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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kahuna Burger" data-source="post: 2723766" data-attributes="member: 8439">the other thing about this point specificly - its not their story. Look at the begining of saving private ryan. People are dying everywhere for something or for nothing, with heroism behind it or just because they were in the wrong spot. And the deaths obviously lend a little drama and the illusion of danger to the scene. But reality aside, Tom Hanks is not gonna get hit and die on the beach, no matter how "realistic" it is, because his name was on top of the poster and its his story we're here to watch. If he does die in the movie, it will be towards the end, it will be meaningful and possibly heroic, because its his story. People who die non heroicly or at the wrong time don't get stories written about them, they appear in the background of other people's story. Or at least their pointless death is the end of the story. (Alls Quiet on the Western Front)Put another way, to have a realistic story, there has to be a balance between the reality part and the story part. Where different readers place that balance point will differ, which opens up the market to writers of many styles. But, for me at least, there's a part where a "realistic" death of someone whose story was being told just screams to me "hey, look how edgy and realistic a writer I am! Wow, taste the realism and be amazed! Now the story will continue on for a few hundred more pages on some other stuff...." At which point, as "realistic" as such a death might be, the hand of the author has been waved in my face and given me the finger, and the story has been so disrupted that I am overaware of it.Heh, anyone read Mostly Harmless? There was a very dull planet with very realistic books - which all ended at exactly 200 pages regardless of where the 'story' was at that point.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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