Are you worthy of the trust of your readers?
Right now the number of books available is immense.
Through libraries and bookstores, both physical and online, every reader can access almost every book that has ever been written.
So, today more than ever, the reader by starting to read our novel takes an act of trust.
And as writers we have to ask ourselves a question: am I worthy of the trust of my readers?
The principle of suspension of disbelief
To try to answer this fundamental question, let’s introduce the principle of suspension of disbelief.
The principle was introduced by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the fourteenth chapter of his Biographia Literaria, published in 1817.
The principle of suspension of disbelief is a tacit agreement between the reader and the writer in which the reader agrees to suspend his own critical sense and trust the writer’s words while being perfectly aware that it’s fiction.
The principle of suspension of disbelief allows the reader to enjoy the story.
During the reading, the reader doesn’t ask himself questions and, as soon as he closes the book or he turns off his e-reader, the magic stops and the reader returns to reality.
A question of trust
As Coleridge wrote, starting to read a novel, the reader trusts the writer.
And the writer shall act to deserve that trust, otherwise, the reader will stop the reading of the story.
So, how will the writer prove himself worthy of the trust of his readers?
It’s quite simple: the writer must tell a believable story.
And since every story starts from the conflict of characters, a believable story must start from believable characters.
Believable characters
Characters that are completely good or completely evil are stereotypes and therefore are not believable.
Characters are believable when you can understand the complexity of their human nature: qualities, defects, contradictions.
So, how can we create believable characters?
The only way is to know everything about them.
Physical aspect, behavior, psychology, sociology, ideas, passions, their life before the beginning of the novel.
It doesn’t matter if in our novel will be shown even one day of the life of our characters: the way they will live that day, every single gesture, will be the result of their way of being and experiences lived until the day before.
Interview your characters!
bibisco is a novel writing software that can really help you to know your characters.
In order to do this, bibisco proposes a funny and unusual method to know them: an interview!
Every aspect to know about a character has a dedicated card and for each aspect a series of questions.
The characters’ interview is one of the bibisco features that writers appreciate the most.
They say that question after question the characters take shape and become real.
William Faulkner
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
Conclusion
By starting to read our novel, readers decide they trust us.
To be worthy of this trust we have to create a believable story based upon believable characters.
The only way to create believable characters is by knowing everything about them. Using bibisco characters’ interviews we can do it in an effective and funny way.
