Let's see how it works out this time! 🖊

If you haven't tried this approach before, it's worth it. Give it a shot and see what happens!

to reiterate my point more clearly: suspension of disbelief and understanding conventions of storytelling is critical analysis while nitpicking like you're cinemasins is just annoying

From Tolkien’s essay “On fairy stories”

"Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called "willing suspension of disbelief." But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful "sub-creator." He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is "true": it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying ... to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed."

I had that exact essay in mind when I wrote this originally!!

Not to nuance my own post, but I love the idea of a distinction between a willing suspension of disbelief (something that requires obliged effort) and the rare magic spell a literary work weaves where little to no effort is required to believe the "truth" of the make-believe world.

Here comes the nuance!

Sometimes your problem with the media being "unbelievable" is because you're in cinemasins-mode and you're not even entertaining any form of suspension of disbelief (i.e. accepting the conventions of storytelling). The solution there, I might suggest, is to consume less of that brand of "critical" content (the sort who would "ding" a musical for, surprise, having all the characters belt out their feelings).

On the other hand, sometimes the problem isn't actually you (that's nice to hear!) and the media you're reading/watching/whatever is actually failing to effectively create this, as Tolkien puts it, "Secondary World". You were perhaps watching this TV show completely engrossed and willing to suspend your disbelief about dragons and unicorns and gnomes and then POP! some weird little throw-away line or plot point bursts the dazy spell you were, until then, lulled under.

Perhaps you can believe in said dragons-and-unicorns-and-gnomes but then the story brings in, I don't know, helicopters. If the writer set this up well, establishing the "laws" of their Secondary World where this could be very unlikely but still believable, still following the rules, perhaps this wouldn't burst the spell-bubble. The magic remains unbroken and effortless. But, if it was executed poorly, if the introduction of this bizarre element isn't woven into the rules of this world, it goes from very unlikely to downright impossible. It sticks out like a rupturing thorn.

In this case, you either have the chance to just accept it and "stifle" your disbelief, something that is now a chore rather than something as effortless as breathing, or I don't know, go online and make an angry YouTube video. But as a writer (and as a reader who likes good writing), it's a great exercise to critically analyze the work (Hurray! We finally got back to critical analysis!) and why it didn't work. What broke the spell? How does this violate the Secondary World? Why can't you believe it? Why is it actively lying in the face of the established "rules" that have been established?

Congratulations you're not cinema-sins nitpicking but interacting with a piece of media with sincere intent and a critical mind!

Thank you so much for this!

Nobody:

Me, age 12, just started drinking coffee:

I drew 14 pictures during the day, and wrote 32 pages a night. Now I can’t do shit.

A huge part of this is because you've gotten better! And now, when you're drawing/writing/doing whatever creative task, you're not just mindlessly throwing thoughts at your paper, you're thinking as you do it. Children can churn out a lot more work because it's not yet refined, but when you're older and have more practice, you work with all these thoughts running through your head about form and shape, color palettes or word choice. Now, you're making a dozen decisions with every moment of work, and you're also questioning the decisions you've just made, wondering if you can do it better. Don't beat yourself up about producing less work now than you did back then, because every sentence or shape involves a lot more effort for you now, than it did when you were ten and brand new to this hobby.

Also you have a job now and the never-ending bullshit that is laundry and dishes and feeding yourself.

WE NEED THEM BACK ‼️‼️‼️

it doesnt have to be good or anything you can just write things and post them and it doesnt matter at all

“your story sucks” what are you going to do? refund the money u didn’t pay? you are a bozo