If It’s Unlikely, Support It

I used to watch the decorating shows on HGTV. One of the principles I learned was “If you can’t hide it, make it a feature.” An ugly, useless old chimney would cost too much to tear down. So they painted it suitably, filled the fireplace with candles, and mounted the flat screen TV on it.

Sometimes our stories include awkward facts that a mass audience won’t understand and believe right away. I recently read a novel that featured a set of fraternal twins who appeared to be of different races. That’s not an everyday occurrence, so I needed the author to help me accept it. She used dialogue, the questions asked by strangers, and the readily available home DNA tests to clear it up for me. If she had not “made it a feature” by including an explanation, I might have tossed the book aside as ridiculous.

Summer squash is one food that is very unlikely to provoke an allergic response. Allergies to shrimp and nuts are common enough, but if my character is allergic to zucchini, I’m going to have to bring in a specialist to make it convincing.

One way to deal with unusual facts is to have one of the characters challenge the idea, just as the reader is probably challenging it:

“Oh please. Nobody is allergic to squash. You’re making that up because you just don’t like it. Or maybe to try to get attention. Don’t be stupid.”

Now the character has a chance to quote her doctor, show a doctor’s note, or quote a medical book to support this odd fact. When one of the characters says what a reader might be thinking, we satisfy the reader as well as the fictional challenger.

This is an example of an “audience surrogate,” a character who asks the questions the reader would ask if they could. When Watson asks Holmes how he deduced something, he speaks for the reader as well.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and when that happens, the fiction writer has to be sure to help the reader understand why it’s real.