Hey there, Merworld!

I’m currently working my way through the middle of Dry Ice, the next novel in the Scales & Skin series. And by “working my way through,” I mean stumbling around in the dark, tripping over plotlines, and hoping I eventually find the tail-kicking ending I have planned.

Writers call this section the “messy middle.”

I have an awesome beginning. I have an exciting ending. Now I merely have to connect the dots and write approximately twenty chapters between them. Across 4 characters’ voices. Because writing one character’s perspective isn’t tricky enough.

Easy-peasy.

Except this particular stretch of scribbling has me pondering a question for you, my lovely readers:

Do superheroes need a nap?

Translation: How realistic do you want your fantasy characters to be?

Allow me to digress with several examples.

Surprise! You Have Super Powers

In Dry Ice, Glacia begins exploring her aquatic powers that have been lurking beneath the surface. Without leaking too many details, let’s say she experiences them at a fairly drastic level.

Now, imagine you woke up tomorrow and discovered you could shoot lime Jell-o from your fingertips.

Would you shrug and say, “Neat,” before logging in for your standard Monday zoom calls?

Probably not.

You might scream. You might accidentally slime your favorite pet husky. You might question everything you thought you knew about yourself, your family, and the basic laws of nature. At minimum, your lunch plans would be delayed.

Realistically, discovering a supernatural ability would cause an epic meltdown. There would be fear, confusion, denial, and possibly several hours spent searching the internet for “Is finger-ejecting Jell-o edible?”

Glacia deserves her own version of the “What the heck just happened?” moment.

However, I don’t have fifty chapters available for her to examine her entire life trajectory. At some point, she must stop staring at her hands and get back to tail-kicking.

This leaves me balancing two competing goals:

1. Make Glacia’s reaction emotionally believable.
2. Keep the plot moving before everyone gets bored and wanders off to binge Stranger Things for the fifth time.

Ergo, my question to you, dear readers: 

A. Do you prefer plenty of internal thought so every decision feels relatively logical? 

B. Or are you comfortable with a few leaps of faith, where a character accepts the latest disaster and gets moving without several chapters of meltdown?

The Breakfast Problem

At any given point during a normal day, most of us do thrilling things like:

• Take a shower.
• Get coffee.
• Stare blankly at a wall because we’re tired of listening to our boss and no longer possess an intelligent thought.

I imagine secret agents have similar moments.

Somewhere, an elite operative has probably looked at a major crisis and thought, “You know what? I’m not feeling it today. I’m going to run on the treadmill.”

Those ordinary moments make characters relatable. Even highly trained heroes should get tired, hungry, annoyed, or briefly distracted by the need to find a restroom.

On the other hand, nobody wants to read six chapters about the team eating dinner, washing their hair, folding laundry, and arguing with their mother on the phone.

That might be realistic, but it isn’t exactly the high-stakes mermaid adventure you signed up for.

Most novels solve this problem by sneaking something interesting into the downtime. Romantic tension bubbles up while the characters eat breakfast. Someone makes a witty comment while slurping coffee. The team discusses the case for the fourteenth time until one tiny detail produces a sudden ah-hah moment.

Then everyone abandons their Waffle Wednesday indulgence and races back into action.

Which breakfast option do you prefer?

A. Witty dialogue while they eat.

B. Romantic tension while they eat.

C. Skip breakfast entirely. Our heroes have stuff to do.

How Much Can Happen in One Day?

Eventually, after weeks and months of writing and rewriting, an author hands the manuscript to an editor.

A good editor maps out the timeline and asks helpful questions such as, “Did you realize you crammed thirty action scenes into one twelve-hour period?”

To which I might respond, “Of course it isn’t realistic. This novel is about mermaids.”

Fair point, though.

Even fantasy stories need enough logic to keep readers inside the fictional world. Characters cannot cross an entire country in seven minutes unless teleportation has been properly established. They cannot fight three villains, swim through freezing water, survive an explosion, and attend a romantic dinner without at least changing clothes.

Or can they?

Movies get away with this all the time. I recently rewatched a wonderfully dramatic ’90s disaster movie. In the final moments, one character is trapped inside a collapsed cave with minimal airflow…with their body pinned beneath a crushed car…for several days. [High five if you know which movie I’m talking about]. When rescued, the leading male crawls out slightly disheveled – in that sexy rugged way – walks without assistance, and hugs everyone.

Sir, no.

That man would be dehydrated, injured, covered in grime and body fluids, and immediately loaded into medivac. Nobody would be lining up for cuddles.

Yet the realistic version would interrupt the emotional ending. Instead, the hero hugs the love of his life, greets the children, and everyone celebrates.

Realistic? Absolutely not.

Satisfying? Yes.

And perhaps that’s the real challenge. Fiction doesn’t need to document every shower, meal, nap, bathroom break, and emergency medical evaluation. It needs enough reality to make the characters vulnerable—and enough fantasy to make their lives more exciting than ours.

So, Merworld, where is your ideal balance?

Would you choose fifty percent realism and fifty percent nonstop adventure? Eighty percent action and twenty percent basic human needs? Or should I run these poor fictional humans and mercreatures directly into the ground because sleep is temporary and saving the Merworld is forever?

Let me know in the comments. Your answers may help determine whether Glacia gets time to process her emerging powers—or whether I hand her an algae pudding snack and throw her into the next disaster.

It’s been great chatting with you. Until next time, you flipping rock!