[Rupert Avery]

I often read on some post that a few people find parts of a book to be unrealistic.(most of the time its about romance) Yet I find this kind of odd after all we are reading fantasy here.I dont find this a problem.What I would like to know is what do you find unrealistic and why?
Where do you draw the line on whats real and whats not,when on one page a dragon blows away a army of dwarfs and the next a character makes a move of love on another character that may seem "unrealistic".Its all fantasy is it not.

[Rob B]

With the dragons and dwarfs thing, we suspend our disbelief to a certain degree.

However, when it comes the characters, the part of the story we as the reader can most closely identify with; their actions and reaction; the way they approach situations etc it is a different story. At least for me, it is harder to suspend disbelief in relation to characters, because the author usually has a human or human-type character and we find it difficult to see ourselves or those we know act as some of the characters do.

[wastra]

Exactly- we must be made to believe that given certain things (the existence of other worlds, dragons, elves, magic, etc.) the events in the story could happen.

Each person has a personality- that personality defines how they react to different situations and circumstances. For example- a character who has been established as indecisive, cowardly, and skittish for 13 chapters should turn on the drop of a hat, when it suits the story, and become the supremely confident general in command. It's simply not in character and therefore not believeable. This is a failing of Terry Goodkind, in my opinion.

Fantasy allows us to escape our world for a time, but human emotions and human action should not change across the spectrum- lest there be nothing at all for us human readers to identify with,

[Lani]

I agree with FitzFlagg that we identify ourselves with characters and in fantasy books the characters still have the same psychology as we do, so they should not do something out of the line.
But still I don't know myself why everybody so opposed to romance in fantasy books. Of course it shouldn't play the main part in the plot, but what's so unrealistic about two characters in a book being attracted to each other I don't know. As long as it's not written the same way as paperback romances, I don't see anything wrong with it.

[Barbarossa]

Fantasy shouldn't mean you can forget logic, it just means the logic has another base.
E.g. it's ok if magic exists in a fantasy world, but the author should show us a) which effect that existance of magic has on society, and why it has THAT effect and not another. E.G. why mages don't rule the world or if they do how the world is effected by that...
Characters as mentioned before are an important part too. I have little to add to the previous mentions though.

Another thing is gimmics, i just hate it if anyone (hero or villain) produces a special skill/artefact just in time for the showdown which would have been decesive any time before.

[Pluvious]

I agree with what is posted above. Everything needs to be a certain way for a reason, whether people, places, things, or ideas. If all of a sudden a mild-mannered innkeeper goes on a killing spree we as readers want to know why-or else we don't trust you, we become frustrated, and we throw your book into the fire.

This is why if you create a world you need to make sense. We need to know why people fight wars, why the economy is barter-orientated, and why elves have pointy ears. For this reason most authors use real-world historical cultures as a starting point instead of creating them entirely from scratch. Would you be interested in a bunch of ant-people going around collecting glucose all day? I probably would, but that's another story.

[Cadfael]

I don't mind a characters persona or attitude changing mid-book, as long as there is a valid reason for it. I.e he/she has had about as much they can take of a situation, or they are the victim of a spell or something.

In real life... a mild mannered man walked into a school in the village of Dunblain in Scotland, and shot 13 children to death... we still don't fully understand why he did that.

[Pluvious]

dennizm, was there a point to that? Are you saying we should or shouldn't understand this person's motives? And its one thing to know why, and quite another to understand. Everyone has reasons, but good fiction takes you into the character's mind, often establishing sympathy where ordinarily it would not exist.

[Cadfael]

Obviously... if a mild mannered inn keeper, becomes a hatchet weilding madman overnight, we need to know why, and we have to depend on the author to tell us why... okay, maybe my above post was not too clear on this point.

The Dunblain referace was to illustrate that people do snap, and do things that can be totally out of character, if this can happen in the real world, why not in a fantasy setting, as long as the reader is not left hanging in the air with the reason unanswered. As regards the Dunblain incident, we, or the authorities involved, should try our hardest to understand why this happened, to prevent such a tradgedy in future. We don't live in a perfect world however, and it will happen again.

[This message has been edited by dennizm (edited January 23, 2001).]

[Liselle]

I do not mind romance in fantasy books, though too much of it ruins a story, in my eyes. Then, it's awful if at the beginning you have the hero, and he meets one woman (only one, in the whole book) but you know: they're going to marry... the unrealistic part is that the heros are always successful in regard to girls...