The novel opens in the kitchen of a New York City tenement. The husband has returned after an exhausting day manning a newsstand in frenetic Penn Station expecting to decompress first with a cold beer and then a homecooked meal. Instead, he finds his wife seated at the kitchen table, eyes fixed on an open Daily News, on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Earlier that day, the news reported that a ten-year old girl had been raped, brutally beaten, and left for dead under a staircase in a neighboring building.
The couple are Irish immigrants who came to America in search of a better life. But during the last several months, the wife had begun a slow simmering crusade to return to the homeland, a campaign rooted in the rapidly changing ethnic mix of the neighborhood.
The opening scene kicks off the racial narrative of the book.
Acutely aware of what’s at stake, and noting that dinner has not been prepared, the husband forgoes his customary respite and joins her at the table. Before taking a seat, he grabs a can of beer from the refrigerator, doesn’t open it, and braces for an emotional tsunami. After a short while, however, as his wife emotes, he longs for a pull of the brew and pries open the pop top with painstaking gentle precision to stifle the potentially disruptive “pop.”
The tender opening of the beer is emblematic of the fragile situation.
One more thing: the year is 1959.
Two separate readers of the novel pounced on the pop top reference as historical inaccuracy. Emil Franz patented the pop-top in 1963, years later than depicted.
Was that fair criticism or was the “revisionist” history fair creative license?
Elsewhere on the spectrum, consider the field day critics had with the 1998 film Armageddon. As but two examples of absurdity, Roger Ebert lambasted the portrayal of astronauts literally walking on an asteroid headed to destroy Earth under the power of the same gravitational forces we experience day to day and NASA training oil drillers to be astronauts instead of training astronauts to drill. Ebert summed up his litany of criticisms this way: “Armageddon is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained.” Matthew Rozsa of Salon.com commented: “From a scientist’s point of view, (Armageddon) is a complete fallacy . . . [its] animus toward . . . science runs . . . deep.”
Sometimes storytelling absurdity mocks public intelligence.
To be sure, most if not all of us, writers and non-writers alike, have rolled our eyes, shaken our heads, and muttered under our breath, “oh, come on,” at scenes in books and movies we deem too farcical for our discerning tastes. The challenge for writers is easily stated: veer too far into the surreal and lose reader engagement or tow too closely to the humdrum of reality and lose intrigue and reader interest.
There is no easy answer, especially if the baseline is, as it should be, that novelists and screenwriters are entitled to unfettered license in honing their craft without worrying about self-appointed critics deriding their work because of far-ranging imagination.
Where is the balance? Here are some considerations.
First, be consistent. Whatever the genre, improbable coincidences should ring true to the narrative. For example, the fantasy magic in Harry Potter has rules. Spells require wands, students have to learn proper technique, and lo and behold, powerful wizards have boundaries. When the story honors the rules, it has credibility and meets reader expectation.
Second, know what works in the genre. The freedom to push the envelope in a thriller or court scene is less elastic than in speculative or dystopian fiction. Each has its own leeway. The Da Vinci Code often takes liberties with religious and historical facts, invoking hidden codes and ancient conspiracies, among other extraordinary devices. It works because readers of the genre expect a mix of mystery and action. Similarly, in Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s use of time travel works because it occurs within the context of a reality-based anti-war message. Events can be extraordinary so long as they are grounded in recognizable and accepted themes of the time.
Third, characters must be emotionally authentic. That means emotive extremes must make sense within the storyline. Consider Handmaid’s Tale, where the setting is a disturbing and extreme dystopian society, but the emotional core of the narrative—fear, resilience, and survival instincts—rings true and is relatable notwithstanding the over-the-top setting. The most shocking episodes convey imaginative realism to readers inside historical events. They don’t feel like “fiction.” They feel like real threats and incite emotional reactions in readers.
Fourth, be measured. Don’t inundate readers with a steady diet of episodes that stretch authenticity. Weave them into the narrative like crocheting well-placed threads of color into a large blanket. One effective example is Jurassic Park with its wild theme of dinosaurs roaming freely. The story sprinkles small mysterious events into the narrative, like strange fossil discoveries, unusual animal attacks, and clandestine corporate machinations. By the time those creatures of a time-gone-by dominate the screen, readers are invested and the story holds together in a natural way.
There is no bright line marker, like a check list of ten reader eye-rolls. It reduces to judgment. Professional input helps, whether from a literary agent, book publisher, developmental editor, book coach, or a well-vetted beta reader. Listen to the advice from a source you trust and never forget it is your creation. Err on the side of imagination.