Reality in writing

The things you imagine, are real."
                        ---Pablo Picasso.

In other words, there should be reality in what you imagine, at least from a writers perspective.
I came across the above quote from a family movie that I watched, and the main character in the movie, is someone who imagines a lot. He had a pretty wild imagination and even though his imaginations were kind of unrealistic, his imaginations were connected with his life, with the reality in his life. It was a really good movie, that got an emotion from me. And I just loved how it turned out and how that movie can have an effect on writers and also set as an example.

My point? It is true that fictions are merely formulated, they aren't real, they are just things that we found roaming in our heads, waiting to come out. But then again, fictions are gotten from true life events. They are things from our imaginations but they are things that have been experienced by a person, in real life. Sometimes what readers, editors, publishing companies are looking for, isn't just the entertainment that we get from your creative work but also, the reality in it. How realistic it is and how we can connect it to real life. How people can relate it to their daily life and help them in some situations. Yes, people do things they see in books. And that's much more of a reason for writers to write things that are realistic.

When I'm talking about realistic stories, I'm not saying fantasy, paranormal, vampires etc, doesn't count. They do actually but their actions, the characters, their way of thinking, mannerism and attitude they should all be something real, that we, the readers can relate to. Let's take my above movie as an example. It's, sometimes, unrealistic to see yourself as a cartoon or another person as a monster. Not imagining yourself but seeing, being. At least it hasn't happened to me. But, it was real enough to trigger an emotion, to make me cry. I mean the type of crying, when your throat hurts.

You see, anything that triggers an emotion is real. And what you imagine is real. Your stories or poems are your imagination, they are life and Life is reality. I think you can connect things from here.

Let me drop something here, something to help you in any creative writing you do. Remember, your work of art isn't you, they aren't living your life so as you aren't living theirs. The people in your creative work are in their own world, living their own lives. They don't know you, just as you don't know everyone on earth.  To others, they aren't real but to those characters, they are real, simply because they have feelings of a living being. They eat, cry, sleep, laugh, grin, smile etc. Aren't these things real? And that's why the actions your character make can also define the action of someone else. Your stories just lay out human imaginations and actions just like movies.

So, fellow characters, to finish up, always remember there must always be a sense of reality in all your work of art. A good story is a story that strikes raw human emotion. That is why people actually fall in love with characters and think about them, that's why we stay up late at night reading a book. Because, no one will stay up reading a book they are totally disconnected from, at least for me. As a writer, you should realize that you can create a whole new world with your imagination through your mind and you can define the actions of a lot of people, the way you want it and the way you picture it.

In this post, with the help of a one line quote, my purpose is to make awareness on how reality, realistic character, and our view on reality and imaginations can have a great effect in a writer's career. Many writers out there try to give their characters some traits that they possess or rather some traits that they wish, they have and when they see they have done a great job in it, they feel they have accomplished something huge, because sometimes these characters represent who the writers are in real life and they are simply sharing who they are to the world. I'm working on my very first novel, and sometimes when I'm writing I get stuck, because I keep thinking in this situation, will someone do this? Will I do this? How will someone react when this happens? These are questions I keep asking myself each time I try to write and most times, I find myself not going anywhere. The reason is because, I've never found myself in these situations before, I have never experienced it, neither do I know anyone who it has happened to  but I have my mind. And that is were I get all my characters and words from and sometimes, they seem different than normal but that is what i got and is left to me, to take those things from my head and put it in paper. Restructure it, so it seems like something that can happen to anybody at anytime, mold it, in a way I know it will fit my story. And that, my friends, is pure hardwork.