tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post8916023913220277926..comments2024-03-28T11:52:29.432-04:00Comments on Cockeyed Caravan: Storyteller’s Rulebook: Add Realism, But Don’t Subtract UnrealismMatt Birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-53991245046528981082015-06-16T08:52:57.476-04:002015-06-16T08:52:57.476-04:00That reminds me of something I experienced several...That reminds me of something I experienced several times in creative writing workshops. There would be a scene in someone's work that the class would describe as unbelievable, and the most common defense would be, "But it actually happened!" One of my professors said that in fiction, it was usually better to have some sort of emotional truth than factual truth. The example he gave was of a soldier jumping on a grenade to protect his comrades: it had probably happened, but it felt too ham-handed and sentimental to put in a war story, at least without a lot of justification and buildup.Geekademianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-68132058406195503062015-06-16T00:45:42.190-04:002015-06-16T00:45:42.190-04:00The first example that springs to mind is the rece...The first example that springs to mind is the recent bomb ALOHA. Apparently, Cameron Crowe actually met a red-headed white guy in Hawaii with the last name "Ng", who constantly had to explain that he was half Asian, and Crowe thought, "What a neat little real-life detail that sums up Hawaii and the modern condition! I'll add a love interest played by Emma Stone with the last name 'Ng'!" To put it mildly, the public didn't react the way he thought they would. <br /><br />Such a thing was possible, and apparently actually happened, but it seemed phony and insulting onscreen. Instead of finding a detail that was representative of a larger issue, he found one that was very much UNrepresentative or the larger issue (racial diversity and Native heritage in Hawaii.) When he belatedly tried to explain that he hadn't actually cast a white actress in a role written for an Asian, nobody was mollified: it still rubbed most people the wrong way.Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-56531658641786121242015-06-15T17:46:57.696-04:002015-06-15T17:46:57.696-04:00For me this is the heart and soul of great genre w...For me this is the heart and soul of great genre writing. When I think of my favorite moments in procedural stories like GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY or THE WIRE it's what comes to mind first -- details of the world that feel so true that even if they aren't strictly historically or technically accurate or sociologically documented, they feel like they ought to be. Like that f-bomb conversation at the crime scene in THE WIRE, something that David Simon never witnessed in real life but that he imagined _should_ happen in that kind of world.<br /><br />There's a lot of hard observational work and research that goes into creating those moments. But it's also a pretty delicate matter of judgment and taste. It's almost always more about how or why something is done and what it does for the story than it is even the original motivating bit of research. I wonder if you can think of some illustrative examples of especially bad choices that feel like the result of poor judgment, failure to balance these needs properly or going too far in the direction of realism in a way that ironically plays unrealistically.j.s.noreply@blogger.com