We've all read the books that tell us to exagerrate characters as real people are too dull for fiction and while reading a thread on the importance of life experience, it occurred to me that (almost without exception) when I write something unusual that I have actually seen, it is picked up and slated as unbelievable. Whereas, when I write something that is so extreme as to only be possible in fiction, it is often accepted at face value. Similarly, I find that a lot of redrafting is cutting out details that (while true in my understanding of the scene) distract from the main thrust.

So, the question is, should aspiring writers cultivate a distorting lens view of the world that can see nothing smaller than a life-changing emotional crisis?

I'd say if you've been reading books that tell you to exaggerate normal characters, you've been reading the wrong books.

We've all already got a distorting lens; it's called our own 'normal' vision. Which isn't to say that you shouldn't worry about making characters interesting, but your vision won't be anyone else's, so as long as you make sure you're looking really hard and carefully at real life, and writing it as well as you possibly can, they will be interesting anyway, and in a way that's true to your own vision, because it will be a product of that vision.

I'd be very worried about any writing that set out to distort things in a formulaic way - I think it will read as formula. I know I always give up in exasperation at books which are trying too hard to be gloomy or comic or edgy or whatever. There's no sense of truth about them; it's like talking to people who are absolutely determined to see everything as either wonderful or terrible, with none of the shades of grey and counter-currents and subtleties and surprises that real life actually holds, and if you say, 'yes, but what about...' they go deaf, because it doesn't fit their idea, so they pretend your example doesn't exist. This is probably another case for my mantra of 'it's not as simple as that.' (which is of course a more formal version of 'yes, but'

Emma

I too would disagree with that advice GC - I'd have thought better advice was to take ordinary people and put them into extraordinary situations - that's when all the fun starts, no? - and then they're able to discover the extraordinary about themselves. But if they're not real, who cares about them or what they discover?

By extraordinary, I mean any situation, something fantastical, or ordinary lives but at a moment of crisis, or anywhere inbetween.

Andrea

I'll admit that I phrased the topic with the intention of getting a dicussion going rather than my (slightly) more moderate position, but...

1. This from Frey (How to write a damn good novel...) [Emma, is this a wrong book? It seems to get name-checked a lot...]

Fictional characters - homo fictus - are not, however identical to flesh-and-blood human beings - homo sapiens. One reason is that readers wish to read about the exceptional rather than the mundane.

He goes on to talk about all sorts of exciting stuff that makes a good bit of drama but is woefully unlike real life.

2. Carole Blake (Pitch to Publication) has a rant about people who write from experience and write tawdry novels on accountancy...

3. A screenplay writing group I was in the other week criticised a well-written, but ever so dull piece of writing for being written in "real-time and not film-time".

4. An awful lot of redrafting is cutting out the distractions to allow readers to see the story.

5. Unlike science where something can be proved wrong, people's opinions and actions are always open to debate and as such, a balanced discussion of two positions usually results in no clear conclusion.

6. Try rewriting any of the successful commercial dramas without stretching the imagination as to character. EG:

"Home Alone" - A small boy is abandoned, he cries a lot and his parents are arrested as he is put into care.

"Romeo and Juliet" - A lovestruck teenager is torn by family feuds. He shags her anyway.

As I said, this is a bit more extreme than my actual viewpoint, and I will admit exceptions like "Lord of the Flies" or "How Late It Was How Late", but there are entire genres of writing (crime thrillers and murder mysteries, for example) that depend on a willing suspense of the natural order from the readers.

Undoubtedly fiction isn't real life; real life is the base material for fiction.
My real feeling isn't terribly helpful for aspiring writers, because it's that you can write absolutely anything about anyone, if you do it well enough. And yes, most of the 'rules-of-thumb' you get taught are contradicted by some great work or other. I don't know the Frey book. And when Carole Blake or whoever (haven't read that one either - I really don't have very much time for how-to writing books) says she doesn't like tawdry novels about accountancy what she actually doesn't like tawdry novels. She may put up with tawdry medieval books if she's basically more interested in history than accountancy, but actually, the subject isn't the point. If I didn't have better things to do, I'd be sorely tempted to try writing one about accountancy that she'd pounce on... You could have a lovely time with... No, that's the next novel but two.

I don't know much about script-writing, but clearly that one was dull. When we look at a piece (always excepting straight forward prejudices like 'I hate anything with a castle in it' we feel something, and then we try to work out why we feel that. 'Adultery's such a boring subject' is what you say when the writer hasn't made the adultery compellingly, hair-raisingly, heart-breakingly alive enough. If it is, you can call that 'exaggerated' if you like, but I'd just call it 'real'.

Emma

Undoubtedly fiction isn't real life; real life is the base material for fiction.

I guess that's my point. Anything you read is only the truth from one POV. Often the more extreme the POV, the more powerful.

For example, Mishima (a film biography about the guy who wrote Golden Temple) is:

writing it as well as you possibly can

And:

in a way that's true to your own vision

But the entire film, and the entire story of his life points inevitably to the last scene in which Mishima commits suicide after a failed military coup in which he attempts to reinstate the Japanese emperor.

That's not normal. What that really is not is an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.

What it is, is one screwed up individual almost succeeding in justifying an utterly screwed up and mind-bogglingly extreme POV. It left me speechless because I realised how an alien mindset had been communicated to me in a way that made me think I would have done the same. It is also an extraordinarily good film.

Along the same lines, Will Self would never sell a thing if he had to write ordinary characters. Tolkien depends on extremes of heroism/cowardice and even Jilly Cooper needs extremes of rivalry and infidelity.

If good writing is all you need, why are the EastEnders victim to so many murders?

Gaius

ps:

I don't know much about script-writing

I tried it as a way to improve my descriptive writing for the novel and, for me, it's liberating as the writing is so fast once you know what you want to do. Worth doing if only to understand the differences between the different media. It can be a lot of fun.