I hardly read fiction. I have always preferred to read non-fiction books. In fact, I was going through the list of 40+ books that I have read so far and only two of them can be categorized as fiction. The nearest thing to fiction that I have read is biographies of some great people. I know biographies are technically categorized as non-fiction but that’s the point I am trying to make.
I never really understood why people liked to read fiction so much. To me, reading a book has to add some value to my knowledge, or teach me something practical that I can apply in my life. For lack of better words, I felt reading fiction was a total waste of time as I don’t “learn” anything new from it. I know, people read fiction to enjoy a good story but it never really appealed to me.
This is very much inline with my lack of interest in superhero or fantasy movies. I never liked them. If anything, I found them really annoying. I found it very hard to wrap my head around all those sci-fi concepts, visual effects and unrealistic plots. All I could do while watching such movies was pointing out how illogical and senseless the story was.
Suspension of disbelief
Last year, I was read a book about sociology when I learnt about a concept called “suspension of disbelief”. Now I find it surprising that I never knew the existence of such a concept.
Suspension of disbelief is the act of temporarily ignoring the unrealistic, illogical and impossible narrative of a fictional story with the intent of fully engaging and enjoying it.
The definition can definitely sound wordy but all it means is that we need to shutdown our logical thinking and accept the fictional story as-is. We don’t have to constantly question the plausibility and possibility of the fictional world and point out logical loopholes in the story.
Instead, we have to willingly focus on engaging ourselves fully into the storyline in order to enjoy it. It doesn’t come naturally to us. Especially so for people like me who tend to be a lot more skeptical about a story.
Practicing suspension of disbelief
Ever since I “learnt” about this concept, I am trying to practice it actively. I am forcing myself to watch fictional movies and read fictional books.
So far, as part of my practice, I have done the impossible and watched the full series of Harry Potter movies. I never thought I could even sit through watching a single Harry Potter movie but I have seen all eight of them now. I was definitely engaged in the storyline and enjoyed some bits of it. Of course, my skeptical brain was constantly trying to point of logical loopholes in the plots but I was able to successfully “suspend my disbelief”.
Murder on the Orient Express
Next, as part of my practice I decided to read a fictional book. I decided to go for the mystery genre and picked up Murder on Orient Express by Agatha Christie. It was a 300 page book and it took me around 7 weeks to complete it. It’s a classic novel written almost 100 years ago so the language felt distinct. I did enjoy the story but I found it to be very slow paced and the climax was a bit underwhelming to me. I am planning to read more such fictional books in the future and explore other genres as well.