I have been criticized about my story lacking belief. It wasnt much but I have been thinking aobut my stories last chapter (Vendetta chapter 6) and its lack of believability. I agree, it wasnt very believable. But does that make it bad?
Unbelievable stories some times become a big hit. Look at Batman. 1989 and the begins. they were HUGE hits at the box office, but lets face it. it isnt very believable. What made those unbelievable stories such huge hits.
And superman. My personal favorite but come on. a flying indestructible man. We love him.
I enjoyed writing mine. but, it seems to have been a bomb.
I'm commenting on your
I'm commenting on your question, not your story, so...
I have found that people who are enjoying a story will suspend their "critical thinking". On the other hand, if the person watching/reading a story isn't enjoying... then forget it, you've lost them no matter how many 'special effects' you throw in.
Look at how the big hollywood 'action' movies keep showing some guy standing in the street shooting a handgun at a car and the car blowing up. Does that happen in 'real life'? No, but it's common in 'reel life' because it enhances the movie. Willing suspension of disbelief... because the viewer is enjoying the movie.
So, don't worry about how believable a story is. If it's a good story, people will like it. If it's a bad story that needs god coming down in a chair to save the plot... oh well. ;)
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Superficial?
Firstly, there is just one comment on Vendetta 6 which makes this criticism, although I haven't gone through your other stories to see if this is a common problem. So if that is the ONLY criticism of being unbelievable, my advice is ignore it. Everyone is individual and has their own opinions - it doesn't mean to say you are wrong just because they are different.
However, if that it is a general criticism of your work, you should look closer at it. Your work does not appear to be absolute fantasy, like Batman and Superman. The important point about those types of work is to make it clear right from the start what it is about. Don't let readers think they are in a real world when some incredible thing suddenly pops out of nowhere.
From reading just a few lines of your story, I think the problem may be because it all appears fairly superficial. For example:
"Alright Susan. Just one question, What is the Typhoon?"
Susan Laughed, "That is a ship that I brought it from the Russian Navy a few years ago when they were scrapping hundreds of thousands of tons of old soviet era ships they couldn't afford, or didn't need. I saw one great ship that I didn't want to see destroyed from history, so I went to them and offered a few billion and they gladly accepted. That is what the Typhoon is"
If you had spent a few pages detailing the events covered in your one paragraph, it could be very realistic. But it sounds as though you had the thought and made it all up in five minutes. It's not even good grammar! Would an old ship really cost a few billion? I suspect not. So straightaway my mind is recoiling at the paragraph. It would have been far better to simply say "It's an old ship I bought a few years ago" than to pad it out with superficial detail.
So that's my idea. The answer is probably to try to put far fewer events into your stories, but put much more effort into describing those events to bring them to life.
To suspend or not to suspend. That is the question!
Both can be good.
I have not read your story yet, but will. We have all read stories where the only tenable way for the protagonist to have a satisfactory good ending is for the ground to open up and swallow the antagonist. That doesn't make it a bad story.
To many authors it is the characters that push the story as they talk to you as you write. Some stories call for a fantastic incident others don't, neither way is right or wrong. Sometimes though having the protagonist come up with a natural way to shine can be more satisfying, because we as humans want to see that there is hope in the real world.
If the story feels right to you though, that is all that matters. The story is the purview of the author to tell. If that is the we=ay you feel the story should go stick to your guns (and use them if necessary. I was always partial to the desert eagle .357).
A fantastic incident can be cathartic. It can make justice happen in a position where no other option for justice exists.
Love,
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
Belief
I haven't read your story, so I can't comment about what you may or may not be doing. Since I write mostly Sci-fi and magical stories, your question is one that I think about a lot. I try to make as much of the story as real as I can to balance the 'unbelievable.' You have to draw your readers into the story. Mostly that is old fashioned good writing. What are they seeing, scenting, feeling? Bring your vision to life. The fewer senses you involve the more one dimensional it will seem. I've been accused of being too descriptive at times, so its easy to go too far the other way.
Teasing the reader with clues about what they're about to encounter can work too. Just dumping your 'unbelievable idea' can be an indigestible lump. For example with the Typhoon, the character might have a model of a SSBN that someone mentions briefly, or might be caught playing with it in a humorous embarrassing scene. That plants the idea in the reader minds that this person has a thing for "whatever" it is you're trying to present. Completely surprising a reader can simply turn them off.
Hopes this helps!
Grover
Unsurprising and Contextualized Believability
Like Grover, I too am someone who writes in the magical, mystical, and advanced science worlds. And since I write in these unreal worlds, I have to realize that a number of readers on this and other similar sites have expressed a dislike for these stories, believing they cheat. With that understanding, I try to ensure that I do not capture those readers into one of my stories and then, as Grover said, surprise them with magic or advanced science. I do not want to use it as an answer without laying some ground work in creating a world and introducing the reader into that world where those answers can exist. This includes tagging my stories where necessary as magic or science fiction and then introducing magic or science fairly early into the story.
With that out of the way, I search not for real believability, instead I try for contextualized believability. Whether I succeed or not, I am not sure. But I spend a lot of time thinking about whether something is logical or properly illogical in the world that I have created for a particular story.
Believability - for me
Hi Princess,
For me a story becomes believable if:
#1 it is written well, that is proper grammar and spelling are used throughout, sentences vary in type and style, word usage is complex enough to interest me yet does not require me to open my dictionary for every sentence. Tolkien would never have been popular if "Bilbo put on the ring. Then he disappeared. Then he met Gandalf. Then he ran away. Then he..."
#2 it is imaginative and well thought out, that is that the story twists and turns enough to keep me from wishing I had gone to a paint drying exibit. Frodo didn't while away the whole many hundred pages of Lord of the Rings sitting on his patio swilling beer.(Bilbo actually spent almost the entire time of "Lord of the Rings" in Rivendell writing songs and drinking beer. Think about how many sentences Tolkien wrote detailing those facts.)
#3 it is internally consistent, that is the rules of the universe the author has created are logical within the universe and and the author holds to those rules. Frodo and his pals still needed to eat as they traveled and their speed was limited by the frailties of their bodies. (A 'six shooter' revolver needs to be reloaded after six shots, if the person using it intends to continue shooting.)
I know my writing isn't anywhere near that of some of my favourite authors so I live with the limited popularity I have attracted. I even have one member of the BC community who HATES me for writing my silly blurbs for my stories. SO WHAT!! I also have two people who LIKE my blurbs - so I win. You can NOT please everyone - why even try - please yourself and listen to advice from people you respect. (Even if you don't actually TAKE that advice.)
Just some of my thoughts.
with love,
Hope
with love,
Hope
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
There is one???
Now that is a shocker.
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Believability
You have an unwritten contract with the reader to write something that makes some sort of sense. That is a mouthful. It will mean different things to different people.
Have you ever gone to a movie and said, "This sucks, no one acts that way in real life!"? That is one way of ending your suspended disbelief.
It's fiction. If the reader expects it to be real they're a sick puppy. It just isn't real. From that basic truth it varies by individuals how much they're willing to venture from what they see on the street every day.
The best advice I can give you is, appeal to the senses as much as possible and make every word count toward moving your story along. If you do that you will find your readers will very willingly accept whatever world you want to create.
If you would like some detailed writing advice, let me know and I'll take a look at your work.
Read a couple of my stories to see if that is a style you would like to emulate.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Realistic?
No, It isn't!
That is why they call it "Fiction"!
If you don't like it, just don't read it.
I just finished chapter six, and it was interesting reading.
Thank you for sharing your work with us, and let us (your readers) decide what is believable.
Avid Reader
The Contract
Note: I don't know which story you speak of. I may have read it. It's easy to lose track here :-)
Angela speaks of a contract. I'd like to add to that.
The contract is offered when the author starts writing the story and is accepted by the reader at most after a couple of pages. What it states is completely up to the author to decide; the reader need not accept the contract, as she need not read something if the contract doesn't appeal to her.
One of the important things on this site that's part of the contract is whether the story contains sexual abuse or suicide, and other upsetting things. These need to be declared in keywords.
But the selection of the universe is the most important one for suspension of disbelief. You pick up a copy of Superman, you expect certain things to be true in the story that are not so in real life. You pick up something by Georgette Heyer, there will be no superpowers there. If you read Harry Potter, magic works, but it's otherwise about adolescent discovery. In a war story, you can expect people to be killed by enemies but few war stories set in WWII have superheroes.
When writing for this site, it's almost but not quite in the contract that the story has a TG element. If not, then that should be declared in the keywords.
So when writing something unbelievable, you need to make sure the reader knows in WHAT WAY the story is unbelievable within the first page or two, and preferably in the keywords. If it's FemDom, make sure there's something to clue the readers in early on. If it's magical transformation, or body suits, then foreshadow it as early as you can. And even if the story is intended to be *very realistic* the reader should be told that that's the case. It's often shown simply by paying attention to mundane detail. What song is playing on the radio is never important in a Superman comic. It's part of the feeling of the moment in something realistic.
The MOST important thing is that once you have started writing, you mustn't break your own contract. You should not introduce superhuman powers in the 11th chapter out of 12. A realistic story about a child discovering their TS-ness as adolescents should not suddenly become a FemDom story at the end. This is a kind of bait-and-switch and will have the effect of people not wanting to read your stories since they won't know what to expect.
- Moni
Writing to be popular
You shouldn't write only to be popular. There is an adage in TV production. One complaint = one Complaint but one compliment = 1000 compliments. Simply because if people like what you're doing they're more likely to sit back and wait for the next chapter. But when someone dislikes something and wants to complain... they'll pay money to mail you in writing just how much they revile your work and by extension you and your sexual proclivities and your mother and and and...
So keep writing... but don't worry about the detractors. If we didn't have so many stories posted, the 'good' ones would never be found amongst the thorns.
Besides...roses have thorns too.
Nobody.
i had made a comment
that suggested I wasnt happy with the story becoming not very believeable, but I failed to say I still enjoyed it. There are two different things - one is a moment that "jars", doesnt ring true within the story setting, and that reduces my abliity to enjoy the story, and then there is a well-crafted fantasy that even though the events couldnt happen remains true to itself and allows me to "buy in" and take the ride with the creator of the story. I made the mistake of thinking Vendetta was going to be a story that would be very real based on the first chapter, so the latter move into fantasy took me by surprize, but that was my error, not the authors.
About suspension of disbelief...
I know you story takes place on our earth just from clues other people have said...However I think a crutch a lot of us (cough me) less talented writers tend to do is automatically throw our characters in a different universe or dimension from out good ole earth, because in all honestly...
if you characters aren't on earth then you could have them be giant blue people and its still believe able...(gets behind Public use shield in the event James Cameron decides he wants to check out BC)
...uh my signature?
To believe or not
I find myself approaching stories like this:
1) I start out assuming the universe of the story matches the "real world" in all aspects
2) I then make allowances for any differences introducted by the author and the logical conclusions they would bring with them.
So stories where superman is bulletproof are ok, because it's a change of reality introduced by the author. In some cases, a bit of additional description by the author is needed to remove practical problems with a concept. An example is the force field in Stargate SG-1 that stops bullets but allows objects with less kinetic energy to pass.
I have to admit I'm one of those people who hates internal inconsistancies and illogical behaviour in characters. The first point means I seldom enjoy stories regarding some form of time travel since they are often full of paradoxes. More common on this site is my uneasy feelings about people in stories not acting their given age: a lot of stories have children acting and speaking like adults, including adults accepting behaviour from children that no normal adult would allow.
Of course, there's an ultimate way to get rid of anything that sounds unbelievable. Douglas Adams and the "infinite improbability drive" can take care of everything ;)
Hugs,
Kimby
Hugs,
Kimby
I get the same thing about my stories.
A lot of us have had hatred, beatings, abandonement and being disowned in our lives. When I write a story it is mainly based on the love and acceptance I had from my Grandma Dolly's family in a small midwestern town in the 1950's...yes, I said the 1950's....as well as all of my girl friends and their families. The saying "it takes a village" was true where I grew up, and all the grown ups looked out for the children. Of course they would call our house and tell on us if we did anything wrong...but where I grew up I had love, acceptance, and happiness.
But the hardest audience to write for is the TG community...because they feel if they didn't have any of that in their lives, then nobody else did either. What was it about Jesus and Nazareth? Oh yes! Everybody there knew Him as the son of the carpenter Joseph, and couldn't accept Jesus as the Messiah or the son of God. It is the same thing here too. The TG community cannot accept what they haven't had in their lives...and especially today, when there are more and more transgendered coming out of the closet and being themselves openly.
For those of you still in the closet, all I can say is, don't be so damn cynical because you are missing a wonderful life that you are in control of, but you just for some reason don't want to be.
Are you in the closet because you are afraid you will be beaten, called nasty names, or even killed? I have lived my whole life as a femal openly, while my body remained male. I don't have this kind of paranoia. If I am going to be happy, then I have to live my life to it's fullest. I can't change into "boy" clothes even if I wanted to, because I don't own any "boy" clothes. I don't even wear "boy" cut panty briefs.
So whether or not you may think that a story is unrealistic and too far fetched, just remember that we write for entertainment. And who said a story has to have conflict, drama, hard knocks? Who said? A bunch of writers from the prehistoric writer's club? You know the ones, Dashiell Hammett, "Papa" Hemmingway, and many, many others. Are these the ones who set down the rules because they wrote like that?
Well Ladies and gentlemen, this is the 21st century and there are more and more authors doing away with the old and bringing in the new. Why does a life have to have conflict? Because your life did, so the rest of us have to have it too when we didn't? Now that my dear readers...IS unbelievable.
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."
Suspension of Disbelief - a further question
Hey there,
I'm just going to tack on a question to this discussion, since it's in a similar vein.
In my current project, I've come to an impasse where the heroine, in order to begin to come to terms with her feelings, has agreed to see a therapist. She's been blessed to have fallen into a situation where she has the support of a family member and a new friend.
I can't say more without spoiling the surprises, but in essence a series of events have occured over the last few days, along with a shocking reveal, to force the protagonist to realize she can ask for help, and that things aren't as scary as they seemed. Sound familiar? *grin* Yeah, this is exorcising personal demons, but I'm enjoying writing it, and I plan to diverge the story in other directions so it doesn't get boring. ;-)
The trouble is that as this is a case of art imitating life, therapy is just not an option for me, so going forward I'm flying blind.
Should I just wing it and write as best I can; hang the details? The way I'd like to write it is a process that occupies its own scene at first, and then moving forward, becomes a part of the background until the story needs it to take focus again (I have some pretty dark ideas I'm playing with though I'm not sure which ones will see the final cut ;-))
Thanks, and sorry for the hijack. It was less intrusive than starting an entirely new topic on the same subject. :-)
~Zoe T.
therapy scene
There might be a couple of ways to deal with this idea. One way might be have a quick description of the "exterior" - the office, what position the characters are in (the 'patient' on a couch? or two people siting face to face?) and then go to an "interior" scene - show what the character undgoing the treatment is thinking and feeling, maybe represented in some symbolic fashion. Another way might be to "fast forward" to the end of a session, and show how the treatment is making a difference. Like the character leaves a session thinking "Wow! that really helped me understand whats going on!" or instead the character could think "That was hard. I think I spent the whole time crying. I really hope things get easier soon." just some thoughts.