Suspension of disbelief is an inherent part of genre fiction from fantasy to mystery. The term was originally coined in conjunction with the idea that if a writer could develop a sense of reality in setting and plot as well as humanity in characters, the reader would suspend judgement about the potential implausibility of the narrative. Over time the responsibility for suspension of disbelief has fallen largely on the reader instead of the writer.
Anyone who has read a book or watched a movie or TV show has been in a situation that requires this suspension of the implausible, though the degree to which one must stretch the suspension of judgement varies depending on the genre and the particular piece. Also, some people are more willing to suspend their disbelief to a greater degree than others. This can be a conscious choice or something that occurs because one person is more ignorant of facts that another.
For example: I am not an expert on space and astronauts. I do, however, have a fundamental understanding of some aspects of space, such as the lack of sound and gravity, how an extended stay in space will cause atrophy in ones muscles, etc. Considering these things, when I saw Gravity in theatres recently, I really enjoyed it. What I know as solid, factual things about space [such as the silence] were honored to my satisfaction and my ignorance about other things kept me from getting hung up on potentially problematic aspects of the film. On the other hand, we have Neil Degrasse Tyson who, while he gave the movie a positive review, apparently had a harder time not being pulled out of the narrative due to scientific mistakes that he, as the world-renowned scientist that he is, could easily identify.
Now, in writing, as in film, you are never going to be able to please everyone. There will always be someone there pointing out what you "got wrong" no matter how well you research or world-build. It doesn't mean you've done an awful job, nor does it meant that the readers should just swallow whatever you decide to invent. I disagree with the current trend that puts almost all of the responsibility of suspension on the reader/viewer. We are creators of these stories have a serious responsibility to our audiences to write stories with believable characters and with situations and plots that, while they may often be wonderfully fantastic in nature, can still pull a reader along without requiring them to throw all common sense out the window. Readers need to be willing to lay aside what they may take for granted, or assume is true about the world, especially in fiction and fantasy but we as writers cannot write a load of poppycock and expect readers to bear the entire burden of making it believable.
I have read plenty of books and seen plenty of movies where I felt the writers could have done a better job making the story and characters believable. I have also read and seen several where I recognized that my own knowledge of certain topics or my own stubbornness has gotten in the way of enjoying the work because I couldn't stop nit-picking. [This is always the case with movies made from books I've read. I cannot seem to get passed the incongruities no matter how hard I try. It's a serious problem :( ] Creators and consumers share this responsibility and if you are unsuccessful in suspending disbelief as a writer and/or reader, then at least be willing to accept your own short-comings. It's the only way you'll ever learn to improve. [I really am trying to like movies made from books, guys. I really am.]
As a writer, I'm perhaps overly critical of myself as well as other creators for failings in this department. Struggles and near-misses I can understand but this weekend I encountered an example so awful that it completely offended me. My husband has been playing the most recent Call of Duty and finished the campaign mode this weekend. I wasn't home when he got to the end but he told me that, while watching the closing scene, he had the distinct thought that it was a good thing I wasn't present to see it. [He knows my pet-peeves so well] This, of course led into a discussion of what had happened and I'll try to lay it out as well as I can remember for you. [I apologize in advance for any confusion. I'm not a video game connoisseur in my own right.]
The whole game, your character and his brother are hunting down an ex-member of their team who was lost and then turned against you. At the end of the game you have tracked him down and are fighting him on a train which ends up derailing and sinking into the ocean. As you sink, your brother gets the villain into a headlock and tells you to shoot him [the villain], which you do. Your gun is a .44 magnum, a very large caliber handgun which is [according to my husband] completely capable of shooting through the right side of the villain's chest, through your brother's shoulder, and through a window in the train, as it proceeds to do. As the train car fills with water you manage to grab your brother, who is injured, and make your way to the surface and the beach where you rest and contact people to come and get you.
After you have radioed in for pick up, the villain appears on the beach walking toward you. He proceeds to beat the snot out of you and your brother. The scene ends with him taunting you, telling you that you will be turned against your cause as he was and you'll become his partner in eeeeviiiiillllllll [dramatic emphasis added], and then dragging you away down the beach by your leg, your brother left behind, too injured to help you.
If the reasons for my outrage at this are unclear, bear with me as I list them.
1. If you were shot through the lung while inside a sinking train car, you would not survive.
2. Barring that, if you managed to get out of the car and onto land, you could not be in any condition to walk anywhere and would most likely bleed to death.
3. Barring that, if you could survive the death trap and your body was able to push through the pain and damage of a collapsed lung, you would not win in a fight against two people who have survived the same death trap and are less injured than you.
4. Barring that, if you managed to beat those two up, you are attempting to drag away the less injured of the two by his leg which allows him his other leg as well as both arms to put up any kind of fight [which the character does not do in the game].
5. Barring that, if you were able to drag the character away, before you arrived they had contacted people to get them and when they show up the brother will tell them what happened and these people who have managed to track you across the globe the entire game will track you down again, get the character back, and kill you even if it requires cutting your head off and burning your remains.
6. Barring that, if you get away with the character and no one catches you, this character knows what happened to you, the torture and mind games that were used to break you and turn you "to the dark side." The most effective defense against torture and brain washing is knowing what your captors are trying to accomplish by it. From what you know of the character, he would die before he broke and turned on his family and his cause.
For these reasons, this has got to be one of the most obnoxious endings I have ever heard of. The fact that the developers of this game thought this was an acceptable ending and that it would be at all believable is downright offensive to all of my sensibilities as a creator and a consumer. How stupid do they think their audience is that they think this would be viewed without complaint? Apparently these games have tended more and more toward dramatic endings as they've gone on, which is fine, but this is not dramatic. This is preposterous.
Please, please, please do not do this with your writing. You deserve better, your characters deserve better, and your reader certainly deserves more respect than that.
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