: Re: Where's the balance between realism and story? Mark mentioned in his answer that plotholes aren't usually the end of the world, and that I shouldn't sacrifice too much of the story and the

@Sarah872

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The technical name for what you're describing is a "travesty." Often mistaken for parody, the travesty is a thinly disguised version of someone else's work, used as a setting for cheap gags. The difference between a parody and a travesty is that a parody is capable of standing on its own, even if you don't know the source material, whereas a travesty draws 100% of its strengths from its source or sources. It doesn't have any internal coherence or logic of its own. Travesties can be very popular, but no one would ever consider them great art. This is not what @Mark Baker is talking about.

The core idea is that stories are not reality, and we don't expect them to be. We do expect that settings will have their own internal logic and coherence, but readers will overlook minor flaws in that department if the story is strong enough, and if it makes emotional sense. We do also expect that the author will not unnecessarily endanger our suspension of disbelief.

For these reasons, cheap gags don't generally belong in a story that you want to be taken seriously. You're probably better off trying to mine the intrinsic humor that is often present under the surface in serious situations. It IS possible to take a concept that sounds trivial on the surface, and endow it with real weight and meaning, but it's not easy. The comic strip 1/0 started out as a cheap travesty on webcomics, and ended up as a substantive meditation on life, love, religion and the nature of existence, but that's definitely the exception to the rule. Murakami and Pratchett have also had success in bringing real weight and heft to concepts that seem impossible to take seriously --but they're idiosyncratic geniuses. If you're working at that level, more power to you.

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