3.4.9 The irreducible primary of fiction

In fiction, while reading, you do ‘suspend disbelief.’ You psychologically treat the events portrayed as real and concrete. You don’t experience them as someone talking about something happening. You experience it as something really happening. Which is why it works, as art. And which is why when there are obstacles put in the hero’s path we don’t question it. We take it as the metaphysically given, in a sense.

Either you imagine that the people and events in a story are true, and you read fiction, or you don’t—and don’t. There is nothing on Earth any writer can do to force you to take the story seriously and read it as fiction. At some level, the reader simply has to want to do that. This is an irreducible primary of fiction. The reader either chooses to do it or not.

But psychologically, it’s essentially automatic. Even in stories that are stupid or are based upon utterly irrational premises and contexts, if the characters have something to gain or lose, and getting it isn’t automatic, we follow with interest, almost no matter what. I would almost be tempted to call it instinctive.

2004.10
Based on an email to Steve Clarian