Sorry for the very late post on ‘Q’ day. I stared writing this post yesterday, and life got in the way. I slept in this morning. Until seven am. If you’re looking for a point of reference, I don’t wake up with an alarm clock. I pretty much am conscious between five and six am. Always. It’s just the way my brain works. But this morning, seven. It was awesome ^_^

And before eight, I had an e-mail from the most amazing recruiter in all of history, giving me final confirmation that I had an awesome job offer. And the rest of my day was spent running around filling out paperwork and getting my fingerprints taken.

But now, I’m back with my Q post. WOOT ^_^

We’re watching the ‘Star Wars’ movies right now. The OT (original trilogy), no the new ones. For some reason, we’re watching them backwards, which isn’t really relevant, but is still a little odd and unexplainable.

As we watch the movies, we keep coming up with these questions. “Why did he do that?” “Why didn’t they think of this?” “Where did that come from?”

Not the best way to keep a viewer engaged in your film. Suspension of disbelief is so key in any good story, and if you can’t suspend it…you lose your audience.

So how do you keep it intact? This is a question I used to ask myself. If you have an element you want to introduce to the story, and its an obscure idea that you’re not ready to explain yet for plot reasons, how do you keep the reader from losing interest before you get there?

And then someone explained it to me. I thought it was brilliant and it’s a piece of writing advice I very rarely see anywhere.

If you think the reader is going to ask the question, have one of your characters ask it at the same time. You don’t have to have it spoken aloud, it can be a musing. And you don’t have to give the answer right then. But if you ask the question at the same time as the reader, they know it’s not just a plot hole that you forgot to fill. An inconsistency missed in your editing. They’ll realize it’s there, and possibly even gloss over it until it becomes important again.

Any other suggestions for how to avoid losing suspension of disbelief in storytelling?