All fiction, but especially fantasy and sci-fi, relies on the reader’s “willing suspension of disbelief.”
What the heck is that, though? And how do you make sure your novel does it?
That’s what’s coming up in this post!
What is suspension of disbelief?
According to Oxford, the term “willing suspension of disbelief” was originally coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though the concept itself goes as far back as Horace and Cicero.
It’s when the reader knows and understands that the story isn’t real but agrees to go along with it as if it is.
Kind of like when kids play pretend. One kid says, “Okay, let’s be space aliens trying to invade Earth!” If the other kids agree and join in the game, that’s willing suspension of disbelief. But if the other kids instead say “We can’t be aliens. We’re human!” then they haven’t suspended their disbelief, and the game can’t get started.
When you read a book, you’re joining in on the author’s game of pretend. When the author says, “Here’s a world where cities float in the sky, and nobody can live on the ground because it’s dangerous down there,” the reader either says “Cool!” and keeps reading, or they say “That would never happen” and stop.
(Personally, I think suspension of disbelief is the biggest thing dividing readers who primarily read nonfiction or realistic fiction from readers who primarily read SFF. I think SFF readers are able to suspend their belief much more.)
Suspension of disbelief, they say, is why we can enjoy any kind of entertainment at all, whether it’s stage plays or movies or paintings or books.
Why is suspension of disbelief important in a novel?
Without suspension of disbelief, readers wouldn’t be able to finish your novel at all. Especially if you’re writing sci-fi or fantasy that’s particularly different from our world.
Readers must be able to push away the “That’s so unrealistic” thoughts in order to enjoy your story.
How to make readers suspend their disbelief.
Good news: Most readers are already good at this!
People who read fiction regularly suspend their disbelief for every story they read. The same goes for other media, too, of course, like movies, TV, games, and any other way stories are told.
So you don’t usually have to do anything special to make readers suspend their disbelief.
That being said, there are some best practices:
Best Practices for Making Readers Suspend Disbelief
Present the story world as fact. Resist the urge to overexplain every new term and detail. Treat the normal things in your story world as if they’re normal, because they are normal in that world.
Follow the logic you set up in your story, or explain why the logic is broken when it breaks. If you establish that magic drains life force, but then all of a sudden there’s a character whose life force isn’t drained by magic, there better be a believable reason why.
Avoid suspicious coincidences. Things that would be a funny coincidence in real life look a lot like the author taking shortcuts while writing in a book. Nothing breaks suspension of disbelief like the reader thinking, “Well, that’s awfully convenient.”
Avoid showing your hand as the author. When plot events are too convenient, when there’s lots of mistakes in the writing, etc., readers stop playing pretend and suddenly see the author instead of the imaginary world. The less readers can see the author, the more they’ll be able to suspend disbelief.
Other Strategies for Making Readers Suspend Disbelief
When something weird happens, make sure the characters react to the weird thing. For example, if wormholes aren’t supposed to exist in your spacefaring sci-fi but suddenly one shows up, make sure the characters all exclaim over how they can’t believe it. If they have no reaction at all to discovering an entirely new phenomenon, that’s going to be hard for the reader to suspend their disbelief.
Have story-world-only, not-real-on-Earth things happen more than once. If an animal talks once and then never again in the entire book, without characters acknowledging it or any other explanation, readers are going to start to wonder if it was a mistake. Mistakes make readers stop suspending their disbelief.
Foreshadowing, foreshadowing, foreshadowing. Hint at unbelievable things that are yet to come in subtle ways so that readers will still be surprised but not totally thrown out of the story.
Lampshade the hell out of everything else. Lampshading is when you include something readers are probably thinking in the story itself. For example, if you have a character who keeps doing illegal things over and over but never seems to be suspected let alone caught, have another character say “I don’t know how you always get away with this stuff.” That makes it into a funny character quirk instead of a shortcutting author situation.
Keep these techniques in mind, and remember, as long as you’re writing an engaging story, readers will already be suspending their disbelief, and you don’t have to worry about it much.
If you’re getting feedback that readers can’t get into your story or that your novel feels too unbelievable, that may be a sign you’re having suspension of disbelief problems.
If you want more detailed, personalized feedback on where you went wrong in your book and how to fix it, I can help! Read more about my Editorial Evaluation service, where I analyze your entire book to identify what’s working and what’s not. I can help you pinpoint where readers are losing their suspension of disbelief!
