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Fiction & the Real World - Realism
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 13
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Because realism comes so naturally to most of us, though, it can often be a slippery concept to grasp. Most of the techniques we've discussed thus far could be fairly described as realist techniques, or techniques that help to produce stories readers accept as "realistic." Gardner's notion of the "vivid and continuous dream" is itself an expression of the realist goal of creating a "believable" fictional world. In all of our discussions of plot, character, point of view, the underlying goal has been the realist goal, to create fictional worlds that readers will find true-to-life.
This may not be the most helpful information in understanding realism though. It is often easier to see how realism operates in stories that don't use realist techniques, or use them in unusual ways. It's similar to the way that the grammar of your native tongue is more difficult to understand than that of a foreign language because you've already internalized the rules.
The anthology in What If? contains at least two stories which employ techniques that undercut a reader's ability to accept that the story (might) actually have happened, stories in which the author intentionally undercuts Gardner's "vivid and continuous dream" in order to remind the reader that they are in fact reading a piece of fiction. The author points to the story as an artificial construction rather than pretending it is a report of real events. Flip through the anthology and see if you can identify a story that does this, and then, in a half page to a page, explain what techniques you think the author has used.
Exercise 1 (Req.) - Submit Response
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