Artistic License

/ coldhandboyack

Hi Gang! Craig with you again today to talk about artistic license. I am not an expert here, so this is presented with the desire to get some discussion going.

Essentially, an author is going to bend reality a little bit for the purpose of a better story. Each author is going to have to consider their readership, then build fences to live within.

Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about. I’ll turn to my traditional references, motion pictures. In film, characters can spray machine-gun fire all over the field and never hit anything. In film, every pregnant woman has to vomit at some time, usually before she’s announced her situation. This isn’t the real world, but we’ve almost been trained to accept it. I remember the Lone Ranger shooting guns from someone’s hand like it was an everyday occurrence. There is a little bit of fiction going on here for the sake of the story. Watch John Wick if you need to see it in action.

Recently, I did a bit of research into ground penetrating radar and seismic imaging. When I looked at the actual images produced online, they were a bunch of squiggly lines with some pretty colors. This isn’t going to work for my story, so I’m going to write images a regular person could interpret without needing LSD or something in their system. Artistic license. I don’t want to dedicate two chapters to finding an expert to interpret the pretty lines.

Those who have come before have trained us to accept some of this. Duplicating it almost works without a second thought. Laypeople can land an airliner by talking to someone at the tower. (Never-mind that the cabin is locked.) People can jump off buildings and do the hero landing without even torquing a knee. Cars can jump over obstacles and drive away without a scratch. Swords never chip or get dull.

Be somewhat careful that you don’t break a rule of your own story. If you establish that something can never happen, don’t then make it happen because it would be cool. You should skip it, but could dedicate some time to explain it might be possible. This kind of thing pulls readers out of the story. Within the story, those fences are important to maintain. Rules help create tension and keep it alive.

A bit of a disclaimer is probably due about here. I tend to write at the outlandish fringes of fiction. I do my research and feel it’s important to ground my readers in fact. Sometimes I need to take that leap, like with ground penetrating radar. If you’re writing a police procedural, maybe an historical piece, you might have to be a bit more fact oriented.

Artistic license happens all the time, and you’ve probably done it yourself at one time or another. Where do you stand on it? Is it the most awful thing ever, or is it wide open for exploitation? Do you have personal limits? Let’s all chat today.

77 thoughts on “Artistic License”

  1. Fortunately, I get to take a lot of license in fantasy, but it still has to be believable (sort of). It’s funny how readers will accept that a dragon can fly but will question the distance a horse can travel in a day. The more “common” the knowledge, the more careful we need to be. 🙂 All fun.

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  4. Hi Craig, I think poetic license must be employed to some extent in fiction writing. It can’t become ridiculous though as that makes readers annoyed. I remember feeling slightly irrigated by Poe’s presentation of the Spanish Inquisition in The PIt and the Pendulum because I know it could never have been like that, but the writing is so good I could forgive it (also at the time Poe wrote, people wouldn’t have had access to as much knowledge and detail as we do).

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  5. Like others, I think it depends not only on the genre but the story as well. I don’t have a problem with a tweak here and there if done smoothly. It’s when done so jagged that it sticks out that’s the problem. As mentioned, in a lot of action movies, horror movies, etc. Sometimes, enough is enough!

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  6. I agree that an author’s fictional work doesn’t have to be realistic because, in engaging fiction, it can’t be without boring the reader. I am currently writing a novel based on paranormal events. I’m writing it as fiction, but certain circumstances are based on actual life events from my own experiences. Readers will suspend their beliefs as long as the story remains internally consistent and supports the story without dragging the flow. Readers want to be transported beyond reality as an escape from their daily lives, but if you fly too high, you risk them bailing on the story.

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  7. In the historical novel I’m writing, it’s a balancing act between historical accuracy and artisitic license for the sake of the story. The deciding factor for whether or not I deviate from the history I researched is whether deviating is likely to make a reader stop and say, wait a minute, that doesn’t sound right.

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  8. Scifi is my genre of choice, both as a reader and as a writer, and I really dislike stories in which the science part is mostly hand-waving and tired old tropes like lasguns and FTL [Faster Than Light] travel, and anti-gravity drives. Military scifi I’m looking at you. That said, I have read a couple of military scifi series that were brilliant despite the lasguns and FTL and anti-gravity drives. For example, Poor Man’s War has all those tropes, but in a weird way it’s a character driven story, and because it’s character driven, and is internally consistent, I gleefully allowed the author to do things with the science that I would normally dislike, intensely.
    More traditionally, Dune is a combination of environmental science, politics, psychology AND pure fantasy. Yet I’ve re-read the entire series of Dune books at least eight times, and each time I’ve found myself living in the worlds Herbert created. He was /that/ good. The rest of us have to use poetic licence like salt – a little goes a long way.

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  9. A fine post, Craig. I view artistic license as tools of the writer’s craft. If done correctly, it is a great way to expand on creativity. There are certain genres better suited for the use of artistic license, such as horror–I mean, come on, how many lives do Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers really have? I’m sure I’ve used it somewhere along the way in my own writings.

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  10. In my two historical novels, I had to tweak time a bit, so the story could happen. I had the governor of Eberacum (York) take his post a year or two early so the story could happen, and had a similar thing happen with the Viking invasion.
    In an appendix, I said that I had done this. I’m currently writing the next one about the Norman Conquest and hope I don’t have to tweak history again!
    L

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    • I agree with this. If it’s presented as historical, I also agree with the disclosure. I have had one plotted out for years that will require a compressing of historical events. If I ever get around to writing it, I won’t worry about the tweaked history.

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  11. I understand what you mean about GPR images. They can make you sea sick in a hurry. You might see a sea shell where I see a hubcap. Take that ‘artistic license’ and stretch it as far as you can. It’s my opinion that’s how we get some of our best works. Someone has the ability to take a simple story, put this one element in it that could happen; might happen, in all honesty should happen and the reader believes it. Be it Holmes’ seemly in-human able to follow a trail of clues or an old woman’s visions that led a group of survivors to Colorado.

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  12. For some reason I think artistic license works better in film than books. Maybe it’s just me—willing to suspend disbelief more when I’m viewing a movie or TV show, as opposed to when I’m reading a story. That’s kind of weird when I think of it, but I do see myself reacting that way. That’s not to say I haven’t encountered books where I needed to suspend disbelief and was okay with it. Long story short, I guess I’m fine with it as long as it’s done well and fits within the parameters of the story.

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  13. Great post, Craig. It seems to me that artistic license is a tool to be used carefully. With fantasy, there’s great freedom, but with most genres, writers depend on experience and research to create a believable story. You’ve given us much to think about — thank you!

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  14. Excellent discussion! I have read so many reviews where the reviewer says, “that could never happen in real life!” Wait… this is a fantasy/sci-Fi/speculative fiction novel!! Why not? It’s all in the rules the author establishes in the story. I especially enjoy novels that can twist fantasy into reality in such a way that I have a hard time not believing in the fantasy. I recently read a novel where an immaculate conception took place. The fantasy was so well presented. By the end of the book, you learn that man manipulated the “God-Spark.” A great twist! This all takes planning and research, like you say, Craig.

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  15. I guess I think if you write nonfiction, you’d better get everything right. If you write fiction, you can play with the facts to make the story more fun as long as you make it kind of believable. I’m happy to suspend disbelief as long as it’s not too much.

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  18. I echo what Trish says: ‘Done well, artistic licence lifts the mundane to a more interesting and captivating level. Done badly, it’s a real turn-off.’

    The thing I always laugh at is people shielding themselves behind cars in a shootout … because, of course, we know bullets puncture those flimsy vehicle panels every time, lols. However, it’s become one of those tropes we’ve become inured to, and most movies use it.

    I’ve used artistic license a few times but always with care. Whatever we do, we have to make it believable/palatable for the reader.

    Wonderful post, Craig, with great points and examples. From your books, I’d say you definitely know what you’re talking about 💕🙂

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  19. Interesting topic, Craig. I have mixed feelings about artistic license. For me, it all depends on the type of story I’m reading, and what instantly comes to my mind was a book set in Florida I read many years ago. It was supposed to be a true story (or at least based on one.) The scene that killed the book for me was one where they were boating down a Florida river, and “thick, green snakes” were draped on every other tree branch, dangling down over the water, and threatening bodily harm to all who passed beneath them.

    First I started laughing. Our only green snakes are about the thickness of my little finger and don’t grow long enough to drape over anything taller than knee high. But even when I got over the absurdity of that description, I started spotting lots of other areas where it was obvious this writer had never researched anything about Florida, and yet was constantly describing things that just weren’t true, hoping to build tension or set up drama. I never finished the book. I suspect this is why my own books are set in two places I know pretty well, one being Florida, and the other being the North Carolina mountains. And even though the mountain series has some mildly supernatural elements, I try to be sure the setting where things take place is always accurate. I guess I learned to aim for that after the book with those deadly thick, green snakes.

    As a reader, obviously false or inaccurate things like that are distracting, at the very least. A certain amount of artistic license is fine, if it is done in a way that works and–most of all–fits the type of story being told. If you are trying to convince readers that your story is true (or at least plausible), I think it’s vital to do some research in order to be sure what you are describing isn’t absurd.

    Great post, as always, Craig! 😊

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    • I am familiar with your green snakes story, and it haunted me while writing my newest publication. I used global warming to cover the expansion of things like pythons into new areas. Thanks for the wonderful comment.

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      • I think with the wonderfully bizarre (and I mean that in the best of ways) stories you write, artistic license is pretty much a given, Craig. and you do it so well! Genre makes all the difference, to my mind. Of course, even in realistic settings, a hero can be “above and beyond,” for sure, and I’m fine with that. Sometimes we want (need?) characters who are larger than life and faster than a speeding bullet, right? 😀

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  20. I think utilizing artistic license is one of the freedoms allowed to writers, whether it be books or films. Something in us needs to see heroes that can perform super-human feats and never get a scratch. It makes us believe that maybe, just maybe, it could happen even though we know it’s not our physical reality. However, as you point out, if you are writing a historical, it needs to be accurate. I love all the comments about consulting with people who actually do these things, such as police or doctors, rather than relying on internet searches for facts. I like your example of the ground penetrating radar and seismic imaging to make your point about using artistic license. The facts would be boring to the reader, or at least to me. Thanks for bringing this topic to the table today. I am all for taking advantage of artistic license whenever possible to create an entertaining story.

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  22. I’m not a statistician, Craig, but my guess is that nearly all the top selling films, TV series and books employ large chunks of artistic licence. I suspect people have enough boring things to get through in their own lives without sitting through someone else’s uninspiring life. We like to be scared, surprised, amazed and thrilled – how else can you explain (as you so beautifully point out) the heroes missing hails of bullets from all directions yet taking out the baddy with a single shot? Police procedurals rely ever more heavily on sensationalism where the serial killers uses ever more outlandish and sadistic methods to take out their victims. Done well, artistic licence lifts the mundane to a more interesting and captivating level. Done badly, it’s a real turn-off. Great topic, Craig!

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  23. I hate the “sick before you know you’re pregnant” trope. I roll my eyes every time, and I vomited all day, every day throughout the entirety of both pregnancies (to the point I was in the hospital with each kid for dehydration risks). Why do writers do this? If you’re late and you’re sick, the first thing you think isn’t flu or food poisoning.

    Sorry. Rant over.

    If I’m writing a police procedural or a medical drama, I talk to the experts. (Luckily I have a cop and a surgeon in the family.) I’ve even called my nephew (an aerospace engineer) with questions about military Ospreys. I don’t want to isolate readers who know this stuff. But if I was to write a thriller about a cabal of assassins (John Wick), I’d likely suspend belief. It would be a pretty boring story without outlandish fight scenes.

    Long story short, I believe there’s a time for realism and a time to push reality to and past its limits. A writer needs to understand the genre and the readers to know how far they can push things before losing the audience.

    Great food for thought, Craig.

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  24. Every time a crime program shows an instantaneous hit on facial recognition, that’s artistic license. Ditto with DNA analysis. Fun shows, but not reality.

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  29. Since I started writing police procedurals, I’ve asked several retired and active officers questions and stuck firmly to their guidelines. They agree too often to be wrong. 🙂 Also, the Freedom of Information Act makes accessing police information possible.
    Reading books that involve police action from any angle makes me wonder if any other authors bother or simply copy improbable police dramas on TV. Consequently, the author loses a potential regular reader. Presumably, if thousands of reviews reflect sales, they don’t miss me.

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  31. I think some genres lend themselves better to bending and stretching reality–fantasy, paranormal, etc. But even there it’s good to, as you say, ground things in reality and set limits for magical systems. In literary fiction, it’s best to stick with ordinary reality, unless you want to get into “magical realism.” But that has its own rules and conventions.
    Rules may be tiresome but unavoidable. Without rules you can end up with a mess; even worse, a boring mess. At least if you can make your own rules, it’s easier to play by them.

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