Harry Angel is a private investigator hired by a creepy business man named Louis Cyphre to track down a singer named Johnny Favorite, who owes Cyphre a debt. Without giving the story away, there are plenty of twists and turns, and none of the characters are what they seem.

What I love about this brand of storytelling is the way in which it plays with your mind. If the writer were sitting on the couch next to you, they might cackle with glee as you squirm in your seat at every plot twist and realization.

What would we call this oh-so-special category?

Suspense would probably be the short name for it, but when it comes to writing tricks, a more apt name for this category is Suspension… of Disbelief. This small group of movies excels in exploiting suspension of disbelief through a recognizable set of storytelling tools that, as far as engrossing and immersing the audience, seem to work every single time — if done properly.

Most of us know suspension of disbelief just as the term implies – you suspend your disbelief for the sake of the storytelling. Wikipedia defines the suspension of disbelief as a tacit agreement between the audience and the creator, for the audience to suspend judgment in exchange for entertainment.

An agreement, I like that! It’s as if the audience is shaking hands with the creator. “I won’t give you a hard time about your creation, as long as it’s fun.”

Of course, every agreement has conditions and suspension of disbelief is no different;

“inconsistencies or plot holes that violate the initial premisees, established canon, continuity, or common sense, are often viewed as breaking this agreement.”

Wow, breach of contract clause? Sounds almost like a legal agreement, doesn’t it?

But here’s the catch, and after you’ve thought about it I hope you and I can agree. Every story has plot holes! Every story has violation of the premise upon which the story is founded! Every story has continuity errors, violations of common sense, and things which might break the agreement to suspend disbelief.

So then why do some movies get away with fantastically unrealistic plots and character motivations, while some more down to earth movies are criticized for their shortcomings?

Analyzing a few of the memorable movies in this category, you may start to see a pattern, as in 1998′s Fallen, written by Nicholas Kazan.

Detective John Hobbes sits in at the execution of serial killer Edgar Reese. Soon after, the killings start up again and they are eerily similar to the killings by Reese. But Reese is dead! Or is he? What person or thing is repsonsible?

Legends, Myths, & Unique Mythologies

Where each of these movies succeed is that part of the premise is based on either a real myth or legend, or a unique mythology created specifically for the story — The Blair Witch is an excellent example of this. Unique mythology plays a big role in whether a storyverse (story + universe) works or not. The audience is much more willing to suspend their disbelief if part of the story is told through myths that exist in the worlds inhabited by the characters.

Why? The same reason you’re not checking under the bed two weeks after watching a horror movie. Because you know it’s just a story. This is the clever bit about unique mythology. The characters in your story don’t check under the bed after hearing about the legend of your serial killer because to them it’s, “Just a story!”

Thus through your characters disbelief, the audience is willing to add an extra layer of suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief times two! Double the suspension, double the fun!

The Number 23 is yet another example in the use of even more tools a writer can use to engross the audience through suspension of disbelief.

Walter Sparrow’s wife gives him a thrilling book for his birthday. The problem? Walter quickly becomes obsessed with a character in the story named Fingerling and begins to see similarities between fiction and his own reality. Is he crazy, or is there really a connection?

If you haven’t seen it, you’ll have to find out for yourself! The Number 23 is an excellent example in three of our secrets to suspension of disbelief. They are…

Frame Stories

A frame story is a story within your story. It is sometimes told by a narrator or one of the main characters, but it doesn’t have to be. In The Number 23 the frame story is a novel that Walter Sparrow reads. Pan’s Labyrinth features a rather fantastical frame story, which is the one that Ofelia uncovers from the book the fawn gives her. The frame story makes up an undeniable part of the movie’s appeal.

Why does a frame story help suspend disbelief? For the same reasons myths or legends do, and again — for the reason you’re not checking the closets two weeks after a monster movie. “It’s just a story.” When someone says, “Sit down, and let me tell you a little tale,” you immediately recognize that what you’re about to hear is fiction and so you adjust your attitude accordingly.

If the characters in a story are willing to put aside criticisms and a little bit of their logic so that they can enjoy a tale, then so should you. But what you may not realize as you experience the tale is that the story you’re currently engrossed in is being partly told through a story within the story. You will be extra willing to forgive any snafus because “It’s just a story… within a story!”

In a way, legends about a particular character or thing are just a form of frame story, but they don’t have to be a fully formed story. They can simply be references scattered throughout that the audience picks up on. If the characters keep referring to an event that happened before the story, then the audience will mentally flag that and come to realize it as something significant — if it isn’t buried in subtlety.

Fictional Fictional Characters

Frame stories are even better if there is an iconic character that your heroes identify with, or a larger-than-life villain — characters who live in a hyper reality from that of your heroes and are capable of extraordinary acts. Fingerling from The Number 23 is one example. Atreyu in The Neverending Story is another fic-fic character. Almost all the characters in A Princess Bride are fic-fic characters since the entire movie is a story being told by a grandfather to the grandchild played by actor Fred Savage.

A story without characters would be a dull story indeed, and the same is true for the stories within your stories. So give your fictional fiction, a fictional fictional character.

Unreliable Narrators or Characters

When a narrator says, “Let me tell you a story,” there is the off chance that the character could be lying! Even if the character is not so dramatic as to lie, they could be misinformed, or biased in some way in how they tell the story. This can be used to great effect in the form of a plot twist. When it is not an actual narrator, it can be a character in the story who is missing crucial information, and that information is surprising and dramatic when it is revealed to the audience, as in The Sixth Sense.

In TV shows, where one among many dramatic threads can spread across several seasons, the information the characters have is incomplete on a smaller scale but ‘turned out’ in more regular doses. In a show like 24 or Battlestar Galactica, characters you thought had good intentions turn out to be lying, cheating, stealing, in league with the villains, or simply living in their own skewed interpretation of reality.

There is one more secret to suspension of disbelief that we’re going to tell you. For some writers it may not seem as important a tool as the others, but small doses of it here and there go a long way towards endearing your entertainment franchise in the hearts and minds of your fans.

Fictional Culture, Parodies & Satire

Every good storyverse has its share of fictional culture, parodies, and satire. Consider The Itchy & Scratchy Show from The Simpsons. Or Scientology-like cults in shows like The 4400, or separatist terrorists in Battlestar Galactica. The real world is filled with interesting niches of human society. What are yours? They can be parodies, but they don’t have to be. They can be genuine, straight-faced commentary on the nature of human relationships or the politics of our world.

Fiction inside your fiction can make for a great way to engage the reader on the cheap. Even if the primary thrust of your narrative does not depend on ‘fic-fic,’ your storyverse might be improved using the six secrets to suspension of disbelief.

But wait! What about the sixth secret? I’m going to leave that for you to figure out and share in the comments of this article if you are inspired to do so. Some secrets must be kept, or they wouldn’t be secrets, now would they? Thus proving that I too can sometimes be an unreliable narrator!

“Incluing is a technique of world building, in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set.”

OR:

“The process of scattering information seamlessly through the text, as opposed to stopping the story to impart the information.”

As a gamer, I’ve always had a natural appreciation for incluing. There are a multitude of examples in my favorite games, such as Half-Life, Fallout, and Oblivion. Because games are an interactive medium, they naturally inclue information to the player by distributing it throughout the world.

Fiction writers don’t have it so easy. The world is not revealed in an interactive manner, and so it is harder to inclue items about the world in a subtle fashion.

I have an odd solution to this, given I’m creating a metaseries media franchise.

For example, a murder occurs in Story A, and a news item about that murder occurs in Story B. Cross-referencing is a great way to inclue while also creating a sense of depth to your franchise as a whole. Long-running TV series such as Stargate SG-1 often reference past events in the form of inclues, although SG-1 does its share of infodumping as well.

How do you inclue? Well I’m not certain what will work for you, but I’ll tell you what works for me. Occasionally in thinking about my sci-fi world details, I’ll think of references I can plant from one story to another. It could be a major event. It could be as simple as a press release by a corporation. No, of course you don’t batter the reader with the entire press release — that would be infodumping. Instead you have it on the TV in the background while the character is moving past an electronics shop. The character catches the snippet in media res.

Better yet, use it in your bar scene. There are always TVs in bars, showing sports, news, or what have you. That is the perfect time to give the reader an inclue. What should it be? Preferably something related to the story at hand, but if not then a quick flash about something from one of your other stories makes a nice cross-reference, and at least an easter-egg.

An easy way to bring inclues into your fiction is to use other media within your fiction. You can use news or radio broadcasts, advertisements, billboards, magazines — any form of media that exists in the real world surely has to exist within yours. These are perfect frames to give the reader more information about your world as a brief inclue nugget.

They might hear it on the radio station, or read it in a book via a Frame Story or even a fictional fictional character.

When you think of a cross-reference or inclue, write it down. You won’t remember it later. Keep a wishlist of possible inclues for your story, and incorporate them into your story once you find the appropriate scene for them.

Incluing is a powerful device, especially for sci-fi, fantasy writers, or anyone who has done a significant amount of world-building. Enjoy!

Over the last couple years struggling to put stories together, believe it or not I’ve actually found sitting down and hammering out a novel and a half and two half-treatments isn’t the best way to develop a story.

Sitting down and throwing scene ideas out, and talking about my characters and plot with fellow creative people is usually what pushes me forward the most. Maybe this is just a personal preference, as I enjoy developing stories more than I enjoy writing them. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing them too, but my biggest frustration is to waste prose trying to get across the story I’m trying to tell and failing because it just wasn’t developed enough to sustain across the pages.

Have problems with developing your story because you’re letting it develop within the writing itself too much? Maybe you need some TV or Hollywood style story development?

Maybe some of us should form a story development group?

Screenplay Beat Calculator — Some of you who enjoy structural guides may find this useful.

Blake Snyder — He has a cool blog. In Tools you’ll find a more general Beat Sheet form in the vein of the Beat Calculator.

Alex Epstein — I ordered his book on TV writing, and in looking at his site I found a few useful resources, including a links page on where to find popular movie scripts for study.

The formative years of my ever-evolving musical taste were in high school, like so many other people. That was eons ago in a decade some people call the 1990s. I guess that pegs me as young or old depending on which side of the fence you stand.

In between marathon listening sessions of Smashing Pumpkins or The Cure, I began to discover an abstract among all the music I gravitated towards. That common ground was an appreciation for blissful soundscapes and ambient textures. It wasn’t much later that I delved into electronic music, and as often happens during such explorations, you go to the source. For the ambient genre that would be none other than the grandfather of ambient himself, Brian Eno.

I love ambient music, because it doesn’t distract me or steal the thunder from my writing sessions. A worthy student of his, and another favorite of mine is Cliff Martinez. I first discovered the music of Cliff Martinez when I saw the movie Traffic in the theaters. I sat there with the audience, lodging corn hulls in between my gums, bathing my teeth in high fructose corn syrup and phosophoric acid, I thought to myself, “This sounds like Brian Eno.” When the credits rolled, Cliffy’s name rolled across the screen and the rest is history.

I didn’t follow Mr. Martinez’s career very closely as it happened.

Then I saw the 2002 Solaris. Again the mournful soundscapes greeted me! By this time, I was gleeful that Mr. Martinez happened to show up in a lot of films I enjoyed. So when I popped in the NARC DVD one fateful day, lo and behold what greeted me but yet more Eno-esque bliss? “This must be that Cliff Martinez again.” By this time I had started collecting his albums, eager for the next.

The last Martinez soundtrack available is Wicker Park. Cliff Martinez has since done a few other film scores, which unfortunately aren’t available yet. When they are, you can be sure that I’ll snatch them up and fire the mp3 play button during some future writing session.

Give Eno or Cliff a listen, and tell me what you think. We all gravitate towards certain styles and music.

What helps you write? What is your favorite writing music?