• Fantasy: Suspension of disbelief allows the reader to believe unicorns exist, trolls live under bridges, and wizards really attend school in haunted castles, all for the sake of being entertained by the reading.
    • Science Fiction: With sci-fi writing, suspension of disbelief has to capture a reader's willingness to believe that things not yet created in the real world can really exist in the alternate realities of the story's universe.
    • Mainstream Fiction: The easiest to set aside your disbelief is mainstream fiction, since it's more like actual real life. Still, characters cannot fail suspension of disblief by acting in ways the reader knows a real person would never act.
    • Thrillers: When a police officer reads a crime thriller or an attorney reads a legal thriller or a doctor reads a medical thriller, their suspension of disbelief requires a higher level than the average reader.
  • Suspension of Disbelief is a plot device used to hold a reader's attention in the imaginary world of a fiction writing (short story, flash fiction, novel, etc) long enough that they can set aside their knowledge of the real world and believe the story they are reading could really be true. To be successful, suspension of disbelief requires the writer to write as realistically as possible for the given plot while the reader is able to set aside conventions for the sake of entertainment.

About this page

  • Page Views
    0
What is this?
No one is currently managing this page.
What is this?
This page currently has no vertical manager.