Category: real

Most of us have heard the term willing suspension of disbelief. It’s when a story or plot has something implausible, maybe even impossible in it, but we accept it for the sake of the narrative. Long lost twins. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. The lucky coincidence. Hidden messages behind the Mona Lisa. The walking dead. Kevin Costner as Robin Hood. All things that are inherently unrealistic, but we let them slide because they’re part of the story.

Children have an incredible ability to suspend disbelief, because they don’t know what not to believe in. To them, Cinderella and Aladdin are real. So are Optimus Prime, Sponge Bob, Barney, Barbie, Spider-Man, and Dora the Explorer. When I was little, I was absolutely convinced the stop-motion dinosaurs of Land of the Lost were real (look at them! They’re not cartoons! They’re on film! With people!!) and had many sleepless nights worried Grumpy the Tyrannosaurus would be looming outside my bedroom window the same way he was always outside that cave.

On the other hand, my dad, a former liaison with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, lost interest in Back to the Future less than a minute in. As the gears and gadgets made breakfast for Doc Brown and his dog, the television news report said plutonium had vanished from a local nuclear reactor. He looked at me and said “Do you know what it would take for someone to sneak in and get any amount of plutonium off-site from a reactor?”

Willing suspension of disbelief is like a huge block. Throughout the course of reading a story or watching a film, the audience is going to chip at that block. You, the writer, are going to give them the tools and motivation to do it. The trick is knowing what to give them and how much to encourage them.

Every story starts with that block at 100%. Picture a huge solid cube of ice, stone, or whatever visual appeals to you. Every audience goes in completely willing to believe this is a true story, a story they will believe and accept without hesitation. No matter what the topic or genre is, no one picks up a book or walks into a theater without being open and ready to commit to it.

However, each time you hand them something they can’t accept, for whatever reason, they take a chip off that block. Maybe it’s a small little sliver. Maybe it’s a gigantic slab like one of those ice shelves that keep breaking off in the Arctic Circle (but don’t worry, kids—global warming’s just a myth).

The big trick here, of course, is knowing when to stop chipping, because eventually that block will shatter and collapse in on itself. That’s the point people start laughing, shaking their heads, and posting angry rants online. You want to put in your wild coincidences, werewolves, and wacky supporting characters, but you don’t want to undermine your own work. You need to be aware of what’s going to push your story over the edge. And be aware—that edge comes before the block hits zero.

Quick pause for story time…

On a publisher’s message board I frequent, a gentleman recently posted a large rant of his own about a straight-to-DVD zombie film and the many, many problems it had. Problems like misrolled sleeves on Marines and soldiers. Military vehicles with license plates. The size of a missile silo set. Now, faithful readers (all three of you), d’you remember what the genre of this film was?

Yes, it was a zombie film. In a film about the walking dead rising up to eat the flesh of the living, this gent found someone’s cuffs so unbelievable and distracting that it ruined the film for him.

Don’t worry about pleasing this guy. Or my dad.

Well, okay. Dad loves stuff from William-Sonoma.

So, anyway, let’s get back on track and play a simple game…

Put that big block of belief up in front of you. I’m just going to rattle off some stuff at random and assign values to it based off my own experience. Consider your story and subtract as you need to.

Keep in mind, some chips are contained within larger ones. If you got a chunk knocked off for flying saucers, odds are no one’s going to take another chunk off if you introduce extraterrestrials. Once you’ve taken a sliver away for a woman who’s been pining for her high school boyfriend for twenty years, it’s not too hard to believe she can instantly remember the maiden name of the girl he took to the senior prom. And once they’ve accepted time-travel, most audience members will accept a paradox or two.

Ready?

Every single wooden, forced, or “on the nose” line of dialogue is going to cost you 1% off the block, so be careful because they’ll add up fast. Characters who are supposed to be smart but do inherently stupid things—that’s a good 3%. Every stereotypical burnt-out cop, stripper with the heart of gold, clueless boss, snotty cheerleader, dumb jock, or introspective pot smoker—take 5% of the block for every one of those overused characters. Take off another 10% if they’re one of your main characters. Any unarmed, unprotected person who walks into the dark building they just heard screams come from is going to cost you 5%. Anyone pausing in mid-action to deliver more than three lines worth of dialogue—oh, that’s a good 7% off the big block.

Each woman who randomly gets undressed, changes clothes for no reason, or frets about her hair while in a burning building surrounded by vampires—that’s 10% off the block. Every man who grunts, drinks, or randomly demeans people is another 10%. Anyone who can spontaneously fight like a 20-year devotee of the martial arts will cost you 5%. If any character says “I don’t understand” or some variation thereof twice or more in a chapter or scene, that’s 10%. Also you’ll lose 5% every time a characters does something that goes directly against their established type—cops who get drunk and do drugs with underage girls, college professors who get baffled by simple problems, incredibly wise and intelligent aliens who can’t figure out a doorknob.

Anything that shows a complete failure of research or understanding of the real world adds up fast. A Protestant minister who takes confession is 5% off the block. So do rabbis eating ham sandwiches. Diesel fuel tanks that explode in a fire are 1%. Revolvers that fire seven or eight bullets will be 3 or 4% per extra shot, and people who die from being shot in the shoulder cost you a good 5% off. Every time a random stranger walks off and leaves their keys in the ignition with the engine running—that’s a solid 10%.

If your main character falls five stories without suffering any harm, that’s minus 5%. Another 7% off if computers randomly develop sentience. Call it 10% if, with no foreshadowing, aliens suddenly attack. Knock it up to 20% if, with no foreshadowing, flying space monkeys attack.

Now, ready for the hard one…?

Every misspelled or misused word is going to cost you 1%. As readers hit mistake after mistake, their faith in the writer’s ability drops. After three dozen typos, they just aren’t going to believe the writer can pull off revealing Bobby is a retired NSA agent or that Debbie was raised by wolves. It’s not fair, no, but that’s the way it is.

So, with all that in mind… how’s you do?

More importantly, how did your block do?

Even more importantly—it’s time to get back to writing.

One of your goals as a writer is to bring your stories to life. One of the tell-tale signs of bad writing (a waving red flag, really) is characters that talk, act, or react unnaturally to the world around them. It doesn’t matter if that world is Manhattan, the ancient city of Babylon, or the main bridge of a Space Marine Thunderhawk orbital lander. If readers can’t identify with what a character is saying or feeling, it’s going to distance them from your writing. In some cases, that distance will include them setting down your manuscript, going out to lunch with friends, and completely forgetting it.

For the record—that’s bad.

As writers, the main source we have to draw on is our own lives. We can spend hours doing research in libraries or people-watching from the patio of our favorite Mexican restaurant (El Zarape on Park—it’s fantastic), but in the end it all comes down to things we’ve done and seen. We know how people act because we are people. We’ve all gone to school, hated our boss at work, and been cut off on the freeway. We’ve traveled a bit, kept secrets, and gotten our first kiss from that cute girl (or guy) we like. Well, most of us have, anyway.

However… this is where things tend to get a bit tricky.

People often confuse fiction-real with real-real. Y’see, the thing is, real life—the life you, I, and all the people we know are all living– is actually kind of boring when you get right down to it. I think the average person feels they’re living a pretty good life if they have one or two amazing days a month. And amazing usually just means having a great night at the club, a perfect evening out (or in) with a loved one, or just hanging with your friends while you watch a DVD with pizza and beer.

Very few ninja attacks.

Not that many pirates.

Almost no killer cyborgs from the future.

Not one nymphomaniac Famke-Janssen-look-alike billionaire heiress with amnesia who needs me to follow her to Europe to fend off the Knights Templar while she tries to locate the ancient mystical talisman that will restore her memory and bring about world peace.

(I really had my hopes up for that one…)

The other big problem is one you’ve probably heard of. Truth is stranger than fiction. No, really, it is. Even considering that last little fantasy. The world is a truly bizarre place filled with amazing coincidences and connections. They’re completely ridiculous. Did you know there’s a direct link between the development of the Japanese tea ceremony and the rise of the Freemasons? Honest, there is.

Take Vesna Vulovic. Vesna was a flight attendant on a DC-9 that was bombed in mid-air by terrorists in 1972. She was trapped inside the ruins of the plane’s hull as it plummeted more than six miles to the ground. However, through a near miraculous series of events and conditions, Vesna survived her fall. She fell 33,000 feet, was in the hospital for a mere two months afterwards, and is still alive today, walking, talking, and laughing.

So… does that mean a character should fall six miles and live in your writing? It really happened, so it must be believable, right?

Another great historical example is Grigori Rasputin, sometimes called the Mad Monk. Rasputin had a truly disturbing amount of influence over Alexandra, the wife of Tsar Nicholas II (why he had this influence… well, that’s a topic for the after-hours discussion) and in 1916 a group of Russian nobles decided he needed to be “removed.” But how do you quietly get rid of a man who would be huge by today’s standards (some reports claim he stood almost six and a half feet tall)? As it turned out, they poisoned him, beat him, stabbed him, shot him, beat him some more, smothered him, beat him a third time just to be safe, and then dumped his body in the Neva River.

Final cause of death, when the body washed ashore a few days later?

Drowning.

Another true story, and yet how often have you found yourself scoffing at the film character who ignores knives, bullets, and broken limbs? Or berated the screenwriters when someone survives a three story fall or a major car crash with only a few scrapes?

Here’s another one, a bit simpler and closer to home. I once worked with a guy named Carlos. He was an electrician and a best boy on several television shows and films that I worked on back when I was a prop master. One day at lunch I realized Carlos had the odd habit of putting “bro” at the end of almost every sentence when he spoke in English. At the time I was slogging my way through my first serious attempt at a novel, The Suffering Map, and ended up adopting his habit for one of my characters. When I got requests to send the manuscript to a few agents, I was thrilled. And every copy came back with the same note, worded in a variety of ways.

“The dialogue doesn’t sound real.”

At which point I smacked myself in the forehead, because I’d forgotten this same tip I’d given to dozens and dozens of people…..

Cloverfield is an excellent example of a movie that had flawlessly real reactions and dialogue—dialogue that made you want to smack every one of the main characters into unconciousness. Indie films have almost become a genre unto themselves, where “indie” refers to real stories about real people reacting in real ways to real situations… and boring the hell out of the audience.

Y’see, it doesn’t matter if something is real or not. What matters is that it works and draws in the audience. Books are not real life. Movies are not real life. No, not even if they’re biographies or documentaries. They’re a window, and the thing about windows is that they only offer a limited view, whether you’re looking inside or out. Simple common sense will tell you that you cannot make a window that lets you see everything. There will always be something just out of sight, around the corner, or just too big to see all at once.

A good writer knows just how big to make that window. They know just what they want you looking at. They won’t let you see distracting things. They’ll make sure it’s all fresh and sharp (or old and rotting, depending on what they’re trying to show you). They won’t waste an inch of glass displaying something that isn’t part of the view they want you to see.

Because if you try to make a window big enough to see everything… well, even if it wasn’t impossible, it’s not very structurally sound. Those are the windows that crack in the wind or just shatter under their own weight.

Remember, real life is never the answer.