Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an author and poet of the Romantic persuasion, perhaps most famously known for his work The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In his Biographia Literaria (penned alongside his friend and fellow poet William Wordsworth), Coleridge thought back to some of his more fantastic works (like Ancient Mariner), and noted, “It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

This phrase, “the willing suspension of disbelief,” has been tossed about frequently, especially after the advent of the fantasy genre. When experiencing fiction, we engage with events that never happened and persons that never were, and so must “suspend our disbelief” in these fake things in order to enjoy the story. This need for suspension is exacerbated by elements like dragons, magic, and simply inhuman determination, which are all commonplace elements of fantasy and company.

In short, this phrase encapsulates the experience when an author (or director or screenwriter) abides by the fictional rules of his or her world within the narrative. We suspend our disbelief relative to the skill of the creator in fashioning coherent and consistent fictional worlds and people.

It is an attractive phrase. There is a reason it has stuck around for so long and worked itself in as part of the “how-to” writer’s canon. It rightly emphasizes striving for verisimilitude and consistency in one’s work. However, there are two problems.

The phrase and the mentality behind it are incorrect.

I do wish to reiterate that the phrase is relatively workable, but unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist, “workable” and “truthful” do not necessarily coincide. Furthermore, the phrase promotes certain misconceptions.

I will look at the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” in detail. Each word, barring “of,” carries strong implications that do not necessarily coincide with what we want out of a good story, nor always with reality. First, I will view the words in turn and what they imply, then move into why these implications do not work.

“Willing” carries two adjacent but not identical connotations. Firstly, an antonymous one: not unwilling. That is, “willing” means one is not opposed to an action taking place. However, that could just as easily mean pure apathy, which brings us to the second connotation: “willing” implies movement. Maybe it is desire (movement of the heart) for something to occur, or maybe it is an actual attempt to bring that something about.

When paired with the second word “suspension,” we see that it is the latter. Suspension requires the participation, rather than simply not nonparticipation, from the party doing the suspending. “Suspension” further implies that there is a sort of separation taking place.

When we pair “suspension” with “disbelief,” it becomes clear what we are separating ourselves from: the real world. From a purely factual standpoint, all fiction is lies. It does not 100% correspond to actual things that have happened or the laws that govern our universe.

In summary, “willing suspension of disbelief” is the conscious and intentional choosing to put aside Earthly preconceptions in order to engage with the story and its unearthly peculiarities. With this dissection out of the way, let us now look at why the phrase is incorrect.

Is it truly “willing?” I do not believe so. When we sit down to read a book, we do not pull out some spiritual key and lock our Earth-thoughts away. Indeed, if we did so, we would not enjoy fiction, or at least fantasy and its kin, as much as we do. Magic is exciting precisely because it deviates from what we know to be “real.” In other words, we must be conscious of reality (or put another way, we must maintain our belief) to be as fascinated as we are.

In fact, it is not “willing” because we, the readers, are not the sole actors in the situation. The author, or more precisely, his or her book, also participates. That verisimilitude mentioned earlier prompts what has been called the suspension of disbelief, rather than being created by that suspension.

If it is not willing, then it implies that there is no suspension going on either. Perhaps it could be said that the book forces us to suspend, but that is rather silly. Consider this: reading has often been compared to a religious experience. Such a thing is no mere “suspension;” it is a full buying-in. Why would this comparison be made? Well, that leads us to the last counter and the title of this essay.

The core of religion is belief, which is of course the opposite of disbelief. And in some sense, “disbelief” is the core of “the willing suspension of disbelief.” What disbelief claims is that enjoyment of a story necessitates the exile of Earth in order to temporarily engage with a fake world. Once that engagement has concluded, the suspension of disbelief is therefore broken, and Earth returns.

But that is clearly not what happens. Consider conventions, where fans arrive en masse robed in the regalia of whatever fandom they represent. Consider those who look up to fictional characters as their role models. Consider children as they play-act outside, lost in the fictional worlds they love.

The reason fiction is compared to religion is because of belief, not disbelief. It is not a temporary suspension of the real that fosters enjoyment, but immersion in the fiction. “The willing suspension of disbelief” focuses entirely on Earth, but what is actually happening when enjoying a story is that the fictional world takes precedence.

Some might reasonably argue that immersion, in the end, is just the other side of the willing suspension of disbelief coin. After all, to sink into a fictional world is to abandon our own. Nonetheless, I would contend that the focus is different. “Willing suspension of disbelief” implies that there is no enchantment in story, and that the times and places and people that are not real cannot move us so long as we are bound to Earth.

To quote Neil Gaiman’s paraphrase of G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” In other words, fairy tales, and fiction more broadly, give us a truth “truer than true.” It is not a rejection of truth that allows us a love of story, but stories’ ability to more accurately and powerfully communicate truth which draws us in. That I think is the key: it is not a rejection, as Coleridge’s phrase indicates, but a welcoming.

J.R.R. Tolkien contended with Coleridge’s phrase on occasion. In “On Fairy Stories,” he said, “But at no time can I remember that the enjoyment of a story was dependent on belief that such things could happen, or had happened, in ‘real life’.”

The goal of fiction is not to dismiss with Earth but to fashion a new world entire (something Tolkien called “sub-creation”, a useful alternative, I think, to Coleridge’s phrase). We seek “the inner consistency of reality,” as Tolkien put it, but manifested in a realm that is not our own. Earth, as representative of what has or could happen, to paraphrase Tolkien, is not necessary to the enjoyment or quality of the fictional work. If anything, the fictional stories and worlds must be able to stand on their own.

If we are suspending our disbelief, then something has gone awry. An event has occurred or inconsistency arisen that does not jive with what has gone before in the narrative. Therefore, our only means of continuing through the story with a modicum of “buying in” is through suspension of disbelief. It is not a commitment we make at the start, but is only necessary when a story has broken.

But the good writer creates a world that we believe in. We suspend nothing. It is not subtractive, but additive. Rather than putting aside the “real” world in order to participate in a “fake” one, we receive a second world. This is why such fervent arguments arise surrounding the canonicity of this or that new entry into a franchise, or whether or not a character “would have done that.” If it is all merely falsehood, especially if it is a suspension that must necessarily end when we “return” to the real world, such arguments make no sense.

Instead, we care passionately about the fictional worlds in which we are sojourners. When characters we love suffer or triumph, not only do we mourn or celebrate with them, but we bear that with us beyond the pages into the “real” world. Fiction bleeds into reality through us.

So rather than the pseudo-atheistic conception of spurning reality in order to engage with some whimsical tale, it is instead a pseudo-religious, participatory experience. We are moved by the power of story rather than willingly putting aside supposed disbelief, and quite in contradiction to disbelief, we believe in the secondary world. There is a truth to these created realities which compels us beyond anything like what “fakeness” could provide. These worlds are real, after a fashion.

And isn’t it far more enjoyable to think of fiction not as some childish escapism, but instead an adventure into the unplumbed horizon? Or maybe that’s just me.