Suspension of Disbelief, or Keeping the Magic Alive

After recently finishing ?Heart Shaped Box? by Joe Hill, (Very, very good read. Some language people might find offensive, but he is definitely his father?s son. In fact I liked the ending much better than most of Stephen King?s novels.), I started his ?20th Century Ghosts? last week.

So far I am really enjoying this book of short stories. However the third story in the book, ?Pop Art,? was especially remarkable. It begins with this sentence. ?When I was twelve years old, my best friend was inflatable.? Now before you start getting any funny ideas, let me clarify. This is a story about two twelve year-old boys, one of whom is inflatable. Not a doll mind you. But an inflatable boy.

The narrator says this about his friend. ?The condition Art suffered from is one these genetic things that plays hopscotch with the generations, like Tay-Sachs (Art told me once that he had a grand-uncle, also inflatable, who flopped one day into a pile of leaves and burst on the tine of a buried rake).?

Now imagine for a minute that you just came up with the idea for this story. Your friend asks, ?What?s the story about?? You answer with a straight face, ?A twelve year old kid with an inflatable friend.? Your friend says something like, ?That?s the lamest idea I ever heard.?

The idea is completely crazy. I mean how could the reader possibly be expected to believe in an inflatable kid? But the thing of it is, you do. I did. When the inflatable boy is nearly popped, the reader is actively concerned for his well being. The author has you worrying about a kid with a blow-up valve on his shoulder.

Why?

Primarily it?s about something called suspension of disbelief. In simpler terms it means that the reader wants to believe your story. Interestingly enough Stephen King himself, compares it to a magician and an audience. When people go to a magic show, they are trying to figure out the tricks. They don?t want to believe the performer up on the stage is actually doing magic. They don?t want to be tricked.

With a book however, it?s exactly the opposite. The reader wants to believe in magic. That?s one of the main reasons they?ve opened the book in the first place. They want to believe in spells, and wizards, and ghosts, and inflatable boys. They are giving the author the benefit of the doubt and it?s up to the author not to let them down.

How does an author maintain that belief the reader has given him or her? First off by being consistent. In the case of Pop Art, Hill shows us that the boy can?t talk because he has no mouth. He has to write on a tablet hung around his neck. (With crayons of course. No sharp pencils.) He shows the boy being batted up into the air by some bullies with a Wiffle bat. He even has a little story to explain why Art wasn?t circumcised. (Art is a Jewish inflatable boy.) It?s a great story. You completely believe in Art. You like him. You worry for him.

The next thing is that you have to create rules and stick to those rules. Art can?t run fast because he basically has no muscles. But he can jump quite high, quite quickly. He is prone to the same problems any inflatable would be prone to. He has to be regularly inflated. He must avoid sharp objects. He is easily knocked around. By sticking to the rules, Hill keeps us believing.

These same rules apply to fantasy. Magic is one of the toughest things to deal with in a fantasy novel. The biggest problem is how magic works. What limits are placed on it.

As an author you have to decide the ?rules? of magic. Is there a limit to it? Must it recharge? Who can use it and where does it come from? Even if you don?t call the magic magic, you still must have rules. JK Rowling gets around quite a bit of this by limiting how magic can be used in front of muggles. She also has the kids learn a little more as they go.

Of course there are always going to be loopholes. Why, for instance, are the Weasleys so poor if they can transmute one thing to another? If you can change a mouse to a cup, why not change an orange to a diamond? But early on Rowling showed us Gringotts Vault. By showing us that even magic folk protected their money, we accept that for some reason there is still a currency. Maybe magic coins can?t be conjured? It doesn?t really matter as long as we are consistent.

Another thing an author must do if he is going to maintain disbelief is prepare the reader for things to come. By showing us early how good Harry Potter is on a broom right from the start, it is okay later to have him use that talent in Quidditch, the Tri-Wizard tournament, etc. In fact we even add to the belief when we learn that genetics are in play as Harry?s father was a great Seeker. It would have completely pulled us out of the story if Harry hadn?t discovered he was good on a broom until he needed it to get out of a scrape.

Another thing that is key, is characterization. Recently I was talking to a friend about a book she wasn?t too impressed with. ?Even in the middle of the battle,? she said, ?I didn?t care what happened.? That?s because the character hadn?t become real to her. Every major character, good or bad, must have believable motives. They must have side stories. I would not have cared near as much about what happened to Art if I hadn?t come to really like him as a person. In the moments when we share his hopes and dreams, we forget he is inflatable.

The great thing about being a fantasy author is that I know my readers are looking for cool things. They want a world that surprises and mystifies them. They want fanciful creatures and exciting adventures. The downside is that fantasy readers, ironically enough, are the toughest to sneak anything by on. If I explain why some things change when they go from one world to another?or if I even have the characters make an educated guess but leave open that more information may be forthcoming?readers will accept it. But if I just randomly have some things change and others not, they will eat me alive.

So what keeps you believing, and what pulls you out of the story?