WORK:VerisimilitudeAndDracula

In her response to Miranda Morgan, Jacqueline writes,

>In the field of fiction writing, in order to keep your readers
>interested in your story long enough to finish it -- maybe long
>enough to memorize your name and find your other books -- you have to
>CONVINCE THEM your alter-reality is REAL.

>In sf/f we say, "believe 6 impossible things before breakfast".

Actually, you are never going to convince anyone that your story is REAL
except the sort of person who also believes that what happens on soap
operas is real. The term for what an author tries to create is not
reality, but verisimilitude.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said it about fantasy, but science fiction
writers also frequently quote him--what we want to create in our readers
is "a willing suspension of disbelief."

Your readers have come to you to be entertained. They WANT to enter your
world, and escape from their own for a while. But you have to help
them--and the more sophisticated (experienced) the reader, the more LIKE
reality your writing has to be.

But we write about worlds where there are flying dragons. Where space
ships travel faster than life. Where machines and holograms have
personalities. Where there are vampires.

So how do you create verisimilitude in such worlds? There are many ways.
Just this morning, I was teaching _Dracula_ in my Fantasy, Myth, and
Legend class, pointing out that Bram Stoker invented the modern method of
creating verisimilitude in the horror story. Previously, horror stories
had been primarily in the gothic mode, set long ago, far away, or
both--or at the very least in some isolated area where the protagonists
were trapped, and if they could simply escape the gothic center, they
would escape the horror. Stoker was the first to bring the monster right
into the reader's own territory: Dracula came to England, invaded first
the small city of Whitby, and then moved on to London, where he was seen
walking down Picadilly in broad daylight. Stoker's readers KNEW Whitby,
they KNEW London--and Stoker was very careful in every detail of train
and bus schedules, ship departures, phases of the moon, addresses--any
detail a skeptical reader might happen to know would turn out to be
cirrect.

Stoker also martialed the best science and technology of his day
(primitive to us, but cutting edge in 1887, the year in which the events
of _Dracula_ take place) against the monster: medicine, psychiatry,
blood transfusions, shorthand, sound recording, the typewriter,
telegrams--every bit of modern knowledge, modern technology, is used by
the protagonists to find out what attacks and then kills Lucy, and then
when they have found it, to defeat it. There was no reality to Dracula,
but the resources used by the vampire hunters were quite real in the
world Stoker's readers lived in: they would agree, if something like
that happened, those are the very resources they would hope to use to
combat it.

This particular technique is commonplace in horror writing today, but
Stoker invented it. Copying it is easy, which is why it is so
commonplace today: it works, and it's easy to use.

Stoker was only fair, however, at characterization. And characterization
is the heart of verisimilitude.

If your characters act and react in a way that seems natural and
therefore real to the reader, no matter how wildly unreal the situation
they are in, your readers will suspend their disbelief about the
situation because they believe in your CHARACTERS.

Most of Stoker's protagonists are too good to be true, too noble, too
hard-working, too honest and honorable. But he manages to give some of
them endearing quirks, and interestingly makes Van Helsing, the expert
everyone looks up to, a fully rounded person with serious flaws whose
old-fashioned authoritarian attitude is responsible for Lucy's death and
almost for Mina's.

Believable characterization is probably the key to verisimilitude--and
that one is HARD to do. Like Bram Stoker, we are reluctant to give our
characters serious flaws, but that is necessary to make them come to
life, to make them believable. Real people have flaws, and so must
realistic fictional characters.

So, when you want to create verisimilitude--the art of enabling your
readers to suspend their disbelief as they want to, so they can enter and
participate in your world--there are ways such as the use of genuine
reality within your fictional universe that are easy to imitate. Use
them.

But remember that if your characters don't act and react as your readers
expect real people would if dropped into the universe you have created,
they will not be able to suspend their disbelief and will be thrown right
out of your story.

Jean

Jean Lorrah, jean1@juno.com
http://www.jeanlorrah.com
NEW BOOK: Nessie and the Living Stone by Lois Wickstrom and Jean Lorrah
http://www.nessiebook.com