In a post on CrimeReads, Bridget Collins ponders how genre fiction and the real world collide. “We think of ‘genre’ fiction and ‘realism’ as being qualitatively different, as if authors took a binary decision about whether to write about the real world or an unreal one,” Collins writes. But that isn’t necessarily the case.
The trick of any kind of fiction is to create a sense of reality throughout a story that never happened; ie: an unreal situation. The difference between genre and other contemporary fiction is where the writer draws the line between reality and fiction. Does a certain novel’s reality contain dragons or spaceships or does it hew more closely to what we see outside our windows? “At one end of the spectrum you might be writing about a real person, doing the things she really did on the real dates she did them; at the other you might be writing about Middle Earth or the Discworld,” Collins says. “But somewhere there is a line between reality and fiction, a gap filled with imagination rather than truth.”
Collins suggests the difference is one of accuracy v. consistency. When portraying the “real” world or real-life persons, your research must be meticulous. When creating a new world, you must ensure your details are consistent, to create a plausible, cohesive world for your reader. This choice also governs what your book is about. “If the only thing your world has in common with the real one is humanity—or intelligent life—that’s your subject,” Collins says. “If the only thing your world does not have in common with the real one is the interior life of an otherwise real person… well, you get the idea.”
