User blog:Zathronas/Author's Advice: Believability

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Hello and welcome to author's advice.

Yesterday, I was watching man of steel with a friend. After the movie ended, I asked him what he thought of it. Here's his response. "It wasn't very good, no one would believe superman would kill like that."

Here was the story about an alien from an almost extinct race who can fly, shoots heat rays from his eyes and has incredible strength. Destroys half a city battling the remnant of his race who was trying to terraform our world to be like their old one and what my friend didn't believe was that superman killed in cold blood.

Why?

Then there's the case of the StarTrek reboot. They change the established fact of known background. They even destroyed Vulcan. Which changes completely the dynamic of every character we've known and it's generally accepted as a good reboot.

What's the difference?

Because superman has 70 years of established character development under its belt and you can't change the facts by saying it's a reboot. Star Trek got the reboot right because they explained the change by making it the main plot. There's a lesson here for writers. Believability in your story depends greatly on how you explain your plots.

If your creating your world, you need to establish your rule and once their established you better have a good explanation to break it. If your writing a fan fiction,  your plots has better follow established rules or you need a damn good explanation for the change.

Same thing for characters, you can't have them change their established personality because it's convienient to the plot. You need to explain the change in a believable way or change your plot to accomodate them. Not the other way around.

You can write pretty much anything you want. As long as you explain it properly, most readers will believe it.

Next time on Author's advice, the monster named convoluted.