The Two Kingdoms of Fiction: Realistic and Speculative
Defining, classifying, discerning, and sorting fictional genres is one of the most exhausting tasks of literary analysis. There are any number of ways that genres, subgenres, and individual books or movies can be organized into different categories that make logical sense. Many stories bend genres to their breaking points or blend two different genres with seamless effort, muddying the waters of clear fictional organization.
The differences in genre change, as well, depending on who you ask. Some story analysts set each genre’s defining borders based on aesthetics while others use more subtle cues such as messaging. Given this, Theology of Storytelling: Season 2 is going to present the most basic and widely-accepted forms of each genre, defining each loosely and leaving plenty of room for interpretation by others (such as yourself, as you analyze the stories around you and classify them in your own categories).
To steal from biological taxonomy, under the domain of fiction are the two widely accepted kingdoms: Realistic and Speculative, both if which will be covered briefly in this article. Realistic Fiction is not as much of an oxymoron as it sounds. To put it simply, it is fiction that aligns itself strictly with reality in its worldbuilding. While the adventures might be high-flying or intense, the overall physics and very nature of the characters’ world reflects the one we live in. Red is red, grass is typically green, the gravity is still pulls objects towards the earth’s surface.
This does not mean that Realistic Fiction is inflexible or boring; on the contrary, it can be just as heart-pounding, witty, sweet, or intellectual as it’s speculative cousins. The world in which the characters live in, however, is the one that is most familiar to us. Typically, this means that the characters face more modern issues and the plot follows a more or less realistic line of thinking, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. A think of dramatic, international jewelry heist or a romance between an American waitress and a disguised prince from an entirely made-up (but believable) European country. Neither of these story concepts are very “realistic” in and of themselves, but the world around these characters still breathes like the real world.
In a brief description, Speculative Fiction tends to lean into worldbuilding that extends far beyond our real world and into the fantastic. Red might actually be blue under the light of an alien star, or grass might be violet on the hills beyond the western kingdom, and maybe there is no gravity at all. Speculative Fiction takes the basics of the world around us and embellishes it with all manner of strange, foreign, and creative things. It is, however, a spectrum. Not every piece of Speculative Fiction — be it sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or other — reimagines the entire familiar world. Some imagine the same world we understand the most and throw in a single different element; perhaps dragons the size of housecats or a haunted violin. It is up to the writer to decide how much worldbuilding the story they are writing needs.
The plots and characters for Speculative Fiction tend to, surprisingly, sometimes be on the mundane side. While the writer’s worldbuilding embellishments can offer unique plot and character development opportunities, most of the strangeness tends to be surface level. An interstellar theft to steal back a reality-bending core of alien technology can be boiled down to — in most cases — the same plot mechanic as the simple, modern-day jewelry heist, like the one mentioned above. No matter how imaginative the world, successful Speculative Fiction tends to tell much of the same stories as Realistic Fiction, but with a few extra decorations.
The key to remember in the Christian storytelling realm is that: neither of these kingdoms of fiction (nor their genres) are any more sinful or sinless than the other. Realistic Fiction is not more holy because it focuses on God’s creation or keeps the human imagination from wandering down sinful trails; there is plenty of sin in Realistic Fiction. Neither is Speculative Fiction the work of evil because it does require both the writer and the audience to use their imagination. God created writers of both Realistic and Speculative Fiction to honor and glorify Him in different ways. Some glorify Him by describing the beauty, heartache, and perseverance of the real world. Others glorify Him by digging into what it means to be creative and to imagine universes vastly different from our own. Both kingdoms have their place in Christian fiction; neither is better nor worse than the other and Christians who prefer a specific kingdom over the other should not judge their brothers and sisters in what is, ultimately, a trivial disagreement in the grand scheme of salvation (setting aside any genre or piece of media that actively promotes sin).
In summary, fiction can be divided at the highest level between Realistic and Speculative Fiction. While Speculative Fiction tends towards highly imaginative worldbuilding — think science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror, magical realism, and others — Realistic Fiction tends to overlay its stories over the physics and stage-setting of the world its audience lives in. Despite vehement arguments from audiences on both sides of the spectrum, neither kingdom of fiction is superior to the other. Both can be used to tell bold, imaginative, sweet, restful, mysterious, terrible, or beautiful stories. Both can present rich theological concepts or simple Biblical truths depending on the writer and audience. Writing realistically is not automatically “good” and writing speculatively is not automatically “bad”. The storytelling world for Christians is wide open with possibilities.