A key to good writing is telling a believable story while creating a willing suspension of disbelief in your readers for those parts of your story that are not believable. Most good fiction has aspects that are larger than life, characters who can survive the unsurvivable, who can defy any odds against them, and who can handle an inhuman amount of adversity. Readers expect this. This is the willing suspension of disbelief. They read your story to escape their own reality, to immerse themselves in a story they could never live or experience in real life.
This is where literature shines and film dulls. In literature, we become the characters we read. We experience what they experience vicariously. We become part of the story. In film, we are merely entertained spectators watching someone else do the impossible.
So your readers expect something that is larger than life, aspects that are impossible or improbable at the very least. When they sit down to read your story, you are asking them to willingly suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in the story, to become part of it. Make no mistake, it is a grave and awesome responsibility for any author.
However, despite that, the other aspects of your story where you do not ask your readers to suspend their disbelief need to be completely believable. If you do not, the story then becomes a distraction. For example, let’s say you’re writing about the old west and a cowboy. If you write that his horse ran for thirty miles without resting, most readers will think, “What? That’s stupid. No horse can do that!” And suddenly, they associate your story with stupidity. If the horse can travel thirty miles at full gallop without resting, you must give the readers a valid reason to suspend their disbelief. Perhaps the horse isn’t really a horse, but something else. Perhaps the horse is a one-of-a-kind with special DNA. Without giving a reason for the reader to suspend their disbelief, you will incur their disdain, if not their wrath in the form of negative reviews of your story.
This means you must know what you’re talking about. Which means you must do the research. You likely won’t get everything right, but you should at least know enough to write competently about the subject. For example, if your characters board a ship, you’ll never hear a sailor say, “Let’s look over the right side of a ship.” Anyone who knows anything about ships will blink and think, “What? It’s starboard, idiot!” And if the reader thinks you don’t know what you’re talking about, they won’t willingly suspend their disbelief for the rest of your story. The whole story becomes idiotic if there are enough of these gaffs in the writing.
Speaking of writing about ships—if you do—then you need to know the difference between a boat and a ship, enough so that you can intentionally misuse the terms. For example:
Valorie gazed up at the three-masted schooner tugging gently against her mooring lines. “It’s a pretty boat,” she said blinking.
Jack spat onto the wooden pier. “Ship,” he corrected.
“What?”
“She’s a ship. Not a boat.”
Valorie looked at him in amazement. “What’s the difference?”
Jack just grunted, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Don’t guess. Know what you’re writing about. And don’t take the first source you come across as authoritative, especially if you’re researching on the internet. A well-researched story will never be a distraction to the reader, and done right, they will not even notice.
As another, common example, know the average limits of human endurance when writing your story. If one of your characters walks a hundred miles in a typical fourteen-hour traveling day, you’re way outside the normal limits a person can walk. If your character can do this, then there must be a reason given to the reader so that they can suspend their disbelief. You can only give them a reason when you convince them you do know what you’re talking about, that you know a hundred miles in a day is superhuman:
“You walked how far?” Douglas exclaimed, looking at Jody as if she’d just announced she was an alien from Mars. “That’s impossible!”
Jody grinned and slammed a hand against her leg. It made a metallic sound. “These new legs are something!”
Something that simple will convince the reader that you know what you’re talking about and then they are more than willing to suspend their disbelief in Jody’s ability to travel so far. The reader will now accept this as a fact of the story and eagerly read on.
Again, do the research. Don’t skimp on this. Your story needs to be believable so that your deliberate unbelievable parts can be accepted by the reader.
Happy writing, folks!