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Q&A How do I make a "contract" with my reader?

The answer by DPT gave an example, which was: write a small prologue, or preambel, about a well-known story (for example a biblical one), and then sum it up with something like "Sometimes truth lie...

posted 5y ago by PoorYorick‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:17:42Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43415
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar PoorYorick‭ · 2019-12-08T11:17:42Z (almost 5 years ago)
The answer by DPT gave an example, which was: write a small prologue, or preambel, about a well-known story (for example a biblical one), and then sum it up with something like "Sometimes truth lies not in the facts, but in the ideas under the facts."

This is admittedly a rather (for lack of a better word) "high-brow" way of solving this, it might be too elegant and intellectually-minded for a story about supernatural teens in a post-apocalyptic world. But you can do it in a simpler fashion. **You can just start the novel with a sentence about the supernatural elements.**

> _When the bombs fell, people realized that life as they knew it was over. When the laser-shooting mutants came, people realized that people as they knew them were over._

Making this kind of contract is easy, the problem only appears when you _start_ the novel by giving lots of scientific explanations for the post-apocalyptic world and then _change direction_ to a largely unscientific fantasy novel. Basically, write in one of your first sentences about something supernatural, maybe write about it in a laissez-faire fashion, "that's just the way it is now". If people complain about it, then they're curmudgeons who will always complain that "actually, technically, this is not possible". You can safely ignore those people. You will never make everyone happy, and these people can go back to _Star Trek_ or whatever is more to their liking.

Humour also always helps. People are much less sticklers for scientific rigor when they laugh. That's part of the Marvel formula. Or look at _Futurama_. That's actually a cartoon that is highly scientific in some places, but doesn't ever take itself so serious that people would start expecting correct scientific explanations. So when suddenly real scientific explanations _are_ given in the show, it's noted as a welcome surprise.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-13T09:24:26Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 0