: Re: Use of realism in a fictional setting I am writing a fictional novel. It is set in many fictional places and the book will have it's own set of rules of physics. However, I feel that if

@Karen856

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In my experience, whether a relation between the reader and the characters of a story can be established depends not so much on the accurate depiction of physics or any kind of back-ground but on the realistic psychological depiction of the character. Can I identify myself with the character? Can I understand what he is doing? (This is very different from liking the character.) Previous answers pointed out this issue, and I'd merely like to comment on it by listing a few examples that I thoroughly enjoyed and that appeared, in a psychological sense, realistic to me:

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: She muddled up both the laws of physics and biology and wrote, in my opinion, the best love story of the past 20 years.
Jonathan Strange an Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker: A coming-of-age story set in a world with severly disturbed boundary conditions. A great book that I couldn't put away, because it was beautifully written and psychologically accurate.
Do I really have to mention it? A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. Some say Martin revolutionized Fantasy. I tend to agree, because he did the one thing I always missed in Fantasy literature: he gave psychological depth to his characters.

Personally, I recently wrote a novel about transsexuality that uses fantasy elements to explain the transsexuality of the main character (body switch theme). Unfortunately, I have some difficulties to explain to the publishers that this approach is valid, because the psychology of the transsexuality problem is not affected by slightly disturbed physical laws. In my opinion, this is exactly what fantasy should do: Take a conflict out of our world and place it in a situation that doesn't allow the reader to ignore it any longer. In this respect, Fantasy can be immensely powerful, so: Go ahead, don't be afraid to lose touch with reality. I think, as long as your characters are credible, lacking realism will not be a problem for stories set in a fantastical world.

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