mxpw's Scribe Theater Three Thousand

So earlier I wrote about suspending your disbelief while watching TV or reading a book. I talked about how important it is to immerse your audience in the world you've created for them because if you don't, they'll no longer be your audience. Well, I touched on that briefly, but now I'm going to go more in-depth with the whole idea.

I am going to discuss how you get your audience to suspend their belief and then I'm going to cover what happens when you don't.

How to make your readers/audience suspsend their disbelief

There is a lot that goes into this, as it's such a broad range of ideas, but ultimately, it all comes down to one thing: you must committ. Frea and I have discussed this what seems ad nauseum on this blog but it really is one of the single most important tenets a writer should follow. Commit. No matter what you do, commit to it. Not committing to your plan of action is the fastest way to breaking your audience's interest in your product or ruining their suspension of disbelief.

Typically there are two ways most shows go about convincing their audience to suspend their disbelief (this applies primarily to premises that are fantastical or full of science fiction elements): they either play it completely straight and serious or they introduce satirical elements into their presentation and present it as a