Many writers strive to create realistic fiction, believing that realism automatically makes a story more believable. But realistic fiction and believable fiction are not the same thing.
One surprising thing I sometimes say during a manuscript assessment is that realism is overrated. This statement usually earns me a puzzled look.
After all, isn’t realism exactly what we’re aiming for? Surely characters should behave as people really behave, conversations should sound like real conversations, and events should unfold as they would in real life?
Well, not quite. What readers are looking for isn’t realism exactly. What they need is believability.
Those two things overlap, but they are not the same.
In fact, one of the quickest ways to weaken a novel is to pursue realism at the expense of storytelling.
Real Life Is Badly Edited
Real life contains an astonishing amount of repetition.
We go to work. We have the same conversations. Go to the loo. Lose our keys. Queue at the supermarket. Sit in waiting rooms. Scroll our phones. Say goodbye three times before finally ending a phone call.
All of that is perfectly realistic, and almost none of it belongs in a novel.
Stories are, by their nature, edited versions of reality: the writer chooses which moments deserve the reader’s attention and discards the rest. That is storytelling.
Realistic Doesn’t Always Feel Believable
This is where writers often get caught out.
Something can happen exactly as it would or did in real life and still feel wrong on the page.
William Goldman, the novelist and screenwriter, talked in Adventures in the Screen Trade about this contradiction between realism and believability by describing writing a hypothetical kidnapping movie.
In this hypothetical movie, the kidnapper makes absolutely no plan for his attempt, but then experiences incredible good luck. Technical glitches prevent his detection by camera. Alarms go off but are ignored. The guard suddenly decides to take the dogs out – just as the kidnapper rounds the corner.
Goldman pointed out that no audience would remain invested in this series of events – it’s too unbelievable. A successful and believable such story would have the kidnapper creating a careful plan, doing things to avoid detection and the guards, having a few near-misses and so forth.
Nevertheless, this thoroughly inept and yet successful incident Goldman described was exactly what actually happened when Michael Fagan wandered into Elizabeth II’s bedroom in Buckingham Palace in 1982.
So you see, a story can hew very closely to real life and be unbelievable.
Your story doesn’t have to be realistic. It has to feel true.
Coincidences are another good example because they happen all the time.
People miss trains by seconds. Old school friends unexpectedly meet on holiday thousands of miles away. Someone is slightly delayed, or takes a wrong turning, and it changes the course of their life.
In fiction, however, readers instinctively expect important events to have causes they can see and understand.
If the detective solves the murder because the killer rings them up and confesses, then readers will feel cheated – even though murderers do unexpectedly confess sometimes.
Readers aren’t actually judging your novel against real life. They’re judging it against the internal logic of the story you’ve invited them into.
Why Emotional Truth Creates Believable Fiction
One manuscript I assessed portrayed depression with great realism: the repetitive thoughts, lack of motivation, emotional flatness, and the feeling that every day was simply another version of the last.
It was accurate, but it was also exhausting to read.
That isn’t because depression is unimportant – quite the opposite – it’s because the experience of living through depression and the experience of reading about it are fundamentally different.
A novel needs movement, it needs change, it needs moments of discovery, tension and development. When every chapter faithfully reproduces the repetitive nature of depression, readers may admire the realism and still lose all desire to turn the page.
Your story doesn’t have to be realistic. It has to feel true.
Fiction is full of things that aren’t remotely realistic: dragons, time travel, magic, talking trees, sentient robots with chronic diode pain…
Readers accept all of them without complaint, because the emotional logic makes sense.
The characters react like recognisable human beings. Cause and effect are linked. Actions have consequences. Choices matter.
The world follows the rules, even if those rules are entirely invented by the author.
Meanwhile, a perfectly ordinary contemporary novel can lose readers if the protagonist suddenly behaves out of character simply because the plot requires it.
Time travelling dragons won’t be a problem. Inconsistent motivation absolutely will be, because, ultimately, believable characters matter far more than perfectly realistic events.
Believability Comes From Cause and Effect
Readers are remarkably generous.
They will accept almost anything if they understand why it happened. That’s one of the reasons flawed characters are often more engaging than supposedly perfect ones.
A coincidence that creates a problem will be forgiven, but a coincidence that conveniently solves one rarely is.
An extraordinary decision can feel completely believable if the character’s motivation has been carefully established; while an entirely ordinary decision can feel implausible if the reader cannot see why the character made it.
Believability isn’t about asking, ‘Could this happen?’ but whether ‘In this story, in these circumstances, with these characters, does this feel inevitable?’
The Question Writers Should Ask
Writers will sometimes defend a scene by saying, ‘But that’s how it happens in real life.’ And I don’t doubt it for a moment.
But the question isn’t whether it happened. It’s whether it makes for satisfying fiction. Readers aren’t paying for a documentary. They’re paying for a story.
Reality has no interest in satisfying character arcs, and it doesn’t build tension with careful pacing. People don’t conveniently confront their deepest fears three chapters before the end.
Those things happen in stories.
And that’s why stories work, while real life is frequently narratively underwhelming.
The Bottom Line
Realism and believability are close cousins, but they are not identical.
Realism asks whether something could happen; believability asks whether readers will accept it within the world of your story.
The irony is that the most convincing novels are often those that depart from strict reality in order to capture something deeper than facts: truth.
So don’t worry too much about whether every scene is realistic and instead, ask yourself a more useful question.
Will my readers believe it?
Because in fiction, that’s the standard that really matters.
If you’re struggling with your story, the objective viewpoint provided by a professional manuscript assessment could help you get unstuck.
Further reading in this series:
Why Your Likeable Protagonist Isn’t Likeable
Why Your Beta Readers’ Feedback Isn’t Giving you the Truth
The Difference Between a Flawed Character and An Unlikeable Character
