Why do we enjoy unrealistic tropes in stories?

Cafe Society
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I’m not convinced that this doesn’t reflect real life. When it comes to these elements the big differences that strikes me between stories and real life is that in real life we don’t know everything that actually happened, and in real life there’s not an “ending” in the same way that there is in stories.

In real life things seldom happen out of nowhere, although we may as individuals be unaware of the signs or not appreciate their significance. It’s a cliche that if a woman in a costume drama coughs then she’s sure to die of consumption by the end of the story, but this kind of “foreshadowing” does happen in real life. Every cough obviously isn’t a sign of a fatal disease, but people with consumption/TB do in fact cough. Or, thinking of Chekhov’s gun, it’s not true that every gun in the world will be used to shoot someone, but if someone gets shot in real life then the shooter had to get the gun somewhere. In real life it would be rare for the same person to observe the shooter obtaining the gun and the shooter actually carrying out the shooting, so the unrealistic thing about seeing both in a movie or reading both described in a book is that we’re given a special perspective on the action.

Situations do build to a climax in real life too. Lovers declare their love. Police detectives capture criminals. We don’t always get to see this unless we’re directly involved, but it happens.

There can’t be a true denouement in real life because in real life we rarely learn all the facts and because there aren’t clear-cut endings in real life. For the individual then death is of course the ultimate ending, but in real life people fall in love and get married, murders get solved, etc., and then things keep going for all (living) parties involved. So the difference between stories and real life is again largely a matter of our perspective and its limits. In real life our knowledge of what happens when we’re not around and what goes on in other people’s heads is incomplete at best, but we are aware of what happens in our own lives well after a particular situation has ended. In a story we can know things that happen in different times and places and hear other people’s thoughts, but when it says “THE END” then that’s the end and we don’t find out what happens to anyone after that. (Unless of course there’s a sequel!)

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Foreshadowing, climax, and denouement are elements of focusing attention on the events of interest to the story. Foreshadowing is letting the audience know what is coming. It is made up of events that in real life would happen in a backdrop of a lot of irrelevant but equally as emphasized or nonemphasized. Somebody is coughing. How many people have to cough before one of those is the cough of consumption as opposed to a cold?

Climax is focusing on the action of a particular story. It’s the high point. Well, lives are full of high points that come and go, pick any one of those as a local climax.

Denoument is wrapping up that event. Life is full of little denouments related to all those climaxes. It’s just the story keeps going, so the denouments don’t feel like stopping places, and the denoument for one event may be the beginning of another ramp to climax on another front, so we don’t realize it.

Storytelling is taking all the events that might have been happening and focusing on the ones related to a message, circumstance, etc. So you trim out all the irrelevancies in order to a) focus attention, b) keep it interesting, and c) make the point you are trying to make. Maybe that point is to entertain, maybe that point is “how did I get where I am?”