I once read something claiming that of plot, setting, and characters, a book need to have at least one realistic and at least one unrealistic element to be fun to read. Often, I think speculative fiction works because with alienness elsewhere, characters can be relatable!https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner/status/1161998057325678592 …
heard something similar about music once; like, a song should have one surprising element (surprising lyrics or surprising melody or surprising harmony) and the others should be relatively unsurprising
