Everybody gets one

So I'm on the road getting forms filled out and ready for my trip to China. Step one is over, thankfully, which involved getting notarized documents authenticated at the state capitol building. I thought that would be worse than it was, but we were pleasantly surprised at how quickly we went through everything. Even had time to enjoy the museum attached to the building.

Next up is heading all the freakin' way out to Los Angeles. Hopefully that will be made a little better by a Disneyland trip and maybe meeting a Mulkerin or two. Still, it's a long ways away and it's costing an arm and a leg to get out there. Now that I think about it, it's not that much cheaper making the trip than it will be to make the trip out to China itself. Hopefully we get everything done right on that one because there's no going back for a forgotten charger on that particular trip.

But not everything is about my China trip, shockingly, so let's delve just a little into something literary. In this particular case, let's look at suspension of disbelief. I was listening to Writing Excuses, which if you're not listening to by now, why not? Anyway, they mentioned something great in this particular episode. For any fantasy or fictional world in general, you get one thing... just one... that your audience will buy into without a fuss. Everything after that you need to justify.

So for example, let's say we're talking about a vampire book. Okay, the one you get is vampires are real and perhaps they have various levels of shininess when exposed to sunlight. The vampires we can handle, we don't need to have an explanation. But if you decide suddenly that your main character can fly, you're going to need to give us a reason. There's only so much you can ask your audience for.

This is a direct reference to people saying, "Oh, you can buy space wizards, but you can't buy talking cats?" Well, there's a reason. Your viewer/reader is only usually willing to give you one thing for free. It's about people needed to "loosen up" or "just enjoy the show;" we've all seen the intro to Mystery Science Theater 3000. But unless you're making a complete farce, a total parody, you only get one. Isn't that right Spider-Man?

DFTBA