"The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief"
About this Quote
Fred Saberhagen, a craftsman of both science fiction and fantasy, places the foundation of good writing where it belongs: in the shared toolkit of all writers. Clear prose, believable characters, purposeful structure, rhythm, revision, and an ear for language do not belong to any one genre. They are the common disciplines. What separates speculative work, in his view, is an added habit of mind: a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.
The phrasing flips the familiar idea of suspending disbelief. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief to accept dragons or sentient starships. The writer, Saberhagen suggests, must suspend belief, which is a deeper and more generative act. Belief includes assumptions about what is possible, what people are like, how society works, what the universe allows. To suspend belief is to bracket those assumptions with a sense of play and curiosity, to let the story try on alternatives without the dead weight of certainty.
Cheerfulness matters. Grim skepticism can paralyze imagination, while zeal can harden it. A cheerful disposition signals openness and delight in discovery. It encourages experiments like portraying Dracula as a principled protagonist or imagining machines bent on erasing life, then asking how human beings might respond. Saberhagen’s own work thrives on logical rigor paired with playful audacity: extrapolations anchored in craft but unafraid to break away from received wisdom.
There is also a quiet discipline in suspending belief. It keeps the writer from proselytizing. When the author sets aside personal certainties, characters become more than mouthpieces, worlds more than allegories, plots more than arguments. This suspension does not reject truth; it pauses conviction long enough to see what else might be true for these people, in this universe, under these rules.
So the recipe is not a shortcut. Master the ordinary tools. Then, smiling, loosen the grip on what you think you know and let imagination test the boundaries. Craft provides credibility; suspended belief provides possibility.
The phrasing flips the familiar idea of suspending disbelief. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief to accept dragons or sentient starships. The writer, Saberhagen suggests, must suspend belief, which is a deeper and more generative act. Belief includes assumptions about what is possible, what people are like, how society works, what the universe allows. To suspend belief is to bracket those assumptions with a sense of play and curiosity, to let the story try on alternatives without the dead weight of certainty.
Cheerfulness matters. Grim skepticism can paralyze imagination, while zeal can harden it. A cheerful disposition signals openness and delight in discovery. It encourages experiments like portraying Dracula as a principled protagonist or imagining machines bent on erasing life, then asking how human beings might respond. Saberhagen’s own work thrives on logical rigor paired with playful audacity: extrapolations anchored in craft but unafraid to break away from received wisdom.
There is also a quiet discipline in suspending belief. It keeps the writer from proselytizing. When the author sets aside personal certainties, characters become more than mouthpieces, worlds more than allegories, plots more than arguments. This suspension does not reject truth; it pauses conviction long enough to see what else might be true for these people, in this universe, under these rules.
So the recipe is not a shortcut. Master the ordinary tools. Then, smiling, loosen the grip on what you think you know and let imagination test the boundaries. Craft provides credibility; suspended belief provides possibility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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