This is a topic Pawz and I are well familiar with due to our time making/modding computer games. In gaming, "realistic" is rarely "fun". It's just a sad truth. Realism can be fun if done well. Like simulations.

I'm thinking about how this applies to storytelling. In watching Transformers 4 the other day, I realized how much money is spent on seriously retarded writing. Ok I didn't first realize this here, but it got me really thinking about it in the context of me writing my own story. And yeah, I can remove one sin from the movie for transforming Rainbow Dash into a gun.

But in considering this, I became aware of just how detailed I am forcing myself to be in trying to maintain complete plausibility. In trying to avoid contrivances and make this story play out like it really would if it were to happen. I realized that the harder I tried to do this, the more nitpicky I got about those details. Making sure all the timing for everything was completely consistent, etc.

Then, I realized that almost no good story bothers to do this. Except the true epics like LOTR of course, which are years in the making. Even Fallout Equestria has it's fair share of blatant contrivance and plot holes for the sake of entertainment value. That really is the trade off. To give a story the proper amount of entertaining action, it's pretty much required to cut a few corners in the realism department. That rubs me wrong personally because I'm a detail oriented person. But I love a good entertaining story and I want this story to be entertaining, so I've got my own dichotomy just like Nyx does.

What I'm hoping is that my faithful prereaders can help me discern exactly when it's ok to leave a lapse of logic in the story, and when it detracts from the story's value.

I'll do what I can, but that's an area that I'm still struggling with in my own writings. But who knows? I'm better at catching other people's grammar mistakes than my own. Maybe the same applies to semi-realistic entertainment.

I don't see a dichotomy at all. It's a false comparison, even worse when you talk about realism in the ponyverse :P

It's about being consistent - The better you are at being consistent and logical, the better your story will be - this is true in ANY case.

This is not to say that you are limited in what you can do by 'realism' - you are limited to what you have introduced to your readers.

Maybe the sky turns purple every other day and the world doesn't have gravity on Fridays. Doesn't make the story worse or better - but if you say that it doesn't have gravity on Fridays, then you better make sure that if you later on have something going on during a Friday, that there is no gravity!

Ok I don't mean realistic in terms of laws of physics of our universe etc. I mean realistic character interactions. Realistic timing of events. Realistic coincidences, etc.

I think this same concern is at the heart of why my own writing is so wordy. I always want to explain WHY precisely every character is doing what they are doing, and even where they are precisely in terms of each other.

In my story " tale of two cutie marks" ( which currently resides solely within the handwritten confines of two notebooks) the entirety of the action involves Twillight Sparkle's family ( including Nyx) conversing within the bounds of their Canterlot home as they reunite to celebrate Hearth's Warming Eve. so basically their actions take place in different rooms within the house . I actually hand drew a " room map" for each individual scene, and redrew it every time a characther moved! this way I knew precisely where every character was in relation to each other and what each charachter could see at any given point in time ( example could they see out a window? through an open door into an adjacent room?)

Now there is some level of a point to this ( in the story Nyx is always conscious of where she is in regards to Shiny and Cadence's newborn foal, since she does not want him to see her for she is afraid her appearance will scare him as it tends to scare foals)... but still even I understand this is rather obsessive and stems from the fact that the things that tend to annoy me the most in stories are things like illogical motivations and scenes that make no sense logically or spatially ( if only i gave this much of a shit about my usually horrifying punctuation and spacing issues!)

It is an issue I wrestle with rather intensely.

onlyanorthernsong.. I find that's the kind of detail that can add depth and consistency to the story as long as you're not browbeating the reader with the map / movements of the characters just because you've made the supporting materials.

3711600

I think this same concern is at the heart of why my own writing is so wordy. I always want to explain WHY precisely every character is doing what they are doing, and even where they are precisely in terms of each other.

My rule of thumb is generally that if I've shown the characters moving, I assume the reader is intelligent enough to remember their positions. I think the key to avoid being "too wordy" is to never insult the reader's intelligence (even when the reader likely has none) by giving them details you've already given, or giving details that are easily deduced from other details you've already given them.

I actually hand drew a " room map" for each individual scene, and redrew it every time a characther moved! this way I knew precisely where every character was in relation to each other and what each charachter could see at any given point in time ( example could they see out a window? through an open door into an adjacent room?)

Man.

I understand this is rather obsessive and stems from the fact that the things that tend to annoy me the most in stories are things like illogical motivations and scenes that make no sense logically or spatially ( if only i gave this much of a shit about my usually horrifying punctuation and spacing issues!)

In that case, you're hired to give me detailed feedback as to the user's perspective on the positions of my characters, and if I make a mistake, you can point it out to me right away.

3725782 oh man you are going to have fun with my comments on chapter 5 then, since i keep calling you out on the timeframes in which events happen in your story.