When a reader picks up a novel and begins to read, there is an unspoken agreement that occurs. The reader agrees to accept what she reads as fact. And this agreement remains in place for the duration of the dream the author has created.
The willing suspension of disbelief is a concept I learned in high school theater. It has been around forever and is a foundational fact of how we consume stories. Without this uniquely human capability, all fiction in writing, film, and on the stage would fall flat. We would interrogate everything we read and saw. We’d be constantly preoccupied – tethered to an ongoing argument about whether or not what is being presented to us is a truth or a lie. Fortunately, we don’t think in these terms…when we decide not to. In fact, we are able to tease truth out of a story and learn about ourselves and our lives from events and circumstances that are not themselves real.
While this concept seems complicated, we don’t actively suspend our disbelief. We do it without even thinking about it. This is the joy of reading.
However, as writers we must realize that the dream is fragile. The willing suspension our readers have granted us is always at risk. We must tend to it, keep it propped up. Our reader is willing, but we must support them in their effort.
When crafting the story, don’t grab the reader’s attention and wake them from their disbelief. Watch that your characters stay in character on and off stage. Be sure not to force the story. Let it wander where it will. And here is the test. If the story you are writing doesn’t cause you to slip into the dream, then it will not support your reader’s willing suspension of disbelief either.
The goal is simple. You want your readers to suspend their disbelief as often and for as long as possible.

I spent most of an hour one morning earlier this week re-keying two pages of my current manuscript. Two pages – double spaced Arial ten font. I am always surprised how, once I’ve worked for a while, I look back and see so little on the page…two pages after 60 minutes at the keys. And here’s the thing, the thing every writer has to deal with: what I’ve spent an hour on (much, much more if you include past drafts, editing, and rewriting), my reader will spend one minute – maybe two if they are slow like me – reading.

I like to think the human mind is powerful and will pick up on, in that one or two minutes, mistakes made over those hours of labor. I also like to think that when I have done the writing especially well, the mind of my reader will take notice and the words will fly – as I have intended – like arrows off my bow, lodging deep in their experience. But the fact is that my reader, bless them for it, will zip over these hand-crafted sentences like a beagle after a squirrel. They will notice only the most course characteristics of the terrain under their paws.

Writing is an intricate and slow, very slow, craft. In this fact of my reader’s speed over my own, I think I may have finished coming to grips with this innate slowness. My readers will not pour over my writing like I have. But, they will read it! Some of them will read it and a few may even see some of the more difficult moves I’ve made. If they think upon any of it for even that minute or two, what more can I dare to ask?

The best stories take a turn at some point, early on. There lies some element, a phrase, a texture, that strikes the reader as so human, so emotionally charged and distant from the intellect, that a switch is thrown, disbelief is suspended, and the label “fiction” falls away. The characters stand up off the page and the story at that very point becomes part of where the reader has been.

It is at this intersection that the story becomes forever a part of the reader, producing the same chemistry and cementing the same memories as fact. This is why readers read. (And this is why writers write.) This is the gold. This is what they (we) crave. This act of reading, silently, alone, holds the potential of altering one’s experience.

Unlike TV or film, there is something that happens when we actively construct meaning from strings of letters. Words are produced that alter our soul’s catalogue, carve out who we are, and keep us coming back for more. dm