'The suspension of disbelief' versus 'the budget of believability'

Why some stories lose their readers.

I am happy to take credit for this masterpiece.

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You’ve probably heard of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’. It’s a term coined by Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge about how audiences willingly choose to ignore logic-problems in stories for the sake of enjoyment.

For example:

• How do Michael Myers and Jason keep surviving events that should, by any reasonable account, kill them?

• Why does Jaws keep attacking a boat when he’s injured?

• If Superman can shave by reflecting his eye lasers in the mirror, why don’t his enemies dress in shiny outfits?

• Why don’t zombies disintegrate after a few months?

• Literally everything about vampires.

For writers, particularly writers of fantasy, horror, and all other kinds of speculative fiction, this topic is incredibly important.

The willing suspension of disbelief reminds us that our audiences are gifting us belief in the unbelievable elements of our stories. It reminds us to cherish the trust they give us in return for the stories we tell.

However, as a writer, I don’t think it’s very useful.

Allow me to introduce…

The budget of believability

Rather than thinking of audiences as suspending disbelief altogether, it’s more useful to think of them as loaning us their belief, but they only have so much to give.

Audiences give you wiggle-room to set up your story with fantastical elements or extrapolations, but everything unreal you add to the story burns that budget of believability.

If you go over the budget, the audience loses their connection with your world. It might still look cool, but no-one cares anymore.

For example, an audience might accept:

• Aliens with acid for blood

And, separately, they might accept:

• An astronaut who empties their lungs and manages a two-minute space-walk without serious long-term consequences

And, separately, they will probably be okay with:

• Dinosaurs brought back to life.

But, if you make a film where:

• An astronaut is trapped on a space station with a rampaging alien (with acid for blood) and a herd of velociraptors (maybe they escaped Earth-bound parks too often so were bred in space instead?) and the astronaut’s only escape is to jump out of an airlock to hitch a ride on a passing satellite…

The audience’s budget would be blown. It’s too much. It’s too unbelievable.

Which leads us to the picture from the top of this post…

If I liked gen-AI, I would have used it to create a picture. Instead, you have this awesome drawing.

Each of the component pieces can happen in different films, but together they ask too much belief from the audience.

How do we reduce the cost of belief in the ludicrous?

Audiences want to have a good time. Coleridge was right that the suspension of disbelief is a willing act: they choose to do this because it makes their life fun.

However, we can make life much easier for our audiences. If we give them an excuse for something unbelievable then the cost on their belief-budget will be far smaller.

To explain this:

• “Welcome to Jurassic Park! With the latest advances in DNA, we sampled blood preserved in the stomachs of ancient mosquitos and replicated species that died millions of years ago!”

Sounds okay, right? How about this version:

• “Welcome to Jurassic Park! With advanced necromancy, we summoned dinosaur ghosts and used mystical practises to embed them into living clay - they look and move just like the real thing!”

You might accept this for the sake of the film, but it’s just… worse, isn’t it? But why?

Let’s compare:

Version 1:

• ‘Jurassic Park’: cool, a park of dinosaurs. Sounds like a stupid idea that will obviously backfire, but let’s go with it.

• ‘Advances in DNA’: yeah, there’s always genetic research going on. I heard they did a thing with an ice mummy, didn’t they?

• ‘blood preserved in the stomachs of ancient mosquitos’: would that work? I mean… That sounds like that could work.

Result: although it’s ridiculous, each piece supports the central concept of ‘Jurassic Park’ being viable enough that it doesn’t give us problems. When, later in the film, a middle-aged archaeologist and children outrun a jeep falling (vertically for no good reason) through a tree, we’ve got enough good-will left in our budget to go ‘sure’.

How about version 2?

• ‘Jurassic Park’: cool, a park of dinosaurs. Let’s go with it.

• ‘Advanced necromancy’: necromancy isn’t real, so what’s ‘advanced’ necromancy look like? I’m going to need diagrams and backstory here or you’re burning my will to believe in this.

• ‘dinosaur ghosts’: ghosts aren’t real, but lots of people say they’ve seen them so we’ll give it a pass. Dinosaur ghosts? People don’t see those. More of the budget is burnt.

• ‘Mystical practises’: i.e. the writer couldn’t think of anything. The budget is on fire.

• ‘Embed them in living clay’: what the hell is that? The budget is just ashes. The audience checks out.

Real-life example: Portal

In the video game Portal, you play as a character who can create links between the floor and the ceiling, dropping enormous heights to gain speed before hurling yourself across the room.

But the makers had a problem.

Their character, Chell, was an escapee prisoner. She’s just a normal human, and so would break when falling from these heights or when thrown around.

In almost every minute of gameplay, the game’s puzzles gave you situations where Chell’s legs would be broken.

Test players reported that it didn’t make sense. It was ludicrous.

Bear in mind this is a game with:

• A gun that can fire interlinked portals onto walls

• A psychopathic AI that offers you cake for completing obscure navigation challenges

• Cavernous underground research facilities

• Polite gun turrets

• Floating energy balls.

… And yet, the character’s legs were the problem.

All of the other things were typical sci-fi fare. If you like sci-fi, you’re fine with everything on the list above.

However you, my dear reader, are a human.

Your knees probably hurt.

You know you can’t fall unlimited heights.

This was a MASSIVE believability budget problem, much more so than the portal-gun and the killer AI.

The solution?

Put little springs onto the calves of the main character:

Instantly, players had enough of a reason to accept she could fall massive distances.

It didn’t need to be a lot, it just needed to be enough to bring the fall-damage problem under the budget of believability.

Genre and the budget of believability

If someone hates sci-fi, they’re never going to believe aliens with acid for blood.

It someone hates werewolves, they’re never going to believe Sean ‘sausages’ Pertwee’s struggle to defeat a pack of them in the greatest werewolf movie of all time.

If you hate fantasy, you’re going to switch off at the first sign of magic, dragons, or orcs.

The budget cost for unbelievable things will depend on the tastes of the audience, but that doesn’t mean it’s unknowable for everyone.

We can make guesses, and there are consistent patterns in what cost less budget and what costs more…

High and low choices for spending the budget of believability

In genre fiction, you can typically get away with anything familiar to your niche:

• Dragons, wizards, orcs

• Spaceships, aliens, lasers

• Telepathy, pyrokinesis, superhuman strength

• AI, robots, flying cars

• … etc.

If you keep within your genre, you can be efficient with your budget by assuming ‘if you accept X then you’ll probably be okay with Y too’.

When you combine genres, you get into danger zones:

• Aliens and orcs

• AI and wizards

• Telepathy and flying cars

These uncomfortable combinations increase the cost of your story on the budget of believability. You’ll need to do more exposition to explain the combination. Get it wrong, and you’ll burn more budget.

… But those are big and obvious things. Small-seeming things can break the budget of believability too…

In Disney’s John Carter movie, our hero John goes through a dimensional portal thingy and ends up on Mars, where he’s promptly kidnapped by athletic Martians.

So far, so sci-fi.

It’s clearly established these Martians are careful with their resources.

Sure, if I lived in a desert, I would be too.

They tie John’s hands together with a strip of leather.

That makes sense. All good. If it had been handcuffs that would have been weird. This is a very leather-based economy by the look of things.

When they decide to release him, THEY CUT THE LEATHER BONDS OFF.

WTF?

I could accept every other silly thing up to that point, but this tipped it over the edge for me: a culture that values its resources decides to save a few seconds by cutting precious leather bonds rather than simply untying him? Ridiculous.

I know it sounds stupid, but that moment blew the whole movie for me.

This is one of many examples where the budget of believability can get spent:

• Irrational choices: a killer comes in the front door - would you run upstairs or out the back?

• Inconsistent characterisation: two close friends have a massive fight over something small - if it’s out of character, it burns the budget

• Anachronistic language or technology - terms, ideas, or technology from the wrong time period will send your audience to their mobile phones to Google ‘Would police chasing Dr. Frankenstein have known about fingerprints?’

There’s a lesson here:

Consistency in your character, setting, and genre is key to maintaining a happy budget of believability.

The takeaway lesson

For writers, particularly in genres, we can build on audience good-will to allow us some big expenses on the budget of believability, but every new unreal thing we add and every inconsistent choice we make costs us audience’s belief.

It will vary for everyone, but eventually everyone’s budget of believability can be blown, and that’s when audiences switch off from our stories.

Be deliberate with the choices in stories!

We can ask audience’s good-will only so far: vampires? Sure. Dinosaurs? Sure. Vampire dinosaurs in space…?

Actually, I’d probably watch that. But you get my point.

Spend the budget of believability wisely!

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Have an awesome one. Until next time, go be spooky.

Mata xxx