As readers we all know that when we pick up a novel or a short story, it’s a work of fiction. Something someone made up in order to entertain us.
In other words, we know it’s a story but choose to disregard that knowledge, and instead pretend it’s real.
Lawrence Block posited an interesting thought in his book Telling Lies for Fun & Profit:
But first is it not essential that the writer suspend his own disbelief? He more than anyone knows it’s just a story… To the extent that he visualizes it first, to the extent that he has the experience of his fiction himself before he puts it on paper for someone else, his work acquires an essential reality in his own eyes. He suspends his own disbelief and makes it easier for the reader to go and do likewise.
I hadn’t thought about suspension of disbelief this way before, but I’d have to say Block is on target.
When I think about my own stories and novels, they do indeed acquire an essential reality. The characters become alive and their story becomes real.
I know objectively that Pierce Mostyn and the OUP, Tina and Harry, Bill Arthur and the world of Rocheport, aren’t real. Yet, they are very much real to me. They have lives of their own, and I’m privileged to share their lives on occasion.
The more real my characters are to me, the more I transfer that reality to my writing, which in turn transfers that reality to the reader.
I can’t help but wonder if the books I read that I find boring and fail to enable me to suspend disbelief, are the ones that, in Anthony Trollope’s words, were written by writers telling a story, instead of having a story to tell?
In the first instance, a writer tells the story because he feels he has to. Maybe he needs to pay the rent. In the second, he has a story and it’s so amazing he just has to tell someone. The first is a case of manufacturing a story and selling it to the reader. The second is a case of receiving a story, as it were, and telling it.
When a story has captured a writer to such a degree that he has to tell it, that’s when I think the writer has suspended his own disbelief and thereby enables us to suspend ours.
Of course, subject matter, genre, the writer’s skill, the writer’s style, all come in to play and impact suspension of disbelief. There are some writers who I just can’t stand, yet others love their writing. It’s the beauty in the eye of the beholder thing.
Nevertheless, I’ve read books where the writer truly needed to hire a proofreader. Yet, I read on in spite of the textual interruptions, because the writer told his story so well. My suspension of disbelief weathered the interruptions.
Lawrence Block’s observation is something to think about, and one we writers need to take seriously.
If the story we are writing is just a story, how can we ask our readers to treat it as anything else? They may enjoy it, but will they remember it? Will they even finish reading it?
But if our story is reality to us, then there’s a much greater chance our readers will be suspending their disbelief right along with us.
You can get Mr. Block’s excellent book on Amazon.
Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!
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