What is reality? In fiction, realism is not necessarily real life, and that isn’t what readers really want anyway, argues Sophie Beal
Film director Richard Curtis summed it up: ‘If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it’s called searingly realistic, even though it’s never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you’re accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental.’