V - Verisimilitude - Believable Writing (#AtoZChallenge)

Verisimilitude is the "lifelikeness" or believability of a work of fiction. The concept goes back to Plato and Aristotle, and the dramatic theory of mimesis, the imitation or representation of nature. For a piece of art to hold significance or persuasion for an audience, it must have grounding in reality. But it is the appearance or likeness to the truth, even if it is a far-fetched one.

 

In film, personally, I find English films usually more realistic than that from Hollywood. Hollywood is too obsessed with 'beautiful' people, whereas English film-makers more often use ordinary looking people, warts and all. Good characterization is 'relatable', whereas 'believability ' or realism comes from the script, direction and set.

For us as BLOG writers, believability and relatability will persuade a reader to continue to the end, and hopeful come back to read other posts. This is especially so for erotica writers although typically seeking a viseral response which has its own sense of believability.

In my own work, I have the opposite problem of couching a factual encounter description with some literary license and perhaps some fictionalized wrapping to make it more entertaining to the reader whilst preserving its truthfulness and believability. In "A Bad Habit" I relate an actual cosplay encounter (Nun's costume) and tell it within the fictional scenario of a priest reprimanding a nun. In "The Wicked Wench of Wupert Street", I fictionalize the characters a little bit, Sir Thomas becomes "ST - Super Tongue" and the lady become "The Wicked Wench". But sometimes there is a true story related unembellished ("There's Man A Slip Twixt...") that some think couldn't possibly be true.

Poetry has a different set of issues. It relies mainly on meter and rhyme to convey the emotion of the story. In "The Man From Yarra River - The Ride", I try to convey the rising excitement and adrenaline of a fictional gang bang by parodying the famous Australian poem, "The Man From Snowy River" by Banjo Paterson (as used in the movie of the same name - it tells the story of rounding up the brumbies in the high country). Even if the reader hasn't actually been in a gang bang, I hope the excitement elicited by this poem might make it feel as if it might be realistic, in a literary sense at least.

So aim for some verisimilitude in your BLOG and/or erotica writing. Ask yourself, "Can I actually hear a real person speaking like this?"

 

Click to see who else is taking the challenge.