Character reality vs story reality

Question

Is it ever "good storytelling" for character reality to be inconsistent with story reality? I don't mean that the character's perception of reality, I actual inconsistencies in the reality of the movie or TV show.

A glaring example of this would be the series House M.D.

Every episode ends with House recommending some medical treatment which all the other doctors, tests and reasonable diagnoses say will kill the patient. After everyone agonizes over this for a few moments, they carry through with the treatment, because House is always right. And lo and behold, the patient is cured, proving once again that House is a brilliant, if unconventional diagnostician, who is always right.

But he isn't. He's wrong far more often than not. Every episode follows the formula wherein House's "brilliance" almost kills the patient at least three times (once before each major commercial break). He is only "always right" because the he and rest of the characters (in conjunction with the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience) act like he is.

A quite different example is Married with Children. Ed O'Neill was never in particularly bad physical shape during the run of the show. For most of it he was in very good shape; an actor taking good care of his instrument. He would be in a scene shirtless, with well-developed muscles and very little body fat, but all of the characters acted as if Al Bundy was flabby and woefully out of shape.
Similarly, Amanda Bearse was usually relatively attractive on the show, but her character Marcy was perceived within the context of the show as looking like a chicken or a young boy.
The more general version of the Marcy incongruity would be the concept of "TV ugly," wherein we are supposed to believe that various actresses are not gorgeous simply because they are wearing glasses and don't have the latest hair style.
[nq:1]From the point of view of the writer, are things like this okay in certaincircumstances? Or is it just lazy storytelling?[/nq]
Tim C

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]From the point of view of the writer, are things like this okay in certain circumstances? Or is it just lazy storytelling?[/nq]
You can add another incident to your list in "Ocean's Eleven" when Julia Roberts walks down the steps in the hotel all the men are supposedly blown away by her good looks.
But in good story telling, unlike the above example, it is how your characters react to other characters that often determines how you react to them. For example, Ed O'Neil wasn't in that bad of shape, but the "perception" they wanted you to have worked for me. As for the "chicken" perception of Marcy I never thought she was physically ugly I just thought that was part of the mutual insults between the two characters and her personality was kind of "ugly."

And you're right about "House." Of course the implication is that these cases are so complicated that any doctor would not have "almost killed" the patient they would have let him/her die because they would have never figured it out. It does strain the suspension of disbelieve often.
My wife likes the show so it's the only thing I watch on TV but she's even joked several times "Well, it's time for the seizure now."

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is it ever "good storytelling" for character reality to be inconsistent with story reality? I don't mean that the character's ... believe that various actresses are not gorgeous simply because they are wearing glasses and don't have the latest hair style.[/nq]
[nq:2]From the point of view of the writer, are things like this okay in certaincircumstances? Or is it just lazy storytelling?[/nq]
[nq:1]Tim C[/nq]
I think, in a sense, you're talking about the same thing.

All stories take place in a realm of "story convention."

On the one hand, stories occur in the realm of the convention of narrative story structures of first acts and second acts with their progressively building oppositions leading to the apparently insoluble problem which is then solved.
Life, of course, rarely arranges itself in this way. Most problems that appear in ever respect to be insoluble, for the most part, are actually insoluble and thus are not solved.
That clearly doesn't make for good stories. Nor do problems that are mostly solved right up front and then you just tidy up some of the minor messy details afterward. Nor are the problems that have some minor issues then you solve the really big, crusher, and then you have some more minor issues to tidy up afterward.
Dramatically, we always like the structure where the hardest part to solve comes at the very end and strangely enough, stories tend to arrange themselves in this utterly artificial way.

And since we like to identify with the characters, we tend to like the POV characters to be stronger, brighter, prettier even the uglier characters, somehow, are prettier than that uglier characters in real life.
Everything in the world of drama is sort of bigger than life, prettier than life.
That also is part of the conventions of story-telling.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is it ever "good storytelling" for character reality to be inconsistent with story reality? I don't mean that the character's ... believe that various actresses are not gorgeous simply because they are wearing glasses and don't have the latest hair style.[/nq]
[nq:2]From the point of view of the writer, are things like this okay in certain[/nq]
[nq:1]circumstances? Or is it just lazy storytelling?[/nq]
I don't think it's ever okay, and yet you see it all the time (even setting aside the whole Anne-Hathaway-as-plain-overlooked-girl thing).

We went to see "Eragon" last week, so now we're reading the novel (my 11 year old daughter and I). I know the book was written by a teenager, but it's still sort of funny: virtually none of the emotions are in any way earned. Young Eragon is always RAGING mad at something. Furious to tears that someone died, angry at at his horse, raging at the murderers of his step-father... It's a little single-note.
It's an impressive piece of writing for a teenager, but there's a disconnect between the events that happen and the hero's emotional reaction. You just sort of have to accept that the writer didn't yet have a sufficient range of emotions yet to assign the right one to each circumstance. In the spirit of generosity I've found myself inventing a separate emotional level for the character which is not actually written.
You know the other one that never works? Stories about writers where they show the writer's work. Take a story like "The World According to Garp". Irving actually puts some of Garp's writing into the book, and it's okay, but it's not enough to catapult him to fame, as it does in the context of the book. Worse, there's the example of the character Pursewarden in "The Alexandria Quartet". He's set up to be a literary ***, but his writing is all brittle and mannered and old-style English. Thank *** they destroy his letters to his sister, which are supposed to be his masterpiece, without exposing them to the reader.
As you point out, it's one thing for the directory or writer to put his hand on the characters' backs and force them to bow before another, but it's a whole different matter to convince us the characters would bow on their own.

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
Deus ex Arriflex
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Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]You know the other one that never works? Stories about writers where they show the writer's work. Take a story ... they destroy his letters to his sister, which are supposed to be his masterpiece, without exposing them to the reader.[/nq]
Another example is Emma Thompson's voice-over narration of the book she's supposedly writing in Stranger Than Fiction. It's just not believable as the work of a literary genius.

Hercule Platini

Character reality vs story reality

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