rec-meta: Factual Realism
May. 1st, 2008 05:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Factual Realism, Characterization, and OOMPH-factor are a bit different. These three elements, when done well, are often remarked upon, because they're individual bits and pieces in a story that make all the difference. If we go back to the house metaphor, when done right, these factors will both 'fit the feel' of the house, as well as 'dress the house up' a bit. It's like a coffered ceiling in the dining room. When done badly, or set off wrong, all you want to do is avoid the dining room or cover it up - but when done right and highlighted correctly, it might just be the thing that you fall in love with the house for.
When I say 'Factual Realism', I'm actually thinking about two different categories of 'facts' - one is real-world, physical facts that can be researched and verified, such as medical facts or gun facts. The other is the set of 'universal truths' that make up the particular universe you're writing in, such as character background or a particular social or political setup that's universe-wide. It's important to handle both categories of facts correctly, but each set has such a different focus that far differing strategies can be used to make your story 'realistic' and - most especially - consistent within itself.
Fun with Physics
Real-World facts are the bane of the fanfic world. Our beloved TV series don't usually bother to research anything particularly well or thoroughly, so it can be a bit of a pain, sometimes, that fanfic is held to higher standards. The trick here is to know your show. A fanfic for House, MD, that features an actual case needs to be researched high and low, because House is relatively high on the fact-based scale. (Not the highest, but very high.) A fanfic for The Sentinel, however, will let you get away with more medical handwaving, because in addition to the show not being focused on medicine, it's not exactly high on realistic events itself. But don't let that fool you into thinking you can pull all kinds of weird things out of your butt. The Sentinel may not be very realistic - but it is very solidly based in the real world, with enough real-world research backing it up that making things up completely off the top of your head is going to show, and badly, unless you're just good at bullshitting. Here are some basic guidelines for the sanity of your reader.
1) Know When To Research: Even for a short-short, you may need to research your physical facts; for anything longer than 5000 words, it's pretty much a certainty that you're going to want to verify something at some point. Your primary signals for what to research should be what the TV series is focused on, what the AU you're writing in is focused on, and the primary topic of the story. For example of when to research, let's look at Tests, by Cmurph. Cmurph states in her author's notes that she knows nothing of guns, and that a gun she made up off the top of her head makes an appearance. At this point, I'm not too worried, since I 'don't know anything about guns' either. I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt that she can still write a good story. She ruins this impression with her very first section, which consists of this dialog:
"It sure lit a fire under you, Buck. I didn't think an old guy like you could move that fast," Tanner said with a smile.
"Watch it Vin, you're still on probation around here," Buck warned him.
"Are you kidding Buck?" asked Nathan. "The way he shoots? Orrin would've traded you and an agent to be named later if Houston had put up a fight about transferring Vin here."
"What're you grinnin' about Junior?" Buck asked J.D.
"Gotta admit - the man has a point, Buck. Not a one of us could've hit Savros from 30 yards like that," J.D. said admiringly.
"Indeed," Ezra agreed. "I would not have put money on it myself."
Everything in this section is fine, except for the numbers. And the numbers are a break-point for me, because I really can't read that line without collapsing into giggles. 30 yards is only an impressive shot if you're a failed baseball pitcher - it's certainly not a shot worthy of mention for an Army-trained sniper. There really should be a couple extra zeroes on that number - 3000 yards is a much more reasonable shot in context.
At this point, you might ask who would know the difference? You might wonder if I'm being picky because I'm an engineer, and might be expected to know these things. But I'm not being too picky. Anyone who's ever seen a baseball game or a football game knows how ridiculous this sounds: the distance from the first base to home plate is 90ft - 30yds. The length of a football field is 100 yds. It's even worse if you know anything about golf - length from tee to hole runs from about 150 yards to 500 yards, and for a modern day sniper, those are all short shots. Anybody who's studied American history should be aware that the modern rifle was a game-changing invention that occurred just prior to the Civil War. It is, in fact, one of the reasons the Civil War was so very, very bloody - the Civil War was fought under leaders trained to fight with smooth-bore muskets, not the rifled barrels that characterized the Civil War weapons. The result of the rifling was an increase in the range of reliable accuracy to 500 yards, with men regularly making shots of 800 yards, and sharpshooters maxing out around 1000 yards.
You can see where I'm going with this - 30 yards is so out of scope it sticks out like a sore thumb. And I really can't read the rest of the fanfic when I'm aware that these men who are supposed to be ATF agents don't know any better. And that, right there, is the killer. The fact that men who should know their stuff, don't, is what throws me out of the story.
If your character should know what he's talking about - research it enough to know what you're talking about.
2) Know When to Gloss. If you don't want to research, or are not sure of your facts even after your research, gloss over whatever it is. Be vague and unspecific, have a character who isn't expected to know what he's talking about mention it, or just fade to black. In the section quoted above, Cmurph could have saved the whole thing by using the phrase 'from that distance' instead specifically mentioning 30 yards. 'From that distance' is vague enough that even if Cmurph has the wrong idea - the reader can't tell. And the ATF agents, who deal with guns day-in, day-out, and who do know better don't look like completely incompetent fools.
3) Know How to Bullshit. Ok, you've done the research or know a topic enough to be sure of some things, but not others. You want to write something realistic enough that your readers don't flail in laughter because you're so obviously wrong, but you're not sure of the specifics. Bullshitting your readers is a skill that can take time and effort to develop. Sometimes, you just shouldn't bother. Sometimes, you need to. The key to bullshitting is putting together your facts in such a way that the reader isn't inclined to go and check them. For an example here, I'm going to refer to a recently posted story: With an X, and a Y, and an X, X, X by lit_gal.
I want to say here that lit_gal shouldn't be offended by my using her story for this example. I don't actually know how much research lit_gal put into this, but that's the point behind this particular section: by the time I get to the end of the story, I'm satisfied that she did enough research to make it work, no matter what that amount actually is.
This is a 'not really an mpreg' story set in The Sentinel fandom. Blair is talking to Jim about having kids, and he delves into unusual medical territory: intersexed people. When I got done with this story, I mentioned that I thought it was pretty realistic - and I did. Until I got to thinking that I don't actually know how realistic it is, because I don't know all the ins and outs of intersexed people and what they're capable of, medically speaking. But I also realized that it didn't matter that I didn't have this knowledge. Lit_gal had presented the story in such a way that I A) was inclined to believe her, and B) was not inclined to check her. How did she accomplish this?
First, the appropriate character mentions a medical condition :
Blair just snorted. "Fine, but when you freak, I'm reminding you of that. Anyway, have you ever heard of
congenital adrenal hyperplasia?"
I have no idea if this medical condition exists, but Blair, who would, must surely know. And look at the name - congenital means something is present from birth - it's going to be an intrinsic part of the person's life - at least, that's the layman's interpretation. Adrenal means 'hormone glands'; hyper is 'more than necessary'. I don't know what 'plasia' is, but the other three things convince me of Blair's knowledge and gives me a set-up for the description below of Blair's genitals, and how they relate to his intersexed status.
What follows this is a conversation made up of Jim getting the gender identity of Blair wrong, and Blair correcting him while he explains his innards. And if anyone should know about Blair's innards, it's Blair, right? What this does is set up a natural back-and-forth the reader can clearly follow. Jim is voicing the reader's questions, and Blair is answering them. The dynamic is set up such that the reader is put in the mindset of 'student', and is not inclined to question what s/he is being 'taught' from such an authority as Blair. And Blair does have the authority in this conversation - his statements are strong, positive, affirming. They are stated as facts - and his 'facts' aren't actually too out of left field for people to swallow. Like the 'fact' that his penis is in the 2 percentile range - this plays on the basic understanding people have of the bell curve - there has to be someone out there on the edges of the bell.
The combination of these factors means that I, who really don't know all that I should about intersexed people, came away from this fic deciding it was very realistic, and more importantly, I don't feel the need to check lit_gal's understanding. And while I think lit_gal probably did do her research, and probably was accurate to the best of her ability, that's sort of beside the point. Because even if this was made up out of whole cloth, she presented it in a way that is very solidly plausible and possible.
Universal Consistencies
The other category of factual realism that can throw a reader off-balance is inconsistency in the universe you're playing in. A common example of this is Vin Tanner's background in the Mag7:ATF AU. Vin Tanner's history is usually given as: runaway/ foster brat till 18, enlisted in the Army, sniper-trained, got out, spent some time bounty hunting, spent some time as a US Marshall or Texas Ranger, was picked up by Chris Larabee for Team 7. This may match his Old West profile, but it presents a bit of a timing problem, particularly when an author has him down as younger than about 27. The main problem here is the sniper-training. The military typically does not tap people for Special Operations training who are younger than about 25. Before spending a lot of money training valuable operatives, they want people to demonstrate steadiness, maturity, ability, flexibility - all traits that the 18-25 set haven't had time to develop yet. You can be tapped younger - I have a friend who had to have been tapped for BUD/S training (SEAL training) around 23 - but it's not really usual. But the point is, if Vin is 27 when Chris hires him, and was tapped at the normal time - and there's really no reason he shouldn't be - that gives him only 2 years to 1) be trained, 2) go on missions, 3) retire and find a job or start bounty hunting, and 4) possibly spend some time as a Texas Ranger or US Marshall, all while 5) making enough of a reputation that Chris doesn't look like an idiot for hiring him. In the ATF:AU, I mentally place Vin at about 30 at the time of being hired by Larabee for TEAM 7 - and even that's a stretch, even if he was tapped at 22 or 23. For the same reason, I usually place Chris at 40-42 at team start, with Buck no younger than 38.
An example of background consistency problems as applied to an entire Universe Setup can be found in Susan Foster's Guide Development Project (GDP) AU. This is a Sentinel AU where-in Sentinels and Guides are psychically bonded and interdependent on each other; however, society elevates and reveres Sentinels, but denigrates and essentially enslaves Guides. This is actually a fascinating idea on a number of levels, but there are at least two major 'mistakes' she makes on the executive decision level. The most glaring decision was to meld the United States and Canada into one country. It's mentioned in Susan's author's notes, and it's 'present' in her fanfic, but it's not explored or represented in any way that makes any sense. It should be obvious even to someone who's from Europe that fusing the US and Canada into one massive state is going to take a lot more development than an unexplained holiday ('America's Day' - don't get me started), for the simple fact that the US and Canada have two very different political systems. The US is a Democracy, Canada is a parliamentary system like England - these two systems? Not really compatible at all. Likewise, states are not counties, and can't be treated as such. There's also a history of colonial aggression between the US and Canada - so melding the countries, if it didn't happen recently, means a complete rewrite of history from some point. And if it did happen recently, where are the glitches in communications and bureaucratic territorial pissing matches over it? They should still be going on.
The second example of background consistency problems in the GDP-verse is Susan's very mixed guidelines for bonding between Sentinel and Guide. She starts out indicating that most Sentinels and Guides get to know each other before bonding - that's the whole point of Sentinel/Guide 'mixers' - they're get to know you parties. She indicates that Sentinel and Guide will have some level of control over their instinctive bonding behavior, and who they pick to bond with. And then she pretty much has none of her featured pairs following those rules. Every single one has a related past life that predicts that the current pairing was 'meant to be'. Abused Guides are often shown as not actually dependent on their Sentinels - which shouldn't be the case, if the two are really interdependent. Sentinels frequently lose control when the pre-destined 'right' Guide is presented to them - again, this also shouldn't be the case if they really have any control whatsoever over the bonds. There should be more cases of pair-bonds bickering like old married couples, young married couples, and people with teenagers, instead of the schmoopy 'everything is all right since I'm with my life-partner' feel to the pair-bonds in the AU.
So, what's a universe that gets background consistency right? For my example here, I'm going to go with... the TV CANON MYTHOS of the The Sentinel. Yeah, these guys did a bang-up job of being consistent. Let's look at the medical background of what makes a Sentinel. A Sentinel has five heightened physical senses - you really can find people with one or two heightened senses all over the place. Remember that bell curve? Somebody's got to be on the high end, too. Untrained Sentinels have difficulties sorting and processing the incoming information - see: autism spectrum disorders. These disorders are often characterized by some level of inability to 'filter through' stimulus, until some of it reaches 'background noise' while you can concentrate on what your brain perceives as important. See also: sensory aphasia, or the phenomenon associated with seeing letters or words as different colors, hearing touch, feeling speech, that sort of thing. Jim's zone-outs have a direct correlation to the catatonia an autistic person might retreat to when the sensations get overwhelming. Nearly everything associated with Sentinelism shown in the show can be shown, on an individual level, to have roots in real-world phenomena.
Even the 6th-sense and psychic stuff is consistent within itself, within generic totemic cultures, and with how it interacts with the characters. This is why I love The Sentinel, and keep coming back to it. It's got a solid, consistent base, with larger applications and implications. This is a good thing.
To sum up: Readers will be thrown by things that don't fit. Make sure your facts are real or at least realistic enough to pass. Know when to gloss over knowledge, and how to bullshit your readers - but don't fall into the trap of trying to bullshit your characters. Your characters should sound like experts when discussing their specialties. When constructing a brand new universe, or a character background, make sure you have a reason for everything you do. Know why, when, and how something happened, even if you don't mention it on-screen. Trust me, your readers will pick up on this.
Next Up: Characterization
-bs
6/19/2008: ETA for spelling and fact correction - yup, even I screw up!