Feedback Wanted
Public services in fiction usually get two modes: saintly competence or total collapse. The more interesting version is the one that works, mostly, in the boring ways and still manages to irritate everyone.
Queue systems that are almost sensible. Forms with one field that makes no sense. Opening hours that seem designed by someone with a grudge. That sort of thing does more work than a dramatic breakdown ever will. It gives a city texture, and it makes the machinery feel human rather than decorative.
Curious how other writers handle that balance. How much competence do you give a fictional service before it starts feeling implausibly tidy?
Queue systems that are almost sensible. Forms with one field that makes no sense. Opening hours that seem designed by someone with a grudge. That sort of thing does more work than a dramatic breakdown ever will. It gives a city texture, and it makes the machinery feel human rather than decorative.
Curious how other writers handle that balance. How much competence do you give a fictional service before it starts feeling implausibly tidy?
The bit that usually feels fake is perfect information. Real services lose paperwork, misfile a form, and still keep the lights on. A city feels more convincing when the system has friction, but the people inside it know the work and keep going anyway.
Iād rather read about a registrar who hates the software than a flawless civic machine.
Iād rather read about a registrar who hates the software than a flawless civic machine.
The useful version is usually inconsistent. A library can be efficient at issuing books and still have a filing system held together by habit, local knowledge and one person who remembers where everything was moved in 2008. That feels truer than either saintliness or collapse.
Too much polish and you lose the sense of people wrestling with the machinery. Too much chaos and the service stops being a service.
Too much polish and you lose the sense of people wrestling with the machinery. Too much chaos and the service stops being a service.