What Makes a Story Feel Real?

The Sound of You is out in the world. I hope book clubs really like it—not because I want to sell a zillion books (I do, though), but because I want people to read it, talk about it, and tell me how it felt to them.

Back in the 90s, when Minstrel of a Modern Time was floating around in book clubs, people would always ask the same thing: “Where do your ideas come from?” That one’s easy. The voices in my head won’t shut up.

The harder question was, “How do you make your characters feel real?” I don’t know that I do. What I try to do is not waste the reader’s time. That’s really the beginning of it.

So, I started thinking about what “real” means to me as a reader, and how that applies to my own method.

I’ve always believed most of what we experience in a day is lost. It’s blur. Peripheral noise. We don’t notice it. We don’t record it. We don’t think about the grass under our feet in detail unless something about the grass matters.

When I write, if I say “grass,” you’re not picturing purple. You’re picturing what grass looks like to you. And if it is purple, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, you’ve got this. I trust you.

But when a writer starts describing subtle golds and greens haphazardly laminated across the hillside, I start skipping paragraphs. Not because I’m judging them. I’m just wondering if they know their reader. Unless the grass is going to poison someone. Or hide something. Or catch fire. Then I pay attention.

Scenery only matters when it pushes back.

If the mountain is beautiful, say it’s beautiful. If the character is trying to descend it with a twisted ankle while the sun’s going down, now we’re talking. Now, the beauty of the mountain is in contrast to the struggle of the character. It means something.

I believe stories are about people under pressure. The rest is wallpaper. And unless the wallpaper is strange enough that someone reacts to it, I don’t need it.

I feel the same way about dialogue.

People don’t speak with perfect diction and cadence. Nobody says, “We’ll get the bastard, sir.” They say something grittier, seasoned with profanity. Or they don’t say anything at all—they act.

People talk sideways. They imply. They hedge. They ask, “You sure that’s a good idea?” when what they mean is, “This is going to end badly.”

And I don’t like accents written out phonetically. Dialect implies accent. Accent doesn’t imply dialect. Culture shows up in rhythm and word choice, not dropped letters. I don’t need to write “I’m fixin’ to.” It’s the same number of characters if I leave the “g” in there. “Fixing to” tells me where they’re from, or thereabouts.

Real people aren’t polished. They’re inconsistent. They make bad decisions. Sometimes they know they’re making bad decisions and do it anyway. That’s real. That’s why Jason Bourne feels more believable to me than James Bond. Competent, sure—but aware of his own cracks.

And if some kind of loss happens, well, that happens. It’s inevitable. Losing a house in a fire, a car accident, or someone close dying isn’t bold plot development. We don’t need page after page on the inciting action. What matters is what everyone else does next. The loss isn’t the story. The coping is.

And when it works—when a story really works—it doesn’t feel like reading. It feels like standing in the corner of a room, watching something unfold that would happen whether you were there or not. Time disappears. Hunger disappears. The outside world blurs.

That’s when I know it’s real. Not because the writer added more detail, but because they took out what didn’t matter.

I don’t sit down thinking, “I hope readers love this character,” or “I want them disappointed here.” Readers connect with different things. That part’s personal. You can’t control it.

The question I ask myself is simple:

Does this add to the story?

If it does, I might lean into it.
If it doesn’t, it goes.

That’s it.

Real isn’t about describing everything.

It’s about knowing what matters, and letting the rest stay in the blur, where most of life already lives.