Adding Realism To Your Writing by Victoria Cornwall

A novel is like the inside of an intricate clock. Just like the well-oiled cogs and gears of a clock, a book has many elements which need to interact smoothly so it provides an enjoyable read. This week I am going to chat about a character’s reaction to a given situation. Their reaction is one of those key elements. A good reaction can strengthen the reader’s interest in the character or plot  … a poor, ill-written reaction can lose a reader’s support and loyalty.

As a writer, I try to imagine how the character would behave and think in any given situation and describe it as accurately as I can. However, over the years I have come to realise that people do not always behave how we would expect them to. If a writer captures this unexpected reaction in their writing, it can add realism to the situation and more depth to the character. It can also add an unexpected twist. Here are two examples of what I am trying to explain. They are both related to losing someone special:-

Imagine you are writing about a young widow learning how to navigate life again without her husband by her side. The story starts with a scene of her sitting by her husband’s hospital bed. They are holding hands as he finally succumbs to a long, drawn out battle with cancer. The last two years have been particularly brutal. The normal emotions of denial, shock and heart rendering grief come to mind. Scenes involving tears, emotional numbness, relatives offering comfort, doctors saying things that in the moment make no sense. Those scenes are in her future, but right now she is still holding his hand as it begins to grow colder in hers. Her love, her soul mate, her friend has just left her forever. The perfect reactions to her husband’s passing are just waiting to be written. But wait! STOP and think again.

Remember that she has just spent years by his side battling cancer. The last two years have been particularly bad. What if his personality had changed over that time? What if he had not accepted his diagnosis well and had railed against the unfairness of it all. She had nursed him up to the point of his admission to hospital and she is now in a state of physical and mental exhaustion. Her love for him had changed as his illness had changed him. The happy years of their marriage are a distant memory as his anger, frustration and physical changes had eaten away at their marriage as efficiently as the cancer inside him. He was not the man she fell in love with. What if she felt a great sense of relief at his passing? Imagine the guilt she would have at experiencing such feelings. She would feel unworthy of the sympathy offered by friends and relatives. She would feel like a fraud. In the story she will eventually learn to understand her husband's reaction to having cancer, understand her own reaction to living with someone she no longer recognised and finally forgive both her husband and her reaction to living with cancer. She will fall in love with her husband all over again as her memories of their happier times together become easier to recall. She has to do all this before she can grieve normally again and feel the true depth of her loss. Finally she learns to live without him, but her initial “abnormal” reaction actually adds realism and an extra dimension and twist to the normal grief process. Her reaction may at first seem abnormal, but it is actually very realistic. Chronic illness is a terrible strain on family members and we can add this side into our story too.

I used to work in intensive care as a nurse. After the death of a patient, I came across his son sitting in the corridor. I sat down beside him ready to offer words of comfort. We were both in our mid-twenties and had never spoken before.  Back then, if I was to write the scene, I would have had him expressing his grief at losing his father, perhaps eyes brimming with tears, hands trembling in grief, reactions all equated with grief. The reality was very different. Although he was very distressed, he did not show it in the normal way. His mind was whirring and he was agitated as he didn’t know how to arrange all the practical things to do with a death in the family.  He gave the impression of being rather selfish – only thinking of himself and all the jobs he had to do. Where would he get the death certificate from? How would he move the body to the funeral directors?  Who would he have to notify? His father had died yet he was talking as though it was a problem to be solved. However, I understood his thought processes as not long before I had been in a very similar situation.

He had no experience of dealing with a death in the family. He felt ill prepared and knew little about how to sort out funerals, wills, death certificates etc. The one man he would normally turn to for advice was no longer there and he was in panic mode. He felt his loss very deeply, but expressed it in a different way and was overwhelmed by the practicalities facing him. He wanted to be a support to his mother and protect her by doing all the practical things required, but he felt totally inadequate for the jobs ahead. He felt that he was already failing his father and as he sat outside the intensive care unit, numb with shock, he spilled out his worries to a nurse who happened to sit down beside him. Luckily, from my recent experience, I could help him more than most.

So just remember, although it is important for a character’s reaction to be a believable one, sometimes you can add depth, a twist or an added layer to a plot or character, by allowing them to react in a way that is not quite what one would expect.

Fiction by Victoria Cornwall