Can fiction be too real?

A beta reader once told me that a certain aspect of my book was “too real, and sometimes realism needs to be sacrificed for the sake of fiction.” Now, this blog post isn’t to pick on her, because her advice was given in good faith. But it got me thinking . . . can fiction be too real?

I don’t think it can. And after I thought about it for a while (ahem, months), I almost certain this complaint usually boils down to one thing—they can’t identify with the character. And surprise! This isn’t always a craft problem.

One of the things I’ve learned by writing romantic relationships in particular is that people are super judgy about how other people (fictional and real) fall in love if it doesn’t match their own experience. Love triangles? People hate them, even though they happen. The instalove trope? It’s hated, and yet I know multiple people who fell in love and knew they’d marry their spouse after just a date or two. Maybe less. I can begin to imagine it, but it happens.

Oh, but you say, but it’s not the trope itself I hate! It’s the poor execution!

No. No, it’s not. Blaming it on the execution is a cop out—because I firmly believe I could write a technically flawless story and still have readers complain, because they can’t imagine falling in love with a complete stranger. Even in the most perfect story, there’s going to be one reader who says, “That would never happen.”

I posted this exact situation on Twitter on a few months ago, and one reply stuck with me:

I have a very minor romantic subplot and was told a certain female was “too taken” with a certain male. I’m like “Okay, because that never happens in real life?” Then I was told that just because it reflects real life doesn’t make it “believable.” – Leanna Rapier

See, I would argue the very fact it happens in real life makes it believable, no matter how much a reader might dislike it. You may not like it or approve of it, but it happens. You can’t tell me (especially if you’re a woman) that you never saw a friend go after a guy to the exclusion of her friends. Perhaps you’ve been lucky and haven’t seen it. But I’m here to tell you, it happens. A lot.

So now we have two issues—the reader can’t imagine a character acting a certain way, because they’ve never been there, and they disapprove of the choices the character’s made, because they’d never make the same one. Both of those are totally valid reactions, as long as we realize their born out of our own limited experience and views. And isn’t one of the purposes of fiction to expand our horizons?

Note that I’m not talking about graphic sex or violence here—just characters that readers find unbelievable because they don’t match their experiences and beliefs. Obviously everyone has a line to draw with regards to that kind of realism. Same with dialogue, the other realism. No one wants to read a book a filled with umms.

But as for the rest? Let’s be open-minded. Let’s let characters act like real people, even (especially!) when they’re not like us.