imo the best way to interpret those “real people don’t do x” writing advice posts is “most people don’t do x, so if a character does x, it should be a distinguishing trait.” human behavior is infinitely varied; for any x, there are real people who do x. we can’t make absolute statements. we can, however, make probabilistic ones.
for example, most people don’t address each other by name in the middle of a casual conversation. if all your characters do that, your dialogue will sound stilted and unnatural. but if just one character does that, then it tells us something about that character.
yeah, go ahead and apply this filter to any writing advice i give forevermore, it’s super correct.
like if i go “kids will NOT let you carry them around like a plush toy all day, have your character put the kid DOWN, their arms are tired, so tired, also the child will now vanish into the distance as if shot from a railgun and by the time the character catches up there will be tears and ceiling food” just take the initiative to recognize that Cuddles Georg, who throws a shitfit when you try to put him down even though he’s three already and weighs the same as a subaru outback, is also valid, but somebody is gonna want to know why tf he is like that
I work with this one vendor that periodically sends a salesman to the office, and that guy knows how to use your name three to four times in a sentence when he’s making a pitch. I legit think he read a book in the 1980s that said this is a good way to build personal relationships and has been hanging onto it ever since. And this really does inform you a lot about his character.
In college my sister wrote a short story in which a character kept a deceased loved one’s ashes in a cardboard box between the mystery novels on a bookshelf.
Her creative writing professor gave her a note saying “No one would actually do that.”
My sister then had to explain to her professor that my grandfather’s ashes were very much in a cardboard box between the mystery novels on a bookshelf in my grandmother’s house.
There are almost 8 billion people in the world right now. The odds of any specific kind of weirdo actually existing are fuckin’ high.
The next level of this is to consider what this thing says about the character doing it - both what it ACTUALLY says, and what it says to the people AROUND them.
Take the Cuddles Georg child example. When children are that clingy, they’re that clingy for a reason. Now, there are hundreds of different reasons! And the people around that child will either know that reason, or they will interpret it and give it a reason … .which, because there are hundreds of reasons, they may be totally wrong about.
Especially since sometimes those “reasons” are more or less fundamentally wrong, but are culturally accepted. Like “he’s just a whiny wuss”.
Real reasons a child (and by this I mean a larval human who has reached the “totally independently ambulatory stage”, ie walking) would be okay with being carried all day mostly have to do with fear, fatigue, anxiety or pain - this is why sick kids, and kids who’ve experienced trauma, are often (tho not always) both very clingy. It means that the comfort and solace of being held by an adult they feel safe with is significantly overriding all other considerations, including boredom and curiosity and the enjoyment of moving around and making noise. Which is actually quite hard to do, as anyone who has looked after a kid who is well enough to be bored out of their mind but not well enough to resume everyday life has experienced! Or done a long car ride. Or had a situation where what you NEED is for the child to sit quietly on your lap and the child is not going to do this willingly.
TBH even when a child is sick or really scared, they will usually run out of patience and get bored enough to start demanding that you Actively Entertain Them pretty quick, even if they want to be a burr on your side.
Meanwhile the people around you are also interpreting the behaviour, and some of those interpretations are He’s Just Whiny (or whatever).
Or take the example of the ashes in the cardboard box: this is very unusual because by and large we as a culture tend to interact with the remains of the dead in a way that requires certain formalities. And mostly, it’s the cardboard box part that I think would give the instructor pause, as if it were in an urn then it would be much less remarkable (sure many people have a more specific place for their loved one’s remains but on the bookshelf with the mysteries is not totally “that’s weird” provoking).
So for that to be the case, somehow the poster’s grandmother missed the cultural indoctrination that says You Put Ashes In An Urn, or there’s some other culturally unusual circumstance that makes the cardboard box an acceptable receptacle for the remains, which opens whole realms of other questions and considerations, were one to make this a character thing: what else does this person do that is culturally unusual? How much pushback do they face? Does that alter them? Do THEY think this is normal and are startled to find others don’t? Is this a culture clash thing?
And additionally people (like the instructor) are going to Judge, and that’s going to have ongoing elements of interaction.
And I’m thinking about the salesperson and here’s the thing: what calling someone by name does is create a HARD attention-grabbing whack in the midst of the conversation. It is a moment of refocusing. The purpose of the name (and to a softer degree a nickname or pet name) is to Grab Attention, and so yes actually all of us do, sometimes, in conversation, use someone’s name in a sentence when talking directly to them … . when we want to put a push of emphasis.
It’s a way of repeating “I am talking to you, and you specifically, and my words apply directly to you, here now, not generally, not hypothetically, not as a chat, but YOU”.
This CAN be deployed with utility in sales pitches! It is particularly common in the Hard Sell or the case when the person is trying to flood you with various forms of unconscious social obligation to close the sale. If you spin it exactly right it can also make the other person feel special, the centre of your attention, etc. Or it can come across as coercive and boorish.
It also comes up a lot in arguments or fights or other conflict: “I need you to understand this, Bob!” No, Freddy, I already understand!“ Etc. So sometimes it’s really appropriate!
But not always. And sometimes people do it because they heard the advice in the 80s and thought it applied across the board and have never figured out that this makes them seem like an overbearing jackass … .but people may well still REACT to them as if they are.
It’s all contextual.
One of the times I get closest to “nobody acts like that” in fiction I have read is a situation where you know what, no, you’re right: it’s not TOTALLY UNHEARD OF for a pair of adult women to behave in the way described!
What DOESN’T happen is a pair of adult women behaving in the way described and ALSO being able to co-lead a high level, prestigious, socially beneficial and (portrayed as in book) FUNCTIONAL organization full of many different moving parts and requiring significant bridge-building and community-collaborating elements. The author wants me to believe they can do THAT, and have been doing it for years, and ALSO act like not just 14 year olds but very immature 14 year olds who just saw a new hot guy to have a crush on … and that’s where these things break down. If you want those characters to be that petty and small and stupid, you’re gonna have to have someone ELSE who has the smarts to keep the organization running, and THEN you’re going to have to have a reason for them to do that rather than just taking over, or quitting and letting the whole thing fall apart.
And those circumstances exist (there’s a general claim that this is how SpaceX achieves anything, in spite of Muskrat, and I believe it) but they gotta have reasons. They don’t just happen. You know?
