Creativity is one of the human traits that separates us from animals. Although we can be considered animals as well, due to ‘fight or flight’ scenarios and thinking, we usually separate ourselves because we are able to use our intellect and creativity to create the craziest things.
With that intro, I want to talk about Creative Writing. The ability we have to make up worlds and make fictional stuff is wonderful, but it’s very easy to get wrapped up into a place where you make something bad by accident, and trying to improve it is much harder than you think.
Fantasy/Fiction and Reality are nested
In every piece of fiction or fantasy you have read, heard or watched before, there’s the expectation of some resemble of reality. And if it’s not close to match what exists for us, it’s gonna take time to be understood, and even then, it’s not gonna be understood fully.
Art is truly incomprehensible not because we give it meaning, but because we give different meanings and every person can understand it differently. A white square in a black colored background can mean many things to different people, a political statement, a provocative image, so on.
With that being said, reality can have as many meanings as people are willing to give them and the works of fiction or fantasy can create new meanings where there was none. But ultimately, reality is where we live in and where we do things, so we can’t just discard it completely, or we’re not gonna live our lives properly.
But denying fiction or fantasy is also not a good thing because… We have dreams. These are nested in reality, but are a fiction that doesn’t exist. Being rich, being able to buy a car, a house, family, studying aboard, so on, these are dreams that we all have some point. They don’t exist (so it’s fictional), but they could, and that can be motivation to go out there and make it happen, turn it into reality.
This means that reality and fiction are two sides of the same coin, and are nested. Fiction isn’t reality, and reality isn’t fiction, but one can ultimately affect the other in multiple ways. The fantasy of buying a vehicle can lead you to buy a vehicle. The fact that life sucks for some people can lead them to imagine how things could be if they were better in n ways.
Localized Reality
There’s also another concept that I’d rather not leave off and that is the concept of ‘Localized Reality’. Some call it ‘My World’ but the name doesn’t really matter, in this case. What matters is that the reality as it exists and as a person portrays is can be different.
Someone living in a country might not experience what someone else is living in a country in another continent. Your house is different than every other house in the neighborhood, and each person there experiences a different reality.
This is the concept of Localized Reality, where what happens and what happens to you are not the same. It’s also one of the reasons why some people are able to live in either ignorance or categorically denying reality actively, because they won’t live through with it.
Refuge in Audacity
No, not the program. Some people are crazy enough to not only live the dream but onlylive the dream. Make it their reality and discard everything else. And I can understand. The world has been plagued with issues (most of them made by humans) but facing reality is really harsh sometimes.
But ignoring reality doesn’t work, because we don’t livein a dream. We all must face the hardships of our existence, and put ourselves in our place. The people failing to do so are only causing problem to themselves and depending on their influence, several others will suffer too.
I am not going to name anyone, but there’s far too many examples of people that live inside their own delusions, their own dreamed reality, where everything is perfect and no one is affected by anything, while refusing to see things are they are, to face reality as it exists.
So they lie, cheat, mistreat, cause issues, invent things that only exist in their heads in other to refuge themselves away from the reality they actually live in. Anything to keep themselves from facing the real world. And as we all know, that doesn’t last forever. Even if the person still denies the real world, once they die, it’s gone. Yes, very morbid of me to say that, but once that person is no longer alive, their dreamed reality stops existing.
Understand the Distinction
This is why we can’t live in a dreamed reality. We can have dreams, and the like, but we need to understand our place in the world. However, we can use our dreams to motivate us to do better, to bebetter. Set a goal, and try to achieve it. Not everyone needs to own a sports car that costs three to four times your house, but having a car will do. For many, just having a college degree would be enough.
And it’s why we need to understand the difference, the distinction between fiction and reality.
Reality: The state of being actual or real.
You can see that even in a description, fiction has ‘real’ on it, meaning it’s a different but a nest subject.
So let’s not kid ourselves and say it as it is, fiction is invented things, they do not exist in reality, while reality is the state of being (f)actual.
A good example is a videogame. The game itself is real but the happening inside of it are fictional because they do not exist in reality in any way. Other examples: a TV show, a book, a fictional book. All of those are real things but portray fictional happenings.
Closing Words
A good way to start the year is to remember that we all have dreams but we need to make it happen, we need to turn it from fiction into reality. If something you want doesn’t exist to you (but it can be achieved), you need to plan it out, and put it into motion. Otherwise it’ll remain a dream forever and you’ll never gonna make it real.
Always start with an idea, something that you want to do and try to achieve it at the end. Shortcuts are a recipe for disaster, avoid those as much as possible. And in the end, your fiction will turn into reality.