(Noun) the quality or state of being verisimilar.
Well that’s not very helpful, Merriam-Webster.
- having the appearance of truth.
- depicting realism (as in art or literature).
I can’t remember where I first heard the word, but I remember being fascinated by it. The idea of truth in fiction is paradoxical. I mean it’s fiction, whatever you say is real, is real. That’s why we like it, because we’re not constrained by pesky reality. Yet verisimilitude is actually a thing and it relates to the suspension of disbelief.
Storytelling is a collaborative effort between author and reader. Readers help authors to make stories work. Otherwise, anyone listening to King Arthur’s tale would shut it down as soon as Merlin is introduced. For example:
“This is Merlin, he’s a wizard, he can do magic.”
“There’s no such thing as wizards.”
“Well in this story there is.”
“But I’ve never seen one.”
“I don’t want to tell you this story anymore.”
With fiction, readers need to suspend their disbelief, at least a bit. Verisimilitude refers to an author’s duty to minimize the amount of work that the reader has to do to engage with a story. When a character wants to get somewhere, the need a vehicle or they need time to walk and this creates complications for the characters to overcome. It doesn’t make sense if the character just jumps up and flies there, unless they’re Superman.
And I don’t find Superman to be all that compelling of a character.
Interestingly, verisimilitude has a separate, philosophical definition posed by Karl Popper. It’s the idea that when you’re present with two false statements, one can be closer to the truth than the other.
“I’m wet because it’s raining outside.”
“I’m wet from a pipe bursting at home.”
In reality, I’m wet from freaking out during a full-on bathroom disaster and no pipes burst, BUT I was at home when it happened. There’s a kernel of truth there. That’s truthlikeness. That’s verisimilitude. Popper even wrote a function to calculate verisimilitude. Use it with grace:
I bring it up because that’s what I named the blog, for now. I’ll probably change it because a quick check of the .com for the word reveals that a film production company has already co-opted it. Even though the last thing they seem to have made was in 2015, I’d like to think I’m original enough to hold the .com for whatever label I stumble on for this blog.
But for now, it’s verisimilitude. Because we believe in credibility around here.
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