In storytelling and novel writing, there is a big difference between what is objectively real and what is believable.

This is the two-part rule:

1. Nothing in your story needs to be real.

2. Everything in your story must be believable.

What do I mean by “real?” As a former philosophy major in college, I can tell you that since the days of Socrates, this has been a topic of vigorous debate! People argue endlessly about what is real. Some insist that ghosts are real. Others say that Covid-19 is not real. And you only need to turn on Fox News to get a big dose of “facts” that seem far from real.

Let’s try to find a definition as it pertains to fiction writing. As I see it, a story element that is “real” is one that the ordinary person would observe or have knowledge of in everyday life, and which ties the story to life as we recognize it. For example, a housecat is a real animal. But a housecat with wings is not real. The housecats that we see every day, and which live on earth, do not have wings.

But could you write a fantasy story featuring a housecat with wings? Of course you could! It all depends on the context and what the reader expects. As an artist, you have the freedom to imagine any kind of universe you want, and populate it with any variety of feline, winged or otherwise. But you need to ensure your reader understands and accepts that your winged cat inhabits a universe where such things are normal.

Get a Laugh at Any Cost

To me, playing fast and loose with reality becomes a problem when the author puts his characters in a contrived situation to make fun of them, and the author clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Recently I read a novel—a purported comedy from a major publisher—set in contemporary Los Angeles. The protagonist is a professional plumber by trade, who specializes in unclogging drain pipes. This is a real profession that real people do. The setup is that a wealthy woman has a clogged outflow pipe from her house. It’s described as a clay pipe invaded by roots from a nearby ficus hedge. The plumber and his partner start digging in a specific place.

Problem 1: How does the plumber know the exact location of the clog? This is a minor but irritating detail. By some divination, he and his partner know exactly where to dig.

The author then describes how the bumbling duo spend “all morning” digging a five-foot trench on either side of the pipe.

Problem 2: Any normal plumber would get a backhoe and dig the trench in fifteen minutes. But I suppose the author thought it would be funnier if the incompetent pair spent all morning using hand shovels to perform this simple, routine task. And anyway, if the homeowner had an antique clay pipe running under their lawn, the plumber would excavate the entire length of the clay pipe, from the foundation of the house all the way to the street, and replace it with PVC pipe.

In the scene, the plumber then puts on “ear mufflers” (whatever those are) and uses a chainsaw to cut the clay pipe.

Problem 3: This is ridiculous. With a little bit of research, the author would have learned the proper tool for cutting buried sewer pipe is a soil pipe cutter. This is a simple manual tool, with no engine and no ear protection required.

With the pipe now cut open, of course you know what happens next: The lady inside the house flushes the toilet. According to the author, the sewer water comes gushing out of the gaping pipe with such tremendous force that a “geyser” erupts, “exploding” with tremendous force all over the chest and face of his partner, who is standing in the trench, which is probably only a few feet deep.

Problem 4: Again, this is preposterous. Home outflow lines operate by gravity, not some sort of pressure system. When the lady of the house flushed her toilet, the stinky water—perhaps a gallon or two maximum—would come dribbling out of the pipe. If the house were elevated, you might say it came pouring out. In any case, if you were inattentive and standing downstream in the trench, it might soak your work boots, but nothing more.

And then comes the tragic end: Somehow, this terrible crisis, capped by his face drenched in raw sewage, is enough to give the plumber’s partner a heart attack, and he drops dead on the spot. The whole sorry episode is just not believable.

You might say, “Hey, take it easy! It’s just a funny scene. Let the author have some creative license.”

To that I reply, “No. The author has not intended to create an alternative, magic universe, with different rules about real life. Neither is this a kids’ slapstick cartoon book, like Captain Underpants. It’s a novel with literary pretensions. The author wants his story to be set in the real world, and when creating his comic scene, he has simply been lazy. He doesn’t know the first thing about the factual underpinnings of the scene he invented, and he assumes we don’t either.”

There is a reason why truly great writers like Stephen King go to great lengths to research and understand the subjects they write about. They want their stories to be believable. They want them to seem real, and they don’t condescend to the reader. In too many literary efforts today, I see a relentless drive to be clever regardless of the relationship of art to real life. It’s like seeing a building with gaudy ornamentation and frothy details, and when you look closer you see the underlying structure is made out of cheap plywood.