(Originally published at the UNbound blog)

All authors, all movie-makers, need in some way, shape, or form for their audiences to suspend disbelief. Whether it's Star Trek to believe we can beam someone across light years, or Wolverine where mutants exist, or Die Hard where one lone New York cop can do everything Bruce Willis did. The person telling the tale wants the audience to be invested in the lives of the characters.

Creating a universe where an audience won't say "Come on!" or "That'll never happen!" requires a delicate balance. We've all sat through movies or read books (or started them at least) where the moment something happens outside the believable, we stop watching or toss the book aside.

That moment is where the creative forces behind the project drop the ball.

I recently read a book, I won't name names, where the villain caught a teacup with his pinky, didn't spill a drop of tea, and handed it back to the heroine. Give me a break! An author has to know how far to push the limits with the audience. We'll readily accept vampires, witches, and mummies, but when you make the terrible mistake of having an ordinary guy catch a teacup midair like that, you've lost your audience.

In my Dark Desire of the Druids series, I ask my audience to accept that Magickers exist. Everyone knows about them, it's not a secret. There's even a department within the British government to deal with these Magickers called Witch Hunters.

Ordinarily, you might not accept there are true, real Witch Hunters in the world, but presented as fact within a universe, it could be made believable. You can't be tentative when creating a universe such as this. While dealing with magicks and so on, there's still that careful line between what people will generally accept as "Well, that's magick", and what they'll say as "That's ridiculous."

A skilled writer can create any universe from mice living in a viable community on the moon to cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers.

Most time the fault doesn't lie with the actual universe, but with the characters within that universe and their actions. The teacup really got under my skin, as you can see, lol, but you can't have your characters so perfect. Even Superman had issues! In the end, my non-expert advice on this is to take your extraordinary universe and have real personalities inhabit it. Flaws, complexities, annoyances, and all.