I am a storyteller. It’s in my nature, and that goes along with a voracious appetite for consuming good stories as well. I love hearing people’s stories, and I love most fiction. Compelling cinema, great novels, brilliantly-crafted television: it’s all great fodder for me.
I do have a particular animosity for one type of flaw in fiction, however. I can “suspend disbelief” for any outrageous concept. Your story can have magic or wondrous technology that breaks the laws of physics, whatever. I do think it’s a mark of good storytelling if your magical conceits are internally consistent, but even that isn’t always a dealbreaker for me.
What is a dealbreaker is when a story relies on humans acting in ways humans simply never act. Humans in Star Trek are far more virtuous and altruistic than humans of the real world, but that’s built into the show – the writers address it directly quite often, talking about the advancements not only in technology but in culture several centuries in the future. That’s believable to me – after all, even though modern humans might seem selfish at times, we’re wildly more altruistic and peaceful than humans were a few thousand years ago (or even a few hundred). When someone sees a neighbor with a shiny new toy, they might be jealous, but 99.9% of them don’t even feel the urge to beat them to death with a rock and take it, even though that’s absolutely in our biological nature. So if time and culture can get us from there to here, I can buy that in the future we go even farther.
But sometimes stories that are ostensibly set in the modern-day “real world” feature humans as virtuous and noble as any Starfleet captain as the default, and that just becomes unwatchable to me. Procedural crime dramas that feature entire major city police departments whose members never lie, cut corners, or take the easy road instead of the difficult one are far more unrealistic than any faster-than-light spaceship or magic wand.
Why do I care? Because I think our fictional narratives are so important because they show us how our culture sees the world. Stories of romance can teach you to be romantic by showing you what tugs on the heartstrings of your fellow humans. Stories of bravery can show you how to overcome adversity and inspire you to do so. Stories about pain and loss can give you a connection to your own, and to others that feel as you’ve felt.
But all of that only works if the humans you’re experiencing that narrative through actually… act like humans. They can be noble, aspirational figures, of course – especially the main protagonists, who often should rise above the average in terms of the virtues of the soul. But they should also carry their flaws, bring their nobility to bear in realistic ways, and exist in a world where the average level of virtue is similar to what you’ll actually see.
If you read romance novels where every character immediately swoons at every suitor’s gesture, that’s not going to teach you much about how romance works! If your action hero is so amazing that he never even needs bravery or cleverness to overcome anything, then it might be a fun distraction for 90 minutes, but it isn’t adding anything to your own reserves of inspiration when you need it.
I believe in the power of stories, of fiction, to connect us to a wider world of humanity. And the stories I love the most are those crafted by people who have obviously met other humans, and understand them a little themselves.
The Opportunity Machine 