by Lisa Hiton
It is in our nature to ask gigantic questions. What are stars? What happens when we die? Will robots eventually “replace” humans? There are many approaches to answering life’s seemingly unanswerable questions. For someone like Galileo, studying the sky led to many changes and discoveries in science—Jupiter, a round earth, universal gravitation, and so on. But for those of us without a knack for math or the patience of centuries, imagination is an excellent replacement for invention. For in the sky of the mind, anything is possible, so long as the logic of our fantasies can be conveyed to readers.
Science fiction is a longstanding genre that trades in imagined futures. These futures may be dystopian, grand in technological advances, full of survivors with special powers, and so much more. Not having answers to the problems of society often leads writers to these variant visions of futurity. But how is it that we believe these seemingly outlandish answers to some of the most pressing matters that face us? By studying the craft of science fiction and its sister genre, fantasy, we can begin to appreciate the power of an artist’s greatest tool: suspension of disbelief.
Using Suspension of Disbelief
Disbelief describes a lack of faith. In our day to day life, we know that, say, the vampires of Twilight are not real. If someone told us they met a vampire, we’d shake our heads in disbelief. Especially when we think of writing, theater, and film, a great challenge for the artist is to combat this sense of disbelief. What will it take for a reader or an audience to believe that Dorothy can land in a more magical reality called Oz and befriend a scarecrow, tinman, and lion? If she weren’t first in Kansas, Oz would serve a different purpose. With no reality to measure it against, we might not believe its rules and mores outright. But because we know that there has been a twister, we sense that Dorothy is somewhere between a dream and a reality, hoping to find her way home.
So, when we encounter a great book, we must suspend our natural sense of disbelief in the imagined world. It allows us to believe in whatever fantastical idea a writer presents us with. When a book is truly excellent, the writer’s craft brings us into that state of suspension. And there are tried and true ways a writer can achieve this that we can see across science fiction and fantasy in particular.
How to Create Out of This World Novels
Speculative fiction presents emerging writers with a duality: Writing in this genre is easier because you can make-up whatever you want, or, writing in this genre is harder because no reader would believe these wild worlds could be real. Whether you’re making up an entirely new world filled with unheard of creatures and languages or trying to layer our current reality with an unfathomable idea like a technological intervention, there are many techniques you can utilize to grant your readers enough logic to suspend their disbelief. Writer of Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card and other writers of science fiction and fantasy have outlined many of these techniques in Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction: How to Create Out-of-This-World Novels and Short Stories. Card’s introduction draws us to why we want to be writers and readers of speculative fiction:
“You have a genuine interest in writing science fiction and fantasy[…]because you believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience.
I hope you’re right, because in many ways, this is the best audience in the world to write for. They’re open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all they want to be led into the places that no one has ever visited before.”
To that end, as we enter the writing of speculative fiction, no matter what we invent, that desire to dream must be balanced with the desire to understand in order for your characters and readers to trust you.
Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction: How to Create Out-of-This-World Novels and Short Stories by Orson Scott Card, Philip Athans, and Jay Lake: With so many inventions regarding characters, worlds, language, and the rest, there are clear rules that help make suspension of disbelief possible in speculative fiction. Card, Athans, and Lake begin in those ideas in the first section of this book, hosting entire chapters dedicated to: The Infinite Boundary, World Creation, and Story Construction. The other chapters of the book delve into fantasy, magic, myth, legend, and references to the world of fantasy writing.
Reading Recommendations for Science Fiction Writing
Kindred by Octavia Butler: For her twenty-sixth birthday, modern-day Dana is snatched from her new husband and home in California and transported to the antebellum south. Time travel is used throughout the novel to bring Dana into the slave trade to meet her ancestors. Each time she enters the past, the stay is longer and more complicated. Will Dana survive? Will she return to the present-day?
- Why does Butler choose to use time-travel in this novel? Why doesn’t she just choose one of these worlds?
- How does Butler decide when Dana travels between worlds? Why?
- What parts of reality allow the reader to believe Dana’s experiences in the past? What logic does Butler offer the reader? What logic does she offer Dana?
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: Unlike Butler’s novel, which relies on two worlds we know about, Ender’s Game takes place in an unspecified future. In this future, mankind is dwindling after two invasions of alien species. The children left in this future train their whole lives to endure whatever invasion will come next. The novel’s protagonist, Ender Wiggin, is one of these children. Ender, the third child in a world where the government only allows two children per household, must achieve greatness to earn his place among his promising older brothers. The journey takes Ender through the military ranks of society as he faces isolation and threats from other children his age.
- What elements of Ender’s world mimic our own reality? How do these human aspects help the reader understand this militaristic future?
- What themes in the novel speak to our contemporary world?
- Why is the family structure important to the novel?
- What techniques does Card use to aid in the reader’s suspension of disbelief?
So, dear writers, as you follow your robots, inventions, dystopias, clones, and the rest down wild paths, through stormy flights, and toward those infinite boundaries we call the horizon, don’t forget to bring us out of this world with you!
