Sometimes when you read a story, you shake your head and say, “This is impossible!" But somewhere out there, somebody is reading the same story. He suspends his element of disbelief and buys the story as plausible. Regardless of its genre, the reader is convinced that the story conveys an impression of reality.

Fiction often represents figurative ideas to simulate reality. If a reader wants hardcore reality in the story he reads, he is better off with nonfiction or his bank statement.

Many readers accept Conan as a formidable barbarian capable of defeating any powerful wizard, that Peter Pan has amazing reflexes to dodge Captain Hook’s fencing strikes, that Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective that can solve any murder case, that Katniss Everdeen is a remarkable archer who can survive in a life and death game.

All these characters represent make-believe fiction with the common theme of overcoming insurmountable obstacles. Characters in classic and contemporary fiction have become measuring sticks of morals and ideals so that we follow their adventures as if we are fighting with them side by side. We are teleported into imaginative worlds with unimaginable situations that we accept without question.

It is up to the writer to make his story believable, no matter what genre he writes and what devices he uses in writing the unbelievable.

First Example: A salesman wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a huge, monstrous insect. His transformation incapacitates him and he becomes a burden to his family. His father locks him in his room under grave threats. His sister shies away from him but supplies him with food.

This is Franz Kafka’s classic, “The Metamorphosis,” in which the term “Kafkaesque” has been derived to mean having oppressive or nightmarish qualities similar to Kafka’s fictional world.

Second Example: A wizard tricks a short human with furry feet to host a party for a band of dwarves. The dwarves sing about reclaiming a mountain with vast treasure guarded by an evil dragon. The wizard reveals plans on how to infiltrate the mountain and, although reluctant, the short human agrees to join the treacherous expedition. This is J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel, “The Hobbit.”

Third example: A prince kisses and revives a lifeless princess after she ate a poisoned apple. True love’s kiss made them live happily ever after. Who isn’t familiar with the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”?

Over the years, I have read many such stories and I would say that believing the unbelievable has changed the way I read fiction by giving me a new and richer way of understanding writer’s creativity. If you have read these stories, you can see how their authors cultivated invention to make their plot and characters believable. You can invent characters and situations and make your readers believe that they are living in that invented world. Part of believing is that need to temporarily escape from the mundane world that we inhabit and pretend that we are part of the adventure.