. Again, I don't know if I have a limit for hard, magical presence. Things can seem very strange to the reader, with histories and languages and creatures unlike our own, but having a reason for that either in-world or on a meta level can keep a setting understandable. An internally consistent Lovecraftian hell dimension is more believable than a lazy medieval fantasy with ill-conceived river placement and women in Victorian corsets. Not because a wizard couldn't have done it, but because the author never gives a reason for us to believe a wizard would have.

 

[Malik]

An internally consistent Lovecraftian hell dimension is more believable than a lazy medieval fantasy with ill-conceived river placement and women in Victorian corsets. Not because a wizard couldn't have done it, but because the author never gives a reason for us to believe a wizard would have.

I am printing that out and sticking it on my corkboard.

 

[ThinkerX]

Dang, I've read a *LOT* of stuff down through the decades. I've read...

... stuff that worked,

...stuff that worked if you didn't ask certain questions,

...stuff that didn't work but did try to tackle some serious issues,

...and stuff that didn't work but did anyway because it was satire o comedic.

One of the ones that failed big time with me was Goodkinds whole 'First Law' series. Large numbers of people leaving an area because small numbers of people in the old stomping grounds practiced magic? Deliberately casting a spell that creates an insane danger not once, but twice - and the second time for no good reason? I just couldn't get past those points. Now, if the area Richards people had fled had been a mageocracy, it might have been a different story.

AD&D (and many of its offspring) fall into the 'works until you start asking certain questions' category. Things like hit points, ethos (alignment), and gaining experience / levels mostly via slaughter and looting...don't work that well once you start giving them a bit of thought.

Its the same for a lot of 'Urban Fantasy' - entire families of vampires and tribes of werewolves running around, all desperately trying to avoid mortal detection even as body counts and property damage escalates. Uhhh...that sort of thing attracts attention.

 

[Svrtnsse]

My setting is contemporary fantasy in an alternate reality and one of the ways I go to try and make it plausible and believable is to have a reason for everything that I've changed that isn't like in the real world.
Some of these reasons may not be the best, and they may not stand up to closer scrutiny and they may not always agree with reasons for other things, but I'm trying to identify these weaknesses and disagreements and sort them out. It's part of the fun of building the work.
I also think that the mere fact that there is a reason will add to the plausibility of the world. I'm not sure how possible it would be to create a world that can withstand all logical poking and prodding, but I'm trying my best.

As far as my stories go I try to increase plausibility by adding in little mundane details. I'm trying to think of things that the reader can easily recognize, relate to or understand and then present them along with the weirdness of the setting.
Practical example: My MC is a member of the anfylk race. They are by nature shorter than humans (about the size of a hobbit). One of the things I did when I introduced my character was to reference the size of the furniture around him. Specifically the fact that the chair he's sitting in is designed for humans and that he can't both reach the ground with his feet and work comfortably at his desk at the same time. It's a detail, but it's something that everyone can at least imagine easily and it gives that setting a bit more depth.

 

[Jabrosky]

Plausibility has been a longstanding thorn in my side. So many times I have suffered the frustrating experience of discovering that the stories I wanted to tell couldn't happen in a given setting or with given characters. The issue seems especially likely to pop up whenever I try outlining. I may put together the bare bones of a plot that appeals to me at first, but the moment I get to refining that plot if not writing the story itself, I realize that the situations I set up just aren't plausible, and thus the whole project comes crashing down.

I don't particularly enjoy having to think through everything when storytelling. I'd love to turn my inner critic off and just write my heart out. The problem is that my heart wants me to write things that don't make any logical sense.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Plausibility through mundanity. - Sounds catchy, yes?

 

[Steerpike]

People worry too much about plausibility. You can go look at successful, respected authors whose work is 'out there' when it comes to plausibility. You just need internal consistency and the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. With speculative fiction, you already got readers all too eager to provide the latter, you just need to give them something to hang their hat on. It doesn't take much.

 

[Svrtnsse]

You just need internal consistency and the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. With speculative fiction, you already got readers all too eager to provide the latter, you just need to give them something to hang their hat on. It doesn't take much.

Isn't internal consistence pretty much the key component to plausibility in this context though - or am I missing/misreading you?

 

[Steerpike]

Isn't internal consistence pretty much the key component to plausibility in this context though - or am I missing/misreading you?

Not necessarily. I think people too often think of plausibility in terms of the real world, not whether something is internally consistent in the fantasy world.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think I may just have a different feel for the word then. To me it follows naturally that plausibility is a consequence of internal consistency.

I'd say presentation is important as well. You may have come up with a perfectly acceptable reason for something strange happening in your world but if you don't give your reader a feel for that reason they won't accept it.

 

[Steerpike]

I think I may just have a different feel for the word then. To me it follows naturally that plausibility is a consequence of internal consistency.

I think you're using the word correctly. It's just not how the word is often used in writing forum. Often I've seen someone criticize a work by pointing to real-world medieval life and pointing out how the fantasy world is inconsistent with it. Or if someone adds a Japanese flavor to their work in some way, you'll get people coming out and saying "Well, in feudal Japan they didn't really..."

The answer to these criticisms should be "Sod off, my story isn't set in real medieval history"* Or in Japan, or whatever. The plausibility of your fantasy world doesn't hinge on how things played out in the real world, even if you draw on real world similarities.

Have you read Neal Stephenson's book Snowcrash or China Mieville's Perdido Street Station? Both are often implausible if you use the real world as a measuring stick. But the authors maintained an internal logic and consistency that allowed the reader to suspend disbelief. That's all you have to do.

*a polite alternative may be used

 

[Svrtnsse]

Have you read Neal Stephenson's book Snowcrash or China Mieville's Perdido Street Station? Both are often implausible if you use the real world as a measuring stick. But the authors maintained an internal logic and consistency that allowed the reader to suspend disbelief. That's all you have to do.

Snowcrash is on "the list" and I've read The City and the City by Mieville. I think I get what you mean. They established the measuring stick within the story in such a way that what happens make sense according to. It makes sense logically to do that, but it seems that it's something that can be tricky to achieve.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I agree Steerpike. Unless you're writing historical fiction, you have as much latitude as you need.

Using a recent example from the world building forum.... A setting was discussed where a Nordic type of culture was driven out of an area that resembled the Mediterranean by a Hellenic type culture. The historical inaccuracies of our reality were bantered about and the project deemed too unlikely.

Why should our historical reality matter in a fantasy story like this one? Even if it's an alternate reality, it's easy enough to design your setting that would allow for these differences and, you don't really need to provide any reasoning, just tell the story.

In my opinion, plausibility can cause the reader to detach when characters or events act or occur in ways they normally would not for the sake of the writer's desires. Yes, you can always use magic to influence these events but then magic needs to effect all things in the world in the same manner. That's where consistency comes into play.

 

[ThinkerX]

I think you're using the word correctly. It's just not how the word is often used in writing forum. Often I've seen someone criticize a work by pointing to real-world medieval life and pointing out how the fantasy world is inconsistent with it. Or if someone adds a Japanese flavor to their work in some way, you'll get people coming out and saying "Well, in feudal Japan they didn't really..."

The answer to these criticisms should be "Sod off, my story isn't set in real medieval history"* Or in Japan, or whatever. The plausibility of your fantasy world doesn't hinge on how things played out in the real world, even if you draw on real world similarities.

Have you read Neal Stephenson's book Snowcrash or China Mieville's Perdido Street Station? Both are often implausible if you use the real world as a measuring stick. But the authors maintained an internal logic and consistency that allowed the reader to suspend disbelief. That's all you have to do.

I've read both 'Snowcrash' and 'Perdido Street Station' - as well as other works by the same authors. Both are plausible and internally consistent.

Goodkinds 'First Law' series, though, lacks plausibility. (Or at least the first book does).

AD&D and its offspring are superficially plausible - until you start asking questions.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I've read both 'Snowcrash' and 'Perdido Street Station' - as well as other works by the same authors. Both are plausible and internally consistent.

Goodkinds 'First Law' series, though, lacks plausibility. (Or at least the first book does).

AD&D and its offspring are superficially plausible - until you start asking questions.

I wouldn't say that Snow Crash is entirely plausible, but I wouldn't say it tries to be entirely plausible. There are points when it just goes straight for the funny (like having pizza delivery be a respected job that requires a college degree.)

P.S. On a side note, it does bug me when people try to link the believability of a setting to how well it matches history or modern times, because it's so often used as an excuse for forcing specific portrayals of race and gender. (I once saw someone tell an author that her books weren't realistic because she'd written so many female characters and none of them had ever been raped. Oy vey.)

 

[Jabrosky]

On a side note, it does bug me when people try to link the believability of a setting to how well it matches history or modern times, because it's so often used as an excuse for forcing specific portrayals of race and gender. (I once saw someone tell an author that her books weren't realistic because she'd written so many female characters and none of them had ever been raped. Oy vey.)

Not to mention that sometimes their preconceptions of that history are obsolete and/or misinformed. It's even worse when they pretend to know what they're talking about and won't admit to being wrong.

 

[Steerpike]

I wouldn't say that Snow Crash is entirely plausible, but I wouldn't say it tries to be entirely plausible. There are points when it just goes straight for the funny (like having pizza delivery be a respected job that requires a college degree.)

P.S. On a side note, it does bug me when people try to link the believability of a setting to how well it matches history or modern times, because it's so often used as an excuse for forcing specific portrayals of race and gender. (I once saw someone tell an author that her books weren't realistic because she'd written so many female characters and none of them had ever been raped. Oy vey.)

I'd say there is plenty about the world Hiro inhabits in Snow Crash that is implausible if you use the real world as a starting point. The same too, with Perdido Street Station, in which the setting itself and the interactions within it is rather implausible if you are using the real world as a reference point. But they're internally consistent enough to make the reader suspend disbelief and go along with them.

As to the second point - yes, I think it is a mistake to say a certain depiction of race or gender in fantasy can't be right because of differences in how it happened on earth, historically. Although I also think that if an author wants to mimic how those things unfolded on earth, that's fine as well.