Disbelief

Even though I have been writing for a very long time, I didn’t start doing anything overtly active with it until probably 2007. At that time, I learnt a lot of things quickly. One of the first things was to learn about who my narrator is for a story. The other thing that kept cropping up was the term; the suspension of disbelief. I thought I knew what it meant, so never actually questioned it. The more I thought about it the less I realised I knew. However, it never got to the point where I had to drop everything and pursue the answer. I kept on writing and sharing and publishing.

Over time, the definition worked itself out. it has more to do with the reader than it does the writer. As I thought it, I remember a conversation I had with someone many years ago about my writing. I told him about a planet I had created, it’s position in its system and its particular relationship to its sun. immediately he attempted to refute its existence saying that it couldn’t exist according to what I had said. It didn’t stop me from writing, and I have used that planet in a number of stories. It’s developed over the years as I’ve needed more information about the planet. If anything, it proved to me that the suspension of disbelief is very needed when reading fiction.

As writers, we are automatically asking our readers to set aside everything they know about the world in which we live. We want them to enter our world. A world that we’ve created. A world that has taken us hours to develop; the geography; the lore; the people; the creatures, and so on. That person I spoke with that time was not prepared to put aside everything he knew and accept that the world I had created existed. He was prepared to stay a disbeliever rather than enjoy a crafted story.

Fiction is all about setting aside what we know and getting involved with what we are reading. Immersing ourselves in the culture of the created space. It doesn’t matter the type of fiction (as in science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, etc), it’s not meant to be real. It is an escape. Regardless of the setting; historical, contemporary or future, it’s all about the story.

Our writing is always about the story. My fiction writing is about the story. It’s about where it’s set and how the characters interact with it. It’s about me asking my readers to set aside their potential disbelief of the story and enjoy it.