How to do this?Ex.>a man approaches you in public, tells you he is from the future, and that your city/town will be destroyed by a meteor in 7 days (or something)>tells you some info that only>seems very sincere, does not elaborate, walks off into the crowd. >char drops a stone>falls straight up into the sky>the world continues on as normalHow do you write situations like this well/realistically? I ask because in my own life I’ve seen that departures from the norm/unusal situations make people behave in extremely bizarre ways not at all congruent with their personalities under normal conditions. An example would be my otherwise rational physicist uncle flipping out and literally throwing away all of the stuff I stocked up for Covid just in case it got worse (modest preparations, some bandages, bottled water, toothpaste, etc).I also sometimes feel that the push for “consistency” is a weaknesses of the novel in general. The old wives/heuristic wisdom is “you le never know le man until he is le tested”. Well okay maybe, but how do you make it believable - or maybe I should be asking should it be believable or is believability not the goal and it should be an inversion or perversion of their normal character as a means of commentary/criticism? Anyway I am rambling, just tell me your opinion on how these sorts of situations ought to be handled.
When we don't understand something we easily fall into states of excitement, but only after having had time to think about it. If these things happen outside you probably don't want your character to freak out. Just look at videos of shootings or catastrophes. People are just standing there for a good while trying to look unbothered and only start running once others do too.If you're aiming for realism just look up people's experiences with weird stuff, or (real) pranks
unless being pressed to act, most people remain perplexed if something unrealistic/very unlikely to happen happens. most just brush it off as if it never happened, or they freeze waiting for something or someone to come and helps make sense of the situation
>>24985320it is not about what is real you have to overact and polarize for the reader to buy it or be interestedvernon dursley (aggressive denial)over eagernessreligious cult interpretationabsolute indifference and skepticism (dana scully X files)the neo thing is the most boring path which is passive acceptance and being carried by it
>>24985320I wrote something similar. A newcomer told a guy that the weird thing in the shy, which had been there a while already, would double in size at noon the next day. The local took hi for crazy, but was nice about it and proposed a bet for anything on the menu at this diner, the loser picks up the tab. When it happened the next day, the guy dropped his coffee seeing it on the news. It was a turning point in the story. I felt I was aping older science fiction, the odd weird stories that didn't deal with cowboys and aliens tropes so common.
