Perils of the Writer: Suspension of Disbelief

Let's talk a bit about the 2003 Daredevil movie and the Daredevil Netflix series that just came out.  The former was largely panned, and is considered one of the low points of the dipping-our-toe-in-this-superhero-thing movies of the early-aughts.  The latter is yet another layer on the every-growing current Marvel Cinematic Universe that consists of a dozen films and two other TV series, with several more of both announced for the coming years, and has been widely lauded.

Now, what were the key differences between these two depictions of, fundamentally, the same character? Why did one work, and the other failed?

I would argue a key reason would be Suspension of Disbelief.

The recent iteration, despite existing in a world in which alien invasions, flying men in powered suits and green gamma-ray monsters are an accepted fact of life, maintains a certain degree of real-world believability.  Matt Murdock is blind, but his other senses are superhuman, and he's trained himself to use those senses as a highly skilled street fighter.  But he's still just a man, and he gets seriously injured along the way over the course of his battles.  His skill, his senses and his outright fearlessness allow him to jump up fences and walls, leap from building to building, in ways that would make most parkour enthusiasts' collective jaws drop.  But he never transcends "that's amazing" levels of skill.  He doesn't do anything that you can't believe a man with sufficient skill and commitment couldn't also do.

Contrast that with the movie version, where Matt leaps off of skyscrapers, using conveniently placed window-washer rigs and telephone cables to jump off of or swing from.  As if doing such things at terminal velocity would not be just as fatal as hitting the ground dead on. This from a man who's only superpower is enhanced senses. Even for a "superhero movie", we were given something we just couldn't believe.*

In writing, of course, you have to find that same level of believability, even in a setting where the incredible and fantastic can occur.  I struggled with this in early drafts of The Thorn of Dentonhill, where I had Veranix take quite a few heavy beatings and be more or less fine the next day.  And I know part of that was going by the Cinematic Flesh Wound Rule**,  but my editor called me on that.  Unless there's magic healing***, you need to let your characters heal or suffer the consequences.  And injuries should have long term consequences if they are bad enough.  Thus one of Veranix's injuries went from an arrow straight through his leg to a deep gash from a shot that grazed him.  I wanted him hurt, not never walking right again.

This is why the term "Rules of Magic" gets bandied about a lot in genre circles.  It's important to establish what fantastic things can occur, so your readers believe the limits you put on your stories.  Which presents the inverse problems: when the rules of the fantastic presents an obvious solution, but it simply isn't taken because reasons.****

So: what do you do to balance the believability of your fantastic things?

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*- There are actually a host of other reasons why the Daredevil movie didn't work, but this is a big one.  Or at least, a symptom of the larger problems.

**- Best illustrated in Last Action Hero, where when Jack Slater is in the "real world" and gets shot, he's on death's door with severe trauma, but once he's brought back into his movie, he can shrug it off.

***- Something which JK Rowling used well, in that magic healing could do a lot, which let her really do horrible things to her characters.  Like have Harry's arm-bones be accidentally removed.  But it was OK, because a spoonful of Skele-Grow is all it takes to deal with that problem.

****- Also known as the Barry Allen Isn't Too Bright Rule.  Because 90% of his cases can be solved by "grab bad guy and put him in my ethically questionable super-prison before he knows what happened".

The Little Things

When you bring up the topic of fantasy worlds, I could name several places I would be delighted to visit, and a few where I'd readily set up homestead if I could. I bet you have a few favorites of your own.

Why is that? 

Because I want to believe this place exists. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that I can see myself there. Not in just a, "Wow, it's lovely there," way either. More basic than that, I'm human and at least some humans reside in that world. They breathe air and ride horses and enjoy a good ale just like I do.

The allure of a fantasy world--and the reader's willingness to suspend their disbelief--is more than the idea of a place that is completely NOT the Earth we call home. While its true that the fantasy worlds I adore have nice decent people as well as assholes just like any era on Earth, they have animals and swings and rain and love just like Earth does...but those worlds are also home to a few things I've never personally encountered, things that my adventurous spirit thinks I would like to encounter. 

Like dragons. 


Sure, fantasy worlds have friendly fire-breathing dragons and toothy vicious ones, but these alien places balance and fit in comfortable places in our minds because they also feature as many warlike kings and ruthless queens as our history books do. Despite familiarity with these character tropes, how they interact and the goals they seek always plays out differently. If you're like me, that's interesting--riveting if the author is good. And along the way, they further feed my fascination not with the potatoes and pumpkins they somehow also have in this otherworld, but with the things that are unique to their world. Things I'd like to try.


Like Nord mead. Or Romulan ale.


The key to suspending disbelief is a mix of engaging characters and plot, convincing storytelling, and familiar elements mixed with fresh ideas. Until I can get my hands on a Time Lord or Hermione's wand, I won't be moving to the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 or to Rivendell. Guess I'll have to settle for being swept away in their stories.

"Anachronisms" in Fantasy - Keeping It Real

My mom sent me these gorgeous flowers last week to celebrate that THE TALON OF THE HAWK, book 3 in The Twelve Kingdoms series, received  Top Pick from RT Book Reviews. That makes two Top Picks and a Top Pick GOLD for this trilogy, which is just...I can't even express how validating this is. They said:

“The saga of The Twelve Kingdoms returns in grand style! It takes a great deal of trust for Ursula to accept that Harlan is interested in her as a woman; his position as a mercenary means he’s skilled at playing courtly games. She’s always possessed a physical strength, so it’s beautiful to watch her accept her own personal power, as a woman and as a daughter of Salena, even when her stubbornness gives you fits. Harlan is her perfect match because his talent at observation allows him to see beyond the tough warrior image she employs to avoid showing her feelings. This is a complex world full of danger, subterfuge and secrets with empowering female characters who are not afraid to fight for their future.”– RT Book Reviews, 4.5 Stars Top Pick

It's so wonderful when someone GETS exactly what you're trying to do with a book. Especially when not everyone does. I'm writing in this odd cross-section of fantasy and romance. It makes me happy and it's exactly where I want to be, but I sometimes run afoul of the genre expectations of both sides of the fence.

But mainly from the fantasy folks.

Because, let me tell you: the sci fi/fantasy (SFF) folks have RULES. It surprises me less coming from the sci fi contingent. A lot of those readers and writers are also scientists and engineers. I've spent much of my life working with both and I know the mindsets. Very much about linearity and sticking precisely - even pedantically - to the rules.

I'm just so not a rules kind of gal.

Really, it's not that I can't. It's that I don't want to. An attitude the pedants don't care for at all. So, you know, I get what I gets.

Which is criticism for using anachronistic language in my fantasy romances. I've seen less enthused reviews for this series calling out phrases like "national security" and "fan club" as anachronistic. Um, okay. Because, this is MY fantasy world, right? I'm careful not to use tech-related metaphors in my non-tech world. No electric shocks or going off like bombs. But how can those phrases be anachronistic when they're drawn from basic words that WOULD have meaning in that world?

It is apropos, however, of this week's topic Realism in SFF: trying to maintain the suspension of disbelief. The argument, I suppose, would be that these phrases are ones that readers attach with modern, popular culture and they thus feel jerked out of the alternate world, losing that lovely suspension of disbelief. It could also be argued that this is a voice thing. I *like* tossing in more current language, to mix things up. But then, I also believe in adopting the slang and alternative usages in our ever-evolving language, where I know many people believe in clinging to some kind of "pure" concept of what is and is not correct.

(Frankly I fall in with those who feel the concept of correct or pure English is a fallacy. Languages by their nature evolve with use, changing to fit the needs of the speakers and listeners. English, in particular, partly because it's the language of technology which is changing at a rapid rate.)

The suspension of disbelief is important, but what is "real"? The word "club" goes back to the 1600s. "Fan" goes back to the 1800s and is a shortening of "fanatic," which goes back to the 1500s. Put together, the phrase dates back to 1930. "National" and "security" are likewise words from the 1500s, put together sometime in the early 1900s. I could see that, okay, those are usages that came into play after the Industrial Revolution.

But, at what point do I draw historical line? After all, in Chaucer's day, "nice" meant "stupid" - not at all how we use it today. When Norman Mailer coined the term "factoid," he very deliberately meant it to convey a fabricated statement. Now our government websites use it to mean a small fact. An irony lost on many.

I think one could go crazy, trying to parse all of this. And is it worth it? Suspending disbelief for the reader: Yes. Totally worth it. Appeasing those who hold to what seems to me to be an arbitrary set of rules? Eh. Yes, Tolkein wrote great fantasy. I read them all, even THE SILMARILLION. But I don't think that this is some sort of academic standard to which we all must adhere. Language changes. Genre changes. If we don't play with the rules, how can we be creative?

What do you all think - am I crazy here?