For example, we know that the Earth is round-ish, but it wasn't always round -- at least, it took a long time for people to believe it to be true -- and it used to be flat and maybe riding on the back of a giant turtle ... "It's turtles all the way down!"

But what if I were to write a story where people lived on a flat world? Such as Larry Niven's Ringworld (if memory serves). How would I go about creating believability of that world without resorting to hard science? How could I get my readers to suspend disbelief that such a world could exist?

Or, like in the DEM thread, how could I convince readers that aliens would want to inhabit a world that rained poison? Such as in the movie Signs. What would necessitate that motivation? How would you do it?

The above examples aren't important. What I believe does matter is the methodology to suspend disbelief properly. Not to force the reader to say, "Oh, yeah?" but to get them to say, "I wonder if such a thing could really happen--or has happened--in our universe?" We want them to believe in the fantastical worlds we create and we want them to invest in our characters; to understand their motivations fully. But when we miss the mark (and that seems incredibly easy to do), we've got the equivalent of "When Good Pets Go Bad" or worse.

One more example before I finish this lengthy piece: How do I convince my readers that 1+1 = 3? Because everyone believes it equals 2. But does it?

1.4 gets rounded to 1, but 1.4+1.4 gets rounded to 3.

That's a bunch of silliness, and it really doesn't have to do with your question, but I thought I'd throw that out there. I also sa a complicated mathematical proof that arrived at the same conclusion, but I'm pretty sure it was flawed and I can't possibly remember it now.

Suspending disbelief is a difficult thing, and I'll expand upon what HSO is saying by adding the following: I've written Oh yeah? in response to things that the author later told me were absolutely true. I know for a fact that I've given them the benefit of the doubt on things that were not rue. The same thing has happened to me...I had a personal experience of mine ripped apart by the believability critics.

For one thing, and this is just terrible but it's true...I tend to suspend disbelief if it's published. Please don't shoot me I'm just being honest. Most of the examples of believability I can think of either come from amateur stories I've critiqued.

I also find more believability issues, in general, in a tv/movie medium than in book mediums. I don't know why this is. Maybe because more things can go wrong in a movie...bad acting, bad special effects, lousy cinematography...on top of the writing. Or maybe because seeing and hearing gives me a fuller picture. I'm not really sure, I just know I'm having trouble coming up with written published examples at the moment...maybe if I rea dmore short stories...

There are a million little things that can destroy the suspension of disbelief in the writing itself, which is what we carea about, so in all bad examples I use I will focus on that element, even if they are in movie form. First of all, there are unbelievable characters. This is the fundamental flaw with the television series "Charmed." The women behave in such a stupid manner that it is a miracle (not a deus ex machine...just a miracle) that they are alive. People, when faced with the threat of death, do not babble on about how they're missing their dates. I just don't believe it. I don't know if everyone can follow this example or not but the point is that characters need to behave in a manner that is both realistic as a person and for a situation. There may very well be a wicca barbie out there but she'll be killed by a demon her first time out so she's probably not going to live to be the hero of your story. A hero can't be too stupid to live, and in fantasy in particular I hate when magical powers are limitd only by the intelligence and imations of the person using them. If a person can teleport, then what the heck are they doing just standing there while someone's throwing magic at them? Don't tell me they didn't think about it!

The first thing that could go wrong was long. But I'm going to keep rambling on anyway and you can read or not.

I just read up to the top and it seemed like HSO was getting on about believable technology more than anything else. I'm going to tailor my points that way then. I'm sorry, I missed it. I think the thing is, though, that if I believe in your characters and situation then I will probably believe in your science. If your characters seem to be smart and know what they're talking about then I'll go with that. That's now always true. If you want an element of hard scifi in your stories (or even just firmness without the soft padding of my person brand of scifi) then you will have to do a little research as well.

Most importantly, RXPLAIN IT! I hope one of the hatrack writers doesn't mind me using their short story as an example...I won't mention your name. I recently critiqued a piece that had a girl who had mild allergies before she went away to college and when she came back she could die if she was in the same room with this cat. I didn't buy it. I wondered why her allergies weren't so bad before she left. As it happens, this is one of those times that the author came back and told me she'd just seen a special about this on the news...about kids going away to college and coming back with worse pet allergies than ever. There's a name for it. My suggestion to her and to any of you who run into this...meet it head-on! Have the characters notice this strangeness and comment on it. Giving something a NAME goes ana amazingly long way to making me believe it, as crazy as that sounds. Merely acknowledging it can work too. Hey, at least the characters aren't dummies, they saw what I saw.

I think that's why I started off on my tangent....because believability stars with characters. The right characters that I care about, sympathize with, and who are intelligent in just the right ways can make me believe almost anything. You could convince me that the moon was made of blue cheese if you set it up right, even though I know that's not true. I have no problem with Terry Pratchett's world riding on the back of a turtle supported by four elephants. Of course, in fantasy it is easier to make me believe because it's all supposed to be werid and magical but still...

I'm going to stpo this post now because I have some other things I had to do this morning, not particularly because I was done.

quote:

---

I also saw a complicated mathematical proof that arrived at the same conclusion, but I'm pretty sure it was flawed and I can't possibly remember it now.

---

I couldn't give you the proof now either, but somewhere around the middle, it divided by (x-y), which by previous steps the variables in question had been defined in such a way that (x-y) = 0. Dividing by zero is a big no-no.

I think what it comes down to is whether or not the author proposes a consistent set of rules for his world and his characters, and STICKS TO IT. Creating fantastical situations and worlds is touchy business. The author has to anticipate every instance in which a reader might say "That could never happen" and preempt it with an "Oh, yes it could! here's why and here's why that makes sense in the setting I've described."

If you're relying on science as it works in this world to drive some event that happens in your own, it has to conform pretty well to rules that your reader is familiar with. If it doesn't conform, you have to explain why it works differently in your world, and how it came to be that way. If you just show it happening differently and drop it, the reader will say "well, that could never happen, and here's why" and, having no answer from you, will continue to disbelieve.

The best way to deal with that, IMHO, is to think through your characters, settings, and ideas as thoroughly as possible so you can preempt disbelief. I've "believed" in everything from jubilee tides to telekenisis because the authors have done such a complete job explaining to me why they're possible.

quote:

---

For example, we know that the Earth is round-ish, but it wasn't always round -- at least, it took a long time for people to believe it to be true -- and it used to be flat and maybe riding on the back of a giant turtle ... "It's turtles all the way down!"

---

A by the way: from my history text book for college (I believe), it said that in Columbus's day they did know the world was round and that the misconception of people from around Columbus's age thought it was otherwise came from either the 1900s or the 1800s (I can't remember if it were 19th Century, or 1900s; I'll have to hunt down the book).

quote:

---

How would I go about creating believability of that world without resorting to hard science? How could I get my readers to suspend disbelief that such a world could exist?

---

Well, how does Niven do it? (For some reason, I thought it was Pratchett). There will be a little science in it that shows up. For instance, the way our moon shows phases was a clue to the people of the past that our world was round. So, how does a flat world show up on things around it, such as the moon? You could also find ways to slip it into the story, such as people looking at a map or you could even have a some character think back on how "ignorant" people were in the past, thinking that the world was round. Maybe there's even some kinda common spoken phrase that came out of it. It might affect their religion. Having a flat world would definitely affect life (days, seasons, etc), period. If details of it shows up enough and it shows that the populace believes this fact, it might not even matter if the readers don't believe the world is flat for this story--that is, if it isn't integral to the character's solving whatever problem they have.

The same with your other examples (though I'm not waxing longwinded any more ;-). If you include enough details, and have it pervade the character's actions and world, etc., it becomes more believable. If the characters believe it, readers are also more likely to believe it too--unless we're presented evidence to the otherwise.

Cya,
CC

Well, most of the time, anyway.

I was having a good time watching Star Wars, with no problem suspending my disbelief, until the space battle scene at the Deathstar, at which point it all fell apart for me.

I was almost enraged that the producer felt that I was so stupid that I would swallow WWII era technology and dogfights, in space. And hearing the guns firing made it even worse. What a crock! I still get mad thinking about it.

Anyway, I'll go back to Christine's first point, which is that if the characters are idiots, then we tend to wonder whether the writer is an idiot.

Contemporary settings and mirthful fantasy can get away with this, on the one hand because there is nothing for most people to disbelieve in the first (I actually have enormous difficulty suspending disbelief with most contemporary literature) and because belief is not an integral part of enjoying the latter. In both, it is better for the author to seem witty than the characters to seem intelligent.

But in most non-satiric work, you must make the characters seem intelligent enough to be real people. There are several components of this intelligence. One key point is that intelligent characters notice things about the world around them (like a person with a mild allergy that morphs into a nigh fatal allergy). Intelligent characters also behave intelligently. They notice inobvious solutions to problems, they don't get stuck in stupid fake dicotomies and so forth, they just generally avoid acting like idiots (and notice when they do act like idiots). And intelligent characters are also "morally" intelligent, they can see when something is grossly wrong, even if it is a situation the author just thought up.

Of course, character intelligence is in the eye of the beholder, but also in the mind of the author. Take time to really think about what readers will expect the character to notice, avoid having the characters act like fools just because you want them to do something, and occasionally step back and see if they are moral imbeciles. When you're making a character less intelligent, make sure that you understand exactly what sort of stupidity they're showing and demonstrate to the reader that you, the author, are writing that character as being stupid in that way.

There's a spoiler coming, but don't sweat it too much; at worst I will make a pretty bad movie even less interesting for you.

The movie was "Out of Time" with Denzel Washington and Eva Mendez. The entire movie is about Denzel doing bad things, and he never has to pay any consequence for it. He cheats on his wife, who is a good woman (not that it would be excusable if she was bad). His mistress cons him into robbing the police station of a bunch of money from a drug bust (he's a cop). Mistress takes the money, stages the death of her and her husband, and frames him for their murders. In the course of trying to escape being caught, he kills a man and breaks all kinds of laws, including obstruction of justice, forging federal documents, etc. etc. etc. I'm sure you get the point.

The ending? He gets the money back, gets it into the right federal hands so they don't know he stole it, gets off completely clean for the people (yes, people, not person) he killed, and his wife even gets back with him even though he blatantly cheated on her. I found it completely unbelievable. If he had gotten some jail time, even just a little bit, I could have bought that. If his wife (who knew all about everything he had done) had sold him up the river because after all, he treated her like trash, I would have bought that. If his wife had at least demanded a divorce, I could have bought that.

It's been a long time since I read Ringworld or whatever book it was I read -- I thought it might have been Niven. Apologies if my memory failed that.

About explosions in space not making sound. Anyone with any knowledge of space/physics, etc. would know that, but I think moviemakers gamble on the fact (or they are just ignorant of science) that the average movie-goer could care less. And, it would probably be pretty dull watching those scenes without sound. Still, you could use music effectively... but anyway.

In a way, this is much more unlikely than a flat world, particularly if you start to work out just _how_ fast the world needs to be spinning. Niven did this, and came up with an explanation for it -- the world is made up of scrith, an impossibly strong material formed by matter transmutation.

On the subject of sound effects in space battle sequences, there are a few things that can work realistically; first, there's going to be constant radio chatter between the pilots. There will always be engine noise; the weapon of the ship the camera is "in" will make noises when it fires, so you won't end up with a silent sequence. If the ships have any kind of (probably impossible) shielding, then this can make noise when it is hit.

The question that remains is, can the audience tolerate silent explosions? I think so. I never heard any complaints about the silence of the explosion at the end of Alien. It's been a while since I watched any, but I think Babylon 5 took the right approach, too.

quote:

---

I was almost enraged that the producer felt that I was so stupid that I would swallow WWII era technology and dogfights, in space.

---

But not that he thought you would believe in people using an energy weapon as if it were a sword? I mean, the lightsaber is _clearly_ an inferior weapon when compared with most of the others available. Except those guns the stormtroopers use that seem to fire in an almost random direction...

[Edited to stop it from sounding like the people lived on the surface of ringworld's star. Ouch.]

Did that cover it?

Okay, raise your hand if you remember the television show "Mork and Mindy". I was but a wee thing, but I recall a good portion of it -- it might have been my favourite show at the time (or it could have been "Busom Buddies" -- who can remember such things at the ripe ol' age of 33?).

Basically (and major spoilers if you haven't seen this late 70's/early 80's show), Mork was an alien; their species aged backwards: They started off old-looking, and got younger-looking as they aged, but still had the mentality of child at birth and so on. Not only that, but they sat on their heads and did other weird stuff, too, and Mork said things like "Nanu Nanu." I think he even developed some strange powers as time went on, but I digress.

But it's an interesting concept to draw from, this aging backwards thing. On Earth, nothing ages like that. All things start young and grow old, gaining experience as they do, and eventually withering and dying.

This is the concept of plausibility I'm after -- or maybe not this specific thing, but something that truly and utterly makes us think: "Uh-huh, like fer sure!"

Now I can think of a dozen ways to accomplish the above example that has nothing to do w/ Mork and Mindy. It could be a simple matter of creatures that do not follow the straight line of time like we do, for instance, and instead must go back in time to live their lives (or perhaps it's a second life given to relive their life backwards...)

It could be anything, really. This is the core at what I'd like to really learn and hone. Plausibility coupled with the fantastical implausibility. Something that is truly different than life on Earth.

And I say this because I'm quite tired of getting critiques that say, "Didn't believe it." And my first reaction is: What a BS thing to say, and later I realize it's true and I've failed at suspending disbelief -- at least for that reader anyway.

Of course, to go with that, just saying the above "Didn't believe it." and not offering up anything else as to why you didn't is actually a crap thing to say. Luckily, I've only had a few critiques that did that.

So, I'm here to learn from you guys what to avoid; how to tackle the unbelievable; how to get all, if not most, of my readers to buy what I'm selling them.

Internal Consistency... where to begin? Surely, this doesn't mean outlining and stuff, does it? I could die of boredom if I had to do that.

Trying to tie this to Mork and Mindy, a show I vaguely remember from childhood.

The potential improbables: Mork is an alien, Mork physically ages backwards.

How is this make more believable: Mork acts young the way viewers expect someone young to act despite his more humanly mature appearance, depending on and reporting to the egg in each episode. He also acts like someone that doesn't understand Earth customs, fulfilling another viewer expectation. I'm thinking a lot of the earthlings on the show didn't believe his origins either, echoing the viewer's disbelief. Plus, the whole thing had an aspect of slap-stick comedy, which I think takes the suspension factor up a notch from a more dramatic situation.

quote:

---

the whole thing had an aspect of slap-stick comedy, which I think takes the suspension factor up a notch from a more dramatic situation.

---

It was more than just one aspect of slapstick, we are talking about Robin William's breakout role here. And for slapstick, you don't want the audiance to believe, if they believe, then they won't laugh when the characters get hurt. Since the whole point of slapstick is that you laugh at people that appear to be getting hurt (the term itself comes from a simple device used to accomplish this effect on stage, a stick with a hinged part that makes a loud clapping noise during a simulated hit), it doesn't work half so well if you believe it.

quote:

---

During the Deathstar scene, the pilot actually 'reacts' to sounds of gunfire and explosions. As the probability of surviving and continuing his mission was low anyway, it really pissed me off that they cose to use such an unbelievable mechanism to help him get through the dogfights.

---

EJS is the one that pointed out in another thread that this is actually something that makes a lot of sense. If you want to improve a fighter pilot's chances of survival in a complex environment, for heaven's sake turn as much of your sensor data as possible into intuitive feedback so that the pilot can dodge explosions and such without having to check his instruments.

I suppose that I could make the same argument about the visible beam weapons, eh?

No? Well, I stick with my previous argument, they give you plenty of time in the beginning to get used to lasers that travel slower than bullets (and a laser beam that apparently has mass) because it's the weapon of a guy that uses magic and noises in space and all that good stuff.

Maybe different genres come with differing preset thresholds.

I reckon its the little things, the details, that hook you in. Like a good con-man, the more details they know about you the more likely it is that you will believe their story.

Details, skillfully and purposefully included, can provide the foundation for the zinger, the really unbelievable bit, moving it from the ludicrous to plausible.

I guess what I mean is; understand what the genre naturally accepts, and also what is genuinely unlikely or unbelievable and build enough details into your story along the way to prove the 'zinger' when it happens.

Now my question is why can't I seem to believe or enjoy 'present tense" stories?

Some of the comments about Star Wars have caused me to think over some believability issues. The thing is, I know you can't hear lasers in space but I got to tell you, if they weren't there I'd believe it LESS, not MORE. Why? Because I've never been in a vacuum. I've never experienced the silent firefights egghead skeptics so disdain. In a book, where there are no sound effects, you can explain the way sound works in a vacuum and that will be fine but in a live action movie it doesn't work the same. The truth is, in order to disbelieve something that is true in your normal environment, something that you've lived your entire life, it takes a certain amount of intellectualizing, of pausing the movie in your head to bring the scientific rule into play. I *choose* not to do that when I watch Star Wars because I like the movies very much. (The real ones, not those prequels they made that as far as I'm concerned don't exist. )

Someone mentioned it, I'm not going back to look at who....I do feel as if some people are trying to look for errors in movies and books. I feel this way in critiques of my own works and reviews of other's work. When it comes across that way, I take neither seriously. People do have to have a willingness to suspend disbelief and one of the things that blocks us is when we hear some scientific tidbit somewhere and feel so special that we know about it that we then have to hate any movies that break this rule. Interestingly, most of the actual scientists I know can still suspend disbelief.

It's like when I was a kid and my family went to see a movie (I can't remember which) and my little brother was being a pain in the *#@ saying he'd hate it. During the movie (a comedy) he laughed uproriously with the rest of us but when we left the theatre he crossed his arms and announced that he'd hated the movie, just like he said! He probably even believed it.

Hold up two fingers. There are two. Stare at them intently and you will probably see three or four. Really there are still only two, but the visual perception is more.

Enough of that

One of my WIPs had me stumped in the disbelief department for sometime. The concept: Robin Hood was not male but female. That was the easy part. The hard part: finding a way to tell the story that would be believable.

I didn't want to go back and re-write history, so I thought about setting it in the future on Earth, and that somehow society regressed and lost much of it's technology etc. This really didn't work because even I couldn't suspend my own belief long enough to write more than a few pages.

Then it hit me. If I set it on another planet, I can create whatever I want!

quote:

---

What I believe does matter is the methodology to suspend disbelief properly. Not to force the reader to say, "Oh, yeah?" but to get them to say, "I wonder if such a thing could really happen--or has happened--in our universe?"

---

I don't think readers have to be able to wonder whether something could be real as long as they don't believe it can't be real. Plausability vs Possibility.

A movie that comes to mind is Waterworld. Personally I liked this movie, it isn't one of my favourites, but I still think it's entertaining. The majority of people out there probably disagree me (at least if the box office is any measure).

Why? Is it so unbelievable that there could be a planet whose surface is almost entirely covered in water? That the inhabitants would live in floating cities and ride in boats? That part isn't too unbelievable. That this planet is Earth in the future? It's a bit of a stretch especially with the way society is portrayed.

quote:

---

Since the whole point of slapstick is that you laugh at people that appear to be getting hurt... it doesn't work half so well if you believe it.

---

But I wasn't walking down a street I was sitting on a sofa.

With some kids you can say something like: 'What would happen if apples were blue?' and they answer,
'But apples are red.'
'Yeah I know, but let's say apples COULD be blue.'
'Did someone paint it?'
'No its just blue.'
'But apples are red.'

Maybe because you are challenging their bright, shiny new understanding of how the world works and you obviously don't understand how apples work.

I wonder if a reader sometimes echoes this process.

quote:

---

The thing is, I know you can't hear lasers in space but I got to tell you, if they weren't there I'd believe it LESS, not MORE. Why? Because I've never been in a vacuum.

---

When I read that, I thought of these people and others like them.

The Apollo Hoax

It all goes back to Robyn_Hood's answer.

And in case anyone here got thrown by the link I posted -- I seriously doubt it, but still -- I'll put up a couple more. The first presents both sides of the "argument" and the other definitely believes the landings took place.

Free Dictionary.com entry on Apollo hoax accusations

quote:

---

Remember the 'choose your own adventure' stories that always started; 'You are walking down the street when...'
But I wasn't walking down a street I was sitting on a sofa.

---

I loved reading "Choose your own Adventure" stories! They were great; I got to be the hero, choose where the story would go and die a thousand deaths.

I've never had much use for reality and have always much preferred suspending my disbelief.

And I'm glad we've decided there can be blue apples (we did decide that, didn't we? ). I do have a question or two though: When we're told that Smurfs are 'three apples high', what colour are those apples? Would blue apples be 1/3 the size of a Smurf, or are blue apples and Smurfs the same size? Would blue apples be called Smapples?

We did a night of "rough acting" skits and halfway through the third one someone told their friend to stop laughing because it wasn't very nice to the actors.

I think that pointing out how weird something is definitely helps (if it is appropriate to the situation). If the character don't believe it either but are somehow forced to accept it and the reader likes the character they too must accept it. I liked Waterworld too (Kevin Costner movies are my guilty pleasure) but the whole future-earth thing didn't really do it for me. (Same thing in the postman).

Jon

http://www.lunaranomalies.com/fake-moon.htm

quote:

---

(Same thing in the postman)

---

Suspension of disbelief has two parts to it. The first - very simplistic - the reader is already coming to the table of your story with a mind that they are reading something that is not real, never happened and so the slate is clean to create whatever craziness comes into the authors head. If they don't, they are just as bad as those de-criers of Star Wars telling us that lazer and explosions blasts can't be heard in a vacuum. For all intents and purposes who care as long as it makes the story exciting??

Second, (and I hope I explain this coherently) your character and how he reacts to his world plays a large part in helping your reader suspend disbelief. If your character takes for granted that green horses flew over his head, then the reader in turn will make note in his head that in real life there are no real green horses and horses really don't fly but that doesn't matter here because the character doesn't seem to find it unusual. That to me is what suspension of disbelief is all about - what your character would consider everyday, ordinary things, the reader would consider fantastic and wonderful.

All those problems with waterworld bugged me too but it was just so cool and I really really wanted it to be real, dig it?

So do the disbelief suspenders attach to the HUB directly or are they merely included in the package?

That was a little poem my mom used to quote from time to time. I think it adequately illustrates the danger of any large, flying mammals.

quote:

---

So do the disbelief suspenders attach to the HUB directly or are they merely included in the package?

---

The disbelief suspenders come standard with the HUB 1.2, but are considered an upgrade from the HUB 1.1. You can use the two of them together, however, the HUB is more of a writer's tool, while the disbelief suspenders are more of a reader's tool.

It has been unambiguously admitted by NASA and a number of former astronauts that it was and remains common practice to cover up unusual/inexplicable phenomena observed during space missions. My favorite was when high altitude observations of thunderstorms revealed that spectacular lightning bolts shooting miles straight up from the top of thunderclouds are a regular feature of thunderstorms. When someone thought to ask NASA about them, their reaction was "Oh, we were wondering what those were." There wasn't even a hint of chagrin about not having reported it.

Obviously, when you go into space, you're going to see some strange things. And I can understand the argument that it is better to not admit to having seen anything until you're ready to explain it. But I disagree with that argument. I think that the best way to maintain scientific integrity is to admit you saw it, even if you can't explain it.