Realism

Actually, I prefer what Harlan Ellison said: "I don't want realism, I want verisimilitude." Not reality, but truth. What SEEMS real and proper.

Basically, don't offend the reader's senses. Do nothing that jars them out of the story. Keep your facts accurate and your logic sensible (even if your plot and your scenes are fantastic and outlandish), and the reader will follow you through the weirdest stuff. read your dialogue out loud, so that it sounds like human beings and not awful buxom-book stilted dialogue.

Yanno. Easy stuff like that.

DwayneA said:

Readers want scenes, dialogue, and characters to be realistic. What does that mean? How do I accomplish this?

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They want characters to act how a real person would act... e.g. If a completely normal person gets kidnapped by a bunch of guys in dark suits, she does not go kick-ass ninja chick on them if she was pretty normal and wimpy for the first part of the novel. She gets scared, begs for her life to be spared, says "don't hurt me"...

Don't make your characters reactions plot-conventient; make them believeable.

The answer to your questions

Along with my Inner Editor, I have this fantastic device called a Believability Scanner. It bleeps and flashes when things don't work the way they should or are not consistent. When the story goes way bad, it hangs. Sometimes it crashes and burns.

I don't mind something that causes an occasional bleep or flash, but when it hangs I toss the book.

I agree with PeeDee. It's not so much about being 'realistic', but being truthful. Even if you're writing complete fiction about talking rabbits and dancing trees or what-not, your story should ring true on a human level. Aim to be truthful in the way your story is unfolding, in how characters are interacting with one another and in how they react to what you, the writer, throws at them. Inject truth and practicality even into complete fiction and the realism will shine through naturally without being forced. To do this, just really think about what's actually going on in the story you're writing, then imagine it was all true and really happening [outside your story]-- how would your character(s) react, what would happen etc. and you'll find yourself writing much more 'realistic' scenes. I hope that makes sense.

Dialogue in novels isn't meant to be real. It's meant to 'appear' real, but of course in real life people stutter, people repeat words often, people speak incompletely, and use hand motions to answer words.

Characters and scenes can be realistic in their representation, but like dialogue, it's rarely really real. (say that five times fast).