Being realistic

I recently read something on a loop (God, don't even ask me where or whom. I couldn't remember that if you tortured me), and it really stuck out to me. The author had had a manuscript rejected and was talking about how the letter said that the story wasn't realistic enough. This led to a discussion of "stories aren't supposed to be real."

Well, sorry to tell ya, but, yeah, we editors like to see come realism in the story. A lot of it, actually. And yes, in fantasy and sci-fi, too. What we mean by realism is, would that reaction take place, would he/she really say that, etc.

For instance, if you have a story where a woman is actually a demon and her lover is a minister and she finally gets around to telling him what she is and he's like "Okay, cool, I love you anyways", *big breath* that is NOT realistic. I mean, think about it. If a character finds out someone cheated on them and automatically forgives them, no argument, no questions, that's not realistic either. I'm not saying people don't forgive, but if your spouse ran around on you and you found out, wouldn't you be just a leetle bit pissed off?

I'm not going to go into this anymore, but this is what "realism" is. Not whether or not the story really happened or "werewolves don't really exist" or anything like that. Of course that stuff is fake. Duh. =)