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Thursday, August 28, 2025

Making a Story Seem and Feel More Realistic to your Reader By Connie Vines #AudibleAudiobook #Rodeo Bull Rider, #Silver Buckle

Making a Story Seem and Feel More Realistic to Your Reader.

The challenge for every fiction writer or non-fiction writer creating a fictional story is to craft a believable one. This challenge is taken to new levels for writers of realistic fiction. These stories, which are woven around real events that have occurred, can be formed from memoirs, historical moments, and even horror stories if desired. Realistic fiction doesn't blend well with other genres of fiction. It must stand on its own.

That's why it's essential to know how to write realistic fiction in a way that can relate to the reader, be realistic, yet avoid including fantasy elements that may drive readers away. Here's how I keep it real for my readers.

#1. Don't go crazy with your characters. Most people in real life don't have crazy names (though spelling names phonetically is the latest craze). If a parent wishes his/her child to go through life spelling his/her name, that's their business. However, I don't give my characters unusual names. Sometimes a guy named Joe, Jacob, or Chris is good enough for realistic fiction.

#2. Give your story a good structure. Realistic fiction requires characters to be fully developed and engaging. People like to see what happens to them because realistic fiction puts the reader into the character's shoes.

#3. Create a good introduction. You want your readers in realistic fiction to begin developing relationships with the characters immediately. This will help to draw them into the story. Let the first couple of pages be the setting where your readers develop a dialogue. Then let the events of your story begin to unfold for your characters. This will lure the reader in so they don't want to put the book down.

#4. Make sure your settings are realistic as well.

#5. Create conflicts that are integral to the character's dialogue. Even close friends will inevitably experience conflicts from time to time. In realistic fiction, these conflicts must also have a touch of realism.

#6. Build to a solid climax. The most common error seen in proposed realistic fiction is that the entire story builds up to a climax at the very end. Remember to include plot points, dark moments, and mini-resolutions in your subplots.

#7. Create a conclusion with a twist. Have you ever worked hard for something only to have something unexpected happen? Sometimes the conclusion of a realistic story is predictable, and that's a wonderful thing. Readers love it when everything works out as it should. For some characters, life throws them a twist.

By keeping things real, you create stories that will help readers relate to your characters in a very personal way. There is no better method to create a story that people won't want to put down until they've finished it.

I don't wish to give too much away in my works-in-progress or my published stories.

But here are a few teasers and hints of what is to come in my novels:

Current (work in progress):

"Perfume Paradise" is a sweet romance...with a hint of mystery.

"Gumbo Ya Ya," an anthology for women who like Cajun romance, is a current release (4 stories).

Each story has a 'Cajun' main character. And, of course, food is also part of the realistic slant of each story.