The Grasshopper #27, Tools for Suspending Disbelief
The strange balancing act
Snowglobe Buddha and Smorkin’ Labbits, image author
In my first novel, The Rememberers, a man crosses an invisible barrier while walking in his city and finds himself in a neighborhood which cannot exist. At least not in the city he knows very well.
I was influenced by Haruki Murakami, the best selling Japanese magic realist novelist. The influence I took from him was to present an unreal event in a way that feels real, though it may defy logic.
When I was young I loved fantasy stories. The best, like Tolkien and the Narnia books, though they presented us with invented worlds, suspended disbelief by making those worlds immersive and compelling. These worlds had rules that the writer must apply consistently.
Tolkien took world-building to a very high standard, inventing a pre-history, languages, and a cast of realistic characters, though most were not human.
Even as a child I knew when a fantasy story worked and when it didn’t. The writers mentioned above worked, others, like H.P. Lovecraft did not, at least for me. His worlds did not hang together for me. I read all his stories of hidden evil but never found those underlying rules that would offer even a glimmer of reality.
Titles and opening lines
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had,””
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Classic opening lines like those above are deceptively simple yet they set the stage for the entire story. The unhappy families in Tolstoy include the Oblonskys. In the chapter that follows we learn that the Prince has been caught cheating on his wife with a former French Governess. In a moment his life falls to pieces and we see a weak man masquerading as a charming one.
Nick, the narrator of Gatsby, keeps the story going by being the non-judgemental observer of flawed wealthy people. He keeps us centered as readers without getting sucked into the egotistical laziness of the very rich.
Both openers set the stage and the curtain opens on the stories. Writing beginnings, whether fiction or nonfiction, is an art form, one that requires more practice and awareness than a new writer may possess. Because they literally suck the reader into the story.
Or they cause them to reconsider reading it.
I rewrote the opening paragraph of my first novel at least ten times and I am still a little unsatisfied with it. But in my second one the opening line went untouched, because it just worked.
Titles serve a similar purpose. The original title of Gatsby was Trimalchio in West Egg. Fortunately, Fitzgerald’s editor Maxwell Perkins convinced him to change it. Tolstoy always planned to use his main character’s name but that name changed over the four years of writing the book, as did the character herself.
In my online non-fiction opinion pieces the title, subhead, and opening line form a hypothesis, while displaying the mood of the piece, often anger or universal frustration with a situation.
If I get it right, I get read, if not, not. It’s that simple, yet not simple at all.
The suspension of disbelief is at the heart of every story. We ask a reader to travel with us to places we’ve created, places that do not exist in reality but come out of a writer’s imagination.
When we ask this of a reader, we must return the favor by providing them with a new way of experiencing the world, if only for a few hours. This new experience may feel familiar, scary, mysterious, or put us into a life we would never otherwise experience.
It’s kind of an awesome responsibility, to ask for a chunk of the reader’s life and to offer, in return, a bit of your own in the form of an entertainment, a diversion, or an illumination. I think the reader is ultimately looking for the latter, a new light on the world. Or at least a little escape.
There are many ways to do this without simply announcing that there is magic, though that worked pretty well for the Harry Potter books. Rowling simply presented her young readers with an entire parallel world next to ours. Don’t underestimate how difficult that is.
But also remember the reality we first encounter in the first book. Harry is an abused child. A lot of fantasy stories start with a character who is in a tough place. That is one path, to offer the character, and the reader, an escape.
Earlier I mentioned the importance of setting some rules for your world making. Normal life certainly has its own rules. When I decided to introduce a magical object in my world I decided it would have very limited powers. You don’t really see them except once late in the book.
That is because until I reached that scene I did not really know what they were. So I, like the reader, experienced the same sense of delight when they revealed themselves. They were so unexpected, so simple, and yet a little wondrous.
String together a few of those moments and you might suspend disbelief, both the reader’s and your own.
I have several new readers this week. I hope you find something useful in my somewhat random approach to talking about the creative impulse. M
If you’d like a coffee talk, buy me a coffee!