Suspension Of Disbelief: What Storytellers Should Know - Margaret Kerrison

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Born in Indonesia and raised in Singapore, Margaret Kerrison received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Her career spans television, film, digital media, games, brand storytelling, location-based entertainment, and immersive experiences. She has worked as a Story Lead, Story Consultant, and Writer for multiple projects around the world, including Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Star Wars: Launch Bay, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, Avengers Campus, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, National Geographic HQ, and the NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Journey to Mars: Explorers Wanted. She was the writer for five projects that won Themed Entertainment Association (THEA) Awards. She has appeared in the Disney+ series Behind the Attraction, the Freeform television special Star Wars: Galaxy‘s Edge - Adventure Awaits, and the online educational program Imagineering in a Box. She was a Disney Imagineer from 2014-2021. She is currently a Sr. Experiential Creative Lead at Airbnb. Immersive Storytelling for Real and Imagined Worlds - A Writer’s Guide is her first book.
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#film #movies #story

[@albertabramson3157]

People go into the theater optimistically, even trying to help the story work. We love movies until they fall flat or worse, waste our time with a series of disconnected events with no theme and no story.

[@christianthompson1473]

Suspension of disbelief is an agreement between the storyteller and the audience on a certain set of rules for the story environment. The audience want to enjoy the experience and they are willing to agree to anything .. but ONLY as long as the rules are respected. The storyteller mustn't break their own rules.

[@Spamkromite]

Very true, and a good reason for the writer to always jot down notes about how their universes work, and to think before committing to create a situation that could compromise the balance of laws and rules you already have set. It's also a good "Dungeon Master" practice.

[@jim9685769]

It's shocking that Marvel has been able to get away with characters that can do absolutely anything, at any time, for any reason, under any conditions. Live action cartoons. Ugh!

[@user-eq8ww1gr6v]

Automatically turned my thoughts to Tolkien's discussion on secondary belief in his 'On the Monsters & the Critics'

[@theTeslaFalcon]

A better question is what takes the audience out of the story & breaks their suspension of disbelief. #1: Illogic. A gross lack of internal consistency. #2: Preachiness. Present the plate of lessons, but I will choose which one I swallow, if any. #3: Every day impossibilities. What makes that impossible action even plausible let alone a regular occurance there?

[@kazzoo8722]

#4: Soulless robotic puppet characters, mass produced in a factory, then shipped out to the Propaganda Facility to be coated with a thin layer of "individuality."

[@theTeslaFalcon]

@@kazzoo8722 That gets into the character-driven plot vs plot-driven character.

[@juju10683]

Blake Snyder said "double mumbo jumbo" is one. Only ask the audience to believe one stupid/implausible/sci fi/fantasy thing.

[@ccwoodlands1565]

Hmm…I always thought of it as the audience comes in ALREADY suspending their disbelief and it’s up to the writer and director to not break the illusion.

[@Spamkromite]

I guess that's because the audience comes with inflated expectations from the trailers and other general media. Sometimes the trailers are just a lie 🤣

[@Spamkromite]

Amazing. I'm an immersion junkie so it's very difficult to satisfy my suspension of disbelief. If the worldbuilding is good, I get a blast, but when everything tethers from a thin strand of "last page exposition" because nothing really was built towards that moment, I get a ton of disappointment. Videogames have this a little easier because they can convey world-building visually, while focusing on the juicy parts of the plot. However, I found that having the characters struggle with their own world was a good method to give the reader a good glimpse of the world and subsequent immersion into it. You know, every world has their rules and the like, specially if the characters live in a society. If they travel this is an incredible opportunity for faux-pas and other type of character struggles that can get the reader invested into the strange types of "universal laws" and other lesser laws the world of your book is about.

[@mikebasil4832]

Thank you, Margaret, for having so many resonating things to say.

[@christophermoonlightproduction]

I have a very different view on what suspension of disbelief is. Like all else, it's not the responsibility of the audience. It is accomplished when the storyteller uses their medium to such affect that the audience can access what you're trying to convey to them with such a little amount of effort that they understand and relate to it in a way that transcends the every day rules of reality.

[@Spamkromite]

Actually my same thoughts. The author is completely responsible of all the impact their work will imprint into the audience. I'm not in blame for having a high standard suspension of disbelief to break. I've read and studied a ton in order to write good sci-fi--and if the author failed at their research homework, the resultant work would end in a disaster of communication between them and the audience.

[@posefile8873]

Lot of words to basically say “Did you get your audience to ‘buy-in’ to the story?” It really comes down to defining your story world (and it’s rules) for the audience AND then being consistent in that definition…

[@crystalding5589]

I think you're exactly right. But that's also exactly why her advice was useful for me. She uses other words to describe story believability and world buy-in, tying it back to a very simple goal. She's just rotating the lens a bit here and making us see this age-old necessity of story-telling in a new way, which for me - gave me explicit ideas on how to refresh my technique.

[@runarvollan]

Michael Haneke's 'Funny Games' (1997/2007) is an "interactive" movie in that for the characters to survive it literally suggests you turn it off.

[@peterkalyabe7553]

I like her take on storytelling.

[@theresameade6633]

Love this. Immersive writing 👏🏽👏🏽

[@TheWilkReport]

Suspension of disbelief has its limits, and too many writers today don't understand this. One reason shows like Star Trek and films like Star Wars worked so well in the 1960s and 1970s is that the creative teams understood that they had to keep their fantastic tales just enough in the realm of believability so as to get and keep the audience immersed in the story. Go too far, and the audience is taken out, and not inclined to remain.

[@danieljackson654]

Excellent.

[@toddpacker1015]

Make whatever rules for your universe as you want but once you got them down don't break them otherwise the spell is broken. People surviving lightsaber stabs in Star Wars for example. Twice.

[@juju10683]

or Leia floating back into the space ship from outer space.

[@toddpacker1015]

@@juju10683 such an awful scene

[@georgew2014]

Her insights apply to VR and AR narratives. I'm speaking as an AR narrative designer.

[@clintoreilly]

Some good insight. Thanks.

[@johnwillards6837]

I love to see people correct their own grammar when they speak

[@joannkelly7994]

Thank you. Very interesting,

[@filmcourage]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@leonorrivera6379]

That's why the musical genre is the genre I dislike most because I have a hard time suspending my disbelief when the characters suddenly sing in the midst of anger or misery or chaos. Because in real life, you don't see people randomly sing out in the streets.

[@azia3337]

Love her advice

[@nathanericschwabenland88888]

You see this all the time with video games of course

[@nathanericschwabenland88888]

And then there is mold breakers in anime

[@genethedancinmachine5483]

Yes but How do we achieve this suspension of disbelief?

[@runarvollan]

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. - Pablo Picasso

[@filmcourage]

Thank you for the comment, Runar. If you're interested in a fascinating documentary, the Perspective KZbin channel has this new upload: "The Artist Who Got Rich Forging Picasso & Matisse | Real Fake: Elmyr de Hory" kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJndk3-XodJ8eM0.

[@gregorylagrange]

It doesn't have to go so far as to becoming immersed in the world created. It really just needs to be accepted as likely to happen as it's being portrayed given the parameters of the story and the world the story is in. A character that can fly like in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon you can suspend disbelief because with making the characters able to fly, you still make the characters succumb to some basic principles of physics if they could fly. Something the movie Gravity really missed on. A movie far more grounded in reality, yet with some grave mistakes that you kept saying "that wouldn't happen" throughout the movie. But with Crouching Tiger, you just enjoyed it. And you see it continued to be done with female characters in science fiction. Sigourney Weaver continues to be the example of "that's how you do it" while Star Wars continues to get trashed. And they're doing it with Predator and many other franchises.

[@xr.spedtech]

The only way this is possible is with character/protagonist bonding ... This is tough to pull off perfectly...

[@Spamkromite]

Icosahedral "love-triangles"!

[@kingMadnus]

I know people are gonna say I’m a jerk for this but speaking of suspension of disbelief I couldn’t suspend my disbelief that an invisible man would stalk Elizabeth Moss

[@thereccher8746]

"Believability" is way too subjective because it's always based on someone's personal philosophy and world view.

[@toddpacker1015]

You can't be more wrong. Breaking the rules of your fictional universe destroys the believability. If things makes sense within the universe parameters then everyone will believe it.

[@thereccher8746]

@@toddpacker1015 What about fantasy worlds like the one in Spirited Away. One of the most beloved anime films ever made, and Miyazaki said he deliberately made it inconsistent to add to the feel of it. And yes, rules are a part of story-telling, but audiences have a way of enforcing their own rules onto a story based on their own life experiences.