How to Enjoy Fiction
or, Suspending Disbelief
Hello Friends,
As most of you know, I write fiction. Or, more precisely, I write speculative fiction, the very broad term used to cover many sub-genres of fiction that do not happen in our reality, such as sci-fi, fantasy, cat detective crime, cozy romance, etc.
To truly enjoy a piece of speculative fiction requires the reader to possess a certain type of mindset. It’s similar to watching a movie.
When we watch a movie with a familiar Hollywood actor, say Matt Damon, to get the full effect, we have to enter into a state where we believe the human actor Matt Damon is the fictional character on the screen: Odysseus (The Odyssey) or Mark Watney (The Martian) or that really smart janitor in Good Will Hunting.
You like apples? How do you like them apples?
This is called the “suspension of disbelief.” And it has to do with sitting there and watching what’s up on the screen without judging whether it is likely, true, or even possible. We just accept it because we know it’s a movie.
Reading fiction requires the same perspective. You could read a book that is clearly a fantasy, like The Hobbit, and easily suspend your disbelief because there are so many magical and fantastical characters in it. Literally anything could happen in the book, and a reader would accept it as a reality in the universe that Tolkien creates.
Similarly, if you were to read a time-travel novel, like Octavia Buttler’s Kindred, where a young woman living in contemporary New York City travels back in time to her slave ancestors in 1815 Maryland. While the characters are fictitious, the two time periods are historical. To get (grok) the novel, the reader who accepts those settings as part of our US American reality must also accept that time-travel exists (which it currently doesn’t—as far as I know).
What I’m suggesting here is that in order to genuinely enjoy (I’m told split infinitives are becoming more acceptable these days) a work of fiction, one should be willing to trust that the slightest, perhaps unexplainable, deviation of the universe constructed in the story from our current reality is plausible. The author’s intentions depend on it. (Unless, of course, it’s just terrible writing.)
In other words, sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.
It’s really about letting go of assumptions and prejudices—not that you can’t dislike a work of fiction—but try to be open to its own setting and rules.
Kind of like living in the world. To get along with others, both inside and outside your community, allow for the suspension of disbelief to slip in when an opportunity calls for it. Each work of fiction (or person you meet) follows its (their) own rules, even if those rules appear similar to yours.
That’s how you enjoy fiction. And one might agree that there is a lot of fiction in the world today.
Happy reading and happy writing,
David