12/24/23
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
This is number forty-two in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“THE DIFFERENCE between life and fiction is that fiction must be believable,” I was told in my first writing class back in 1969. Real life can throw anything at you and it doesn’t make a difference if you believe it or not. It simply is.
I recently mentioned to an editor that I had an acquaintance who was in the top tier in national competition in working a Rubik’s Cube with his toes. She couldn’t believe it, but her comment was, “OMG with his toes!!!!! lol You couldn't make that up lol.” Unbelievable, but that’s life.
But it is not true that fiction has to ‘be believable.’ Fiction needs to be plausible within its universe.
I recall a scene from the movie Thank You for Smoking in which the tobacco lobbyist was working with a movie producer to put a character smoking in a sci-fi movie on a space station. The objection was that in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the space station, smoking could cause an explosion. I don’t recall the exact line, but the producer said something to the effect of, “All we need to do is drop in a line like, ‘Thank God we got the gas mixture for our atmosphere adjusted so we can smoke without blowing up.’” Consistent within the movie’s universe.
I have many unbelievable situations in my erotica (as does just about everyone who writes it). Take, for example, polyamory. Conceptually, multiple consensual relationships in which everyone is happy with everyone else are reasonable and known in the real world. But they are not as common as I depict them in my books.
In my “Model Student” series—now available both individually and as a discounted series on Bookapy.com (finally)—I first began exploring the ‘guy with multiple girlfriends’ concept that has been featured in so much of my writing. I personally find the idea of a guy living with two women who love him and love each other just as much to be patently unbelievable. If it weren’t for the many ‘happily’ married people I know, I would suggest that a man and a woman living together happily ever after is unbelievable. But that’s life. I think.
But the situation is, to many, desirable. We’d like to believe it was possible. And so, we willingly suspend our disbelief to include a world in which multiple polyamorous relationships are both possible and common.
I mentioned to my daughter this week that I was writing a blog post on the willing suspension of disbelief and her comment was, “What an appropriate topic for Christmas Eve.” Perhaps she was talking about Santa Claus.
The essence of ‘faith,’ however, is belief in the unbelievable. We willingly suspend our disbelief, without asking for proof or facts.
But what makes the unbelievable believable in our fictional world?
First, it needs to be something we find attractive or desirable. In other words, we have to be able to visualize the concept. Perhaps it is something we can dream of. Do fish dream of riding a bicycle? It’s not within their realm of fantasy. Fish don’t swim upstream to spawn thinking “This would be so much easier if I had legs and a bicycle.” But readers of fiction can conceive of that. We could conceive of flying to the moon, and dream of it, and achieve it.
Secondly, it needs to be consistent with the world of the story we’re being told. In erotica, polyamory is completely consistent with a sexually liberated and exploratory environment. I believe that one of the reasons we do not see many stories of fifty-to-eighty-year-olds engaged in sexual adventures is because sexual liberation and exploration is not consistent with the world we know they inhabit. Sexual liberation and exploration are topics of discovery found mostly among teens and young adults. They’ll try anything.
Third, it needs to be in character. If the character who will engage in a sexual act is sexually repressed, she can’t simply kiss another girl and immediately progress to a loving lesbian relationship. It’s not consistent with her character. She will suffer anxiety over it. She will set up barriers. And ultimately, if she is to progress in that way, there must be a catalyst or a trigger for her actions. What pushes her over the edge and into this relationship?
In the “Model Student” series, Lissa and Melody both have some same-sex experience before they start fooling around with each other. But even with that, it is the catalyst of Tony loving both of them that liberates them enough to fall onto each other and ultimately to marry. Kate is the youngest of the five principals in this story. She is driven by her own sexual awakening. She knows the object of her desire is only achievable through a relationship with all of them and she spends several months testing the water a little at a time before she becomes active with Melody, Lissa, or Wendy.
Finally, within this universe, the relationship or event needs to have some probability. In other words, given that Tony and Kate go to the same school, have the same lovers, work together on various projects, kiss and make out whenever possible, and have similar values, how likely is it that they will get married? By the same token, with Kate’s background and experience is it also likely that they will have children? While marriage has an acceptable degree of probability, parenthood does not.
When we pick up a book—of any genre—we commit to suspending our disbelief in the world represented there. We do not, however, blindly accept whatever happens in that story. Within those constraints, the fiction needs to be believable.
So, I guess the old adage is still true. The difference between life and fiction is that fiction needs to be believable—within the boundaries we set for it.
Next Sunday is New Year’s Eve. I think I’ll talk a little bit about goals and what I’d like to achieve in my writing of erotica: “Resolved.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
