Willing Suspension Disbelief

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Willing Suspension Disbelief: how to believe in books
by reberald_

You may think that the title hasn't much to do with the key topic, but give me the benefit of the doubt and wait until you'll get to the end of this. I promise you that everything will make sense then. Or, at least, I hope so.

We are about to discuss the willing suspension disbelief.

What are we talking about? This is not a magic formula or neither I intend to start an English lesson of a high moral level—'cause, not really important, I'm Italian and I am just 20 years old.

So.

We're opening a speech which concerns 90% of you, readers and writers. Yeah, that's right: I'm pointing a finger and inviting you to get comfortable, because—again—I'm going to explain the so-called suspension of disbelief, as we could define it in a easy way.

I'm talking about it now, sticking to my PC with the pretension of being able to make the idea right as much as possible, but Samuel Taylor Coleridge, dear fanboys and fangirls, in 1817 coined this expression in one of his writing. Cool, no? It was like two hundred years ago. And I really hope you all know who Coleridge was.

Let's read this passage together: "[...] It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

Interesting, eh?

So, if you have already understood the philosophical discourse that the present one is trying to carry on, then you can sit in front of the keyboard of your computer and write. But if you don't have the faintest idea of what I'm talking about, I hope it will be interesting for you to become aware of the one who can make your life easier, especially whenever you decide to immerse your rational nature in a work of fantasy. Or in a science fiction. Or in a horror. Or in any other kind – fanfiction included, my friends.

How many times have you read a great love story, started in a college, victim of continuous pull and spring, a succession of nonsense quarrels that even beautiful could pale compared to, and then crowned with a lovely marriage? Too many. How many times did you happen to hear about it from your acquaintances? Mmh... Never. Don't misunderstand me; I imagine that there have been stories similar to those of our beloved love novels, or even of our own fanfictions, but we must be credible.

Though, I grant it to you, maybe we twist our nose a little bit, but we devour the book and accept what happened without reflection too much on it.

There. In that tiny moment, in those events, without thinking too much further, without asking ourselves if this or that could ever be possible, has acted the suspension of disbelief. Why do we ever ruin a reading—that is exciting, instructive, relaxing, stupid, unpleasant—allowing the perplexity to interfere continuously? It would be a nuisance. Especially because three quarters of the events narrated by our dozens of books have never happened and could never happen.

My example up here involved only a hypothetical romantic story. Imagine how much of this strange thing I'm talking about you would need to face a fantasy with a mind free from any thought. A lot. Elves and dragons don't walk on our streets every day.

And what about those thousands of stories born from literary fandom? Each of you, at least once, must have stumbled across one of them. I'm talking about those jobs that don't require much; that are written to vent the passion of their authors, fans of Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Game of Thrones... Fans of literary masterpieces that have inspired even the youngest writers. If you're an inveterate reader like that, you know what it means to love a book to madness and having to start a fanfiction that is inspired by it. And you have also tried to find yourself on the other side, one of those who read and know every single detail of the universe from which the stories are taken. You have expectations and, below, you expect certain things not to be devastated, that your beloved characters won't suffer too much from the imagination of others.

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