HOW TO REAP THE REALITY DIVIDEND IN YOUR FICTION
OR HOW THE WELLS IMPERATIVE BECAME THE TOLKIEN ADVANCE
Writers of realistic or mimetic fiction often have to work a lot less to sell their storyworlds than, say, a fantasy writer. Reality, after all, exists — and writing “real” always automatically grants the work a reality dividend — an authority, an imprimatur born of the reality that these stories claim descendancy from, but which they only ever imperfectly ape. If you write about New Jersey, you don’t have to sell that New Jersey and its people exist. Which isn’t true if you’re writing about an invented place, like Narnia. In regards to both New Jersey and Narnia, the writer needs to make their setting convincing — but the Narnia writer has a double job: they have to write the world well and make a case for the existence of Narnia and its people, which is an additional task, no matter what.
The New Jersey writer, in other words, gets their world presumed for free, but the Narnia writer has to pay for it.
Same way those of us writing about marginalized communities have to pay to make our worlds visible.