Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Willing suspension of disbelief is a phrase that refers to what we all do as readers. For example: we know there are no such things as werewolves, but we are willing to go with it in a story. That being said, that willingness to suspend our disbelief can be stretched to the breaking point. I have read novels (I won’t mention any names) that were so over the top as to be unbelievable. At that point I either must decide if I can enjoy it as camp or simply not worth my time.

Back when I was in college in my first phase of attempting to be a writer of science fiction, I was given some good advice. I was told that you were allowed one “wonder”: one thing that wows the reader even though it may not be quite scientifically plausible. Wrapped around that wonder though, everything has to make sense. Things need to be consistent as they relate to the wonder. For example, you could have time travel in a story. It is pretty much universally accepted in the real scientific community that time travel (at least traveling back in time) will forever be impossible. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it in a story. People are willing to suspend their disbelief in time travel as long as the story is good and all the other elements of the story are eminently believable. If you start throwing in multiple impossible things, readers will start to walk away.

This concept may be a bit looser in a fantasy novel, but even so, there are always consistent rules that apply to the world in question. For example, Gandalf may be able to do some magic, but he cannot fly. Not only does this follow the rule, but it makes the story better. If the good guy can do anything, then there is not much at stake when he is fighting the bad guy.

One could only wish that Hollywood would follow this rule, but more often than not, movies seem to follow a rule that says the more wonders, the better. Some of the impossible things that happen in movies are just because the movie makers don’t understand science (speedometers in space?) This even holds true for many movies that were made from good science fiction novels, because Hollywood just can’t resist tinkering. Of course I am not saying all science fiction movies do this, but many do.

In my own writing I have tried to follow the “one wonder” rule. Some of my stories don’t even have the one. As for my early stories that violated this rule, yeah, they weren’t very good. But then, many of my early stories weren’t very good anyway because I did not really know what I was doing. If you are a writer you should always try to gauge how far you can take your readers before you step over the line.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).
zon.com/dp/B07DPW7GFW

Comments

Empathy

Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...

Polar Bears and Entropy

Extinction is a normal part of the evolution of life on our planet. You and I and all individual organisms eventually die. That is the way of things. Entropy happens. Entropy is a word from the third law of thermodynamics that basically means: things fall apart. The natural tendency is for things to become less orderly as time goes on: things break down, things erode, things rust, things wear out. Entropy is a measurement of how fast that is happening in any given system. Individual death is a natural outcome of entropy. But an extinction is where all the members of a species are no longer living. Millions of species have gone extinct over the lifetime of our planet. There are natural background extinctions that happen continually. But sometimes there are events that trigger mass extinctions, where vast masses of species go extinct all at once (all at once in geologic terms, which might mean over the course of hundreds of years). There have been 5 mass extinctions over ...

A speculative mind

Search This Blog