Photography is the truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” Legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard said this famous quote, emphasizing his belief that film is about truth. And truth is what verisimilitude (your new favorite cocktail party word!) is all about. Read on to find out what it is, and how you can use it to create stories that feel true.
Verisimilitude definition
First, let’s define verisimilitude
Verisimilitude may seem like an intimidating word, but its definition and meaning is actually pretty simple.
VERISIMILITUDE DEFINITION
What is verisimilitude
Verisimilitude is defined as the appearance of truth in a story. When a movie or piece of literature has verisimilitude, it means the story is believable to the audience watching it. Their experience of the story feels real, even though they know they are watching a movie.
Some synonyms for verisimilitude include realism and authenticity. When you read or watch it, does it feel to the audience like the story is really happening? If so, the story has verisimilitude.
Define Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude Examples
A movie with verisimilitude doesn’t mean the story has to be true. In fact, some of the stories with the most verisimilitude are complete fiction! What matters is whether the world and characters feel real. Even if dragons are flying through the air, a good movie will have enough verisimilitude to make the audience suspend their disbelief, gasp when that dragon lights a town on fire, and when it ends, cry their eyes out as if it’s all happened to them. When a piece of literature or a film has achieved that “true” feeling, it has verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude Examples:
- Game of Thrones: The GoT universe would never be described as realistic, but the world-building of the show, detailed characters, and high production value made the show abundant with verisimilitude. Even though the show took place in a world far away from our reality, the emotions of the characters and their challenges felt real, so it achieved verisimilitude.
- Saving Private Ryan: Steven Spielberg’s epic World War II film opens with a scene recreating D-Day, when American troops landed on Omaha Beach as part of a campaign to liberate Europe during World War II. As star Tom Hanks’ character experiences the battle, the scene’s verisimilitude and believability gives the audience a look at the true horror of war.
Tom Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan”
Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age story about a high school girl and her relationship with her mother is often lauded for how accurately it portrays inter-family dynamics. The movie’s verisimilitude allows its audience to relate to the main characters as if they were real people.
Verisimilitude examples
How to create films with verisimilitude
Now that you’ve mastered the meaning of verisimilitude, you might be wondering how to achieve it in your own writing. Here are a few tips for how to make your story have verisimilitude:
Characters with depth: Characters that feel like real people - even if they’re witches, robots, or even animals - help the audience relate to them. Every character in your story should feel like a complete person who has their own life, as opposed to someone only existing only to advance a plotline.
World-building: In fantasy or sci-fi, world-building is crucial for the audience to believe the verisimilitude of the story. The rules of the world must be clear and explained easily as the story unfolds. This helps the audience suspend their disbelief of the fantastical elements onscreen, and buy into the story being told.
Credibility and consistency: Stories with plotlines and characters that seem real - or credible - help establish verisimilitude. Consistency - both with characters and the rules of a world - help achieve this. If a character is established to be kind on page 2, and then does something wildly cruel for no reason on page 3, the verisimilitude may be lost. If the production value for your horror movie is so bad that the audience can see the person inside the monster suit, you’ll lose your verisimilitude (and your theater-goers!).
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