Plausible Impossibilities

         When telling stories, Aristotle wrote, it was better to include a probable impossibility than an unconvincing possibility.  Aristotle wasn’t much of a fan of spec fic and his advice may be intended to hold for all fiction, but for me its interest lies in its application to fantasy world creation.  It’s a strange and fascinating fact that when telling stories of impossible worlds, it is nevertheless the case that some things seem less impossible, more real, than others.  Why is this?  And how is an author to make sure their stories are “believable” even when no one really believes them?

        Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined an important phrase when he wrote that he wanted to endow his poems of the supernatural with “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”  Of course “suspension of disbelief” doesn’t mean that readers (or viewers of movies, or whatever) really believe in the fantastical things they’re being told in the same way that they believe in the world outside the story.  Rather, they’re agreeing to engage in the story’s exploration of What if?  Yes yes, we know there’s no such thing as ghost-crewed ships, faster-than-light space travel, or dragons, but what if there were?

        Even for that conditional suspension of disbelief, the author needs to make the impossibilities seem probable.  J.R.R. Tolkien pointed out that readers are not so much setting aside or suspending their disbelief, but rather putting together a secondary system of belief based on the presented reality of a secondary world.  Whatever impossible rules apply within a fictional world, they must be consistent so that they are internally plausible.  (This is why, for example, I don’t quibble with Aragorn’s kingship in The Lord of the Rings even though democracy is a better system of government.  I accept the truth within the story that Aragorn being put on the throne is the best outcome in that world.)

        But all this still leaves the question of how to do it?  How to make those impossibilities in that fictional world seem plausible enough that the audience willingly suspends their disbelief and constructs a solid secondary belief system?  There are a whole host of strategies, and authors can make the magic work in a variety of ways for a variety of effects.  Some things to consider…

        • Although breaking the laws of physics is really a simple binary (possible or impossible), in fact people respond to a sense of how much natural laws seem to be pushed.  It seems that it would be harder to levitate a building (or a crash-landed X-wing) than a toad, and harder to control a hurricane than a local breeze.  So don’t break laws carelessly; don’t defy reality gratuitously.  In the 1920’s Walt Disney introduced a revolutionary concept to animation when he made sure that his animators paid attention to the laws of physics in everything except their magic.  The water sloshes realistically in the buckets of marching brooms, if a dwarf trips his beard flies up just like that of a real man tripping in the real world, and even a flying elephant is realistically affected by the wind.  Even while tweaking one thing, an author can keep the rest of our webs of reality intact.

        • On the other hand, sometimes it’s necessary to distort a whole section of the web around the breach.  Even when considering the impossible, humans have a sense of the logic of what would make something possible.  That’s why we like our magical systems to follow rules and our sci fi to have quasi-scientific explanations.  Magic should come from ley lines, or from the original language of creation, or from angels or demons or Old Gods, or from something…  Space ships should fly because of warp drives, or ion drives, or infinite improbability drives, or something…  Depending on the context, those rules and explanations can be pretty vague or far-fetched, but the author still needs to manipulate enough of the world around the magic to give the audience a sense that it’s internally consistent and plausible within that world.  Sometimes it’s just window dressing, but it can make or break an illusion.

        • Like any good con, speculative fiction works best when you tell a story people want to believe.  That’s where all the sparkly bits of the story come in.  If it’s fun, or beautiful, or intriguing, or full of wonder, the audience will want to spend time there.  Of course people like stories with dragons, because dragons would be so cool!  Ditto exploring the universe, or saving the gnomes from oppression, or going to a school for wizardry, or finding love with a faerie prince…  Offer the audience invitations to suspend their disbelief, and situations they want to spend time considering.

        • In all the discussion of far-future technologies and the glittery laws of magic, people sometimes forget that the most important aspect of “realism” may have little to do with the magic and more to do with those fundamental aspects of what it means to be a person responding to the world and our relationships within it.  In other words, it’s easier to believe in a fairy godmother who reacts to her loved ones in a plausibly human way than to believe in a perfectly mundane woman who doesn’t.  A sensitively portrayed friendship between a space kraken and a moonfrog will ring more true than a sloppy and shallow portrayal of relationships between “normal” humans.  That’s Coleridge’s “human interest,” I think.  If the author tells what feels like the truth about the deepest things, we’ll happily accept most of the other stuff.

        What are some of your favorite plausible impossibilities?  Or what are some things or tropes that you can simply never suspend your disbelief about?

[Pictures: Full many shapes, that shadows were, wood engraving by Gustave Doré from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1877 (Image from Parigi Books);

Marching broom, still from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, 1940 (Image from Disney Fandom).

Quotation from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817.]

Strange Lands

         Today we’re back to block printing, and I’ve got a little collection of landscapes that bring some artistic license to the view.

        First is a cityscape by Luigi Spacal that positively revels in geometry.  There are suggestions of windows and possibly girders or overhead rails, but for the most part this could be a purely abstract collection of patterns - but then there’s a bicycle right there on the street (if that’s the street), in front of the eyeglasses of an optometrist’s shop (if that’s an optometrists’s shop).  I find the whole thing delightfully quirky and surprisingly cheerful.

        The second piece by Betty Sieler is, by contrast, serene and peaceful: a forest on a misty day.  The interesting thing about this one is that it’s amazing how clearly it represents tree trunks, because when you look closely it’s really just seemingly rough and random vertical lines.  The two colors of grey make it even more of a mushy mess, and yet simultaneously give it even more realistic depth.  This kind of art often seems like magic to me, when rough and simple carving coheres into a perfect evocation of a precise scene.

        The final piece, by Madeleine Flaschner, is even more abstract.  In fact, perhaps it isn’t even meant to be a landscape at all.  It’s simply titled “Composition,” so it could actually be purely abstract.  And yet my pattern-seeking eyes see a landscape here: sky at the top, high cliffs in the distance, perhaps water in the foreground, maybe some trees or plants at the sides…  It’s something of a sampler of different patterns and textures, and whatever it is, it’s dramatic!

        Three very different styles, three very different landscapes, and yet each of these three artists manages to evoke a scene that is simultaneously suggestive of the world and imaginative in strange and magical ways.  Which is your favorite?

[Pictures: City in the Night, woodcut by Luigi Spacal, 19702 (Image from 1stDibs);

Woodlands, linocut by Betty Sieler, 1962 (Image from Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art);

Composition, woodcut by Madeleine Flaschner, late 20th century (Image from 1stDibs).]

National Poetry Month

         April is National Poetry Month, but since April is also A to Z Blog Challenge month, that always takes precedence on this blog.  This year, however, I was especially active with National Poetry Month and I wanted to share a recap of some of that poetry goodness, even if belated.

        First of all, I had a number of duties as Poet Laureate of my town.

        1.  On April 13 I attended the opening celebration of a fresh new Poetry Walk at a local church.  They had solicited spring-themed haiku from members of their congregation, and they asked me to contribute some, as well.  They then made special lawn-sign flip-charts with the poems, and placed them throughout their small Memorial Garden, making a lovely, interactive way to engage with spring poetry among the flowers and emerging leaves.  (One of my poems that they used was my dandelion haiku.)

        2. On April 16 I led a Poetry-Writing Workshop at the Needham library.  We started with a few creativity warm-up exercises, and then went through three prompts, spending about 15 minutes on each, and sharing our efforts at the end of each.  The attendees were enthusiastic, willing to try whatever I threw at them, and came up with some excellent poetry.  (They especially impressed me with their tricubes!  That was a form I definitely struggled with, but some of them were able to use the form to advantage in really clever and effective ways.)

        3. On April 28 I gave a presentation for Great Poetry Reading Day for the town’s Council on Aging.  My assignment was to talk about myself and the role of Poet Laureate, and to read a few Great Poems.  I put my presentation together by interspersing the poems throughout the talk as illustrations of certain points in my explanation of the Poet Laureate role and how I got there.  This went over very well, and I ended by having the audience throw out their own favorite poems, which I then looked up and read aloud for them.  (To pull this post back a little more toward the fantasy theme of this blog, I’ll note that the poems I shared included the “Jabberwocky” and “The Listeners.”)

        All three of these sessions were pretty well-attended by the proverbial choir, so the preaching was very enjoyable!  But of course part of my job is to enlarge that choir and get poetry in front of more people who don’t necessarily already consider themselves poetry-lovers.  An activity that hopefully took a step in that direction actually took place outside of Poetry Month, on the first weekend of May.  During the annual Open Studios, I got 10 artists (including myself) to host Poetry Stations, in which they gave out copies of poems to everyone who visited them.  For the Poetry Stations I had selected 10 poems that were inspired by works of art, with a range of poets from Shelley to Yolen to myself, and a range of art from ancient to renaissance to modern.  I’m still trying to collect feedback on how much engagement that project got, but it included visitors who were very excited and were planning to collect all the poems, but also plenty of people who didn’t evince any interest at all!

        In addition to those official activities, I also had some more personal poetry activity during the month.  I was very pleased to have a poem accepted by Haiku Newton, which has printed poems for display.  (It makes me laugh, though, that it’s another spring-themed haiku.  Why does everyone always want spring-themed haiku?  Come on, people - there are other themes and there are other forms!)  For the kick-off all the poems are on display at the Newton library, but over the course of the year they’ll be placed in different areas throughout the city.

        The other thing I did was write a poem every day throughout the month of April.  I’ve never done that before and I enjoyed it very much, although some of the days were certainly more successful than others!  To be clear, only a few of them are what I would consider a finished, polished poem, and many of them will probably never be worth polishing up any further.  But the point was to do the exercise, and that was definitely a success.  Mostly I used the prompts from NaPoWriMo and Readers Digest Poem a Day, although on a few days I just followed an idea of my own.  Of the 30 poems (or, to be clear, poem drafts) about 8 were on fantasy themes, mostly fairy tales.

        I definitely want to keep up the momentum, although the first 8 days of May were so wildly busy for me that it would be more accurate to hope that I can get back the momentum before it gets too far behind me.  National Poetry Month turned out to be a good kick in the pants for my poetical activities, but I certainly don’t want poetry to be confined to just one month.

[Pictures: assorted photos of First Parish Poetry Walk,

Poetry Stations at Needham Open Studios,

Haiku Newton poetry signs, photos by AEGNydam, 2025.]

Reflections on an A to Z of Bittersweetness & Light

         Thanks for another great April A to Z, everyone!  Thanks to the A to Z organizers, and thanks to every one of you who stopped by to comment on my posts.  I enjoyed visiting quite a few of your blogs, too.  However, the last week of April was quite ridiculously busy for me — I had work hanging in 5 shows simultaneously this past weekend! — so my time to visit and comment fell off at the end.  I look forward to reading the last few letters on all my favorites in the next week.

        Some years I have a long final post into which I try to cram lots of extra goodies that didn’t fit into the alphabet, but this year all I really have to say by way of conclusion is to reiterate some of my main points from this year’s A to Z:

        • If you enjoy the work of any small-time indie artists, authors, musicians, etc., your support really makes a huge difference to us.  Word of mouth is always best, but any way you can help connect us with other people who might enjoy our work, you’re making a vital contribution to our ability to keep bringing our creations into the world.

        • The world is pretty stressful right now for a lot of very real reasons, but if you feel overwhelmed, remember that your distress is artificially exacerbated by media algorithms that amplify outrage, human negativity bias that disproportionately focusses on reasons for fear, and a culture of cynicism that portrays hope and love as naive, foolish, and unrealistic.  But you don’t have to accept that.  Bring a healthy dose of skepticism to your cynicism.  Keep your eyes open for the cooperation, love, and delight that really are everywhere.  And keep valiantly resisting those who try to tell you that hatred and lies are normal and inevitable.  Such people are terrified of the power of kindness and hope, so let those be your superpowers.

        • If you’re interested in my next book project, stay tuned for future announcements via my newsletter and this blog.  It’s going to be another collection of short stories, poems, and art, and they’ll all be inspired by, reflecting on, and reimagining stories from Greek mythology, European fairy tales, and other classic folklore.  I hope to have some big news about the project in July.

        Thanks again to everyone who made such supportive, encouraging comments about Bittersweetness & Light.  I appreciate you very much.

        Marketing Moral: Thank you!

        Proper Moral: A book doesn’t truly live until someone reads it.

[Bittersweetness & Light by Anne E.G. Nydam, 2025 (Learn more at NydamPrints.com)].