From J. R. R. Tolkien's On Fairy Stories, regarding the introduction to Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
I read this quite some time ago and it has become quite entwined with how I understand and interact with fiction; or perhaps it has just given me names for my behaviors. In any case it has quite influenced my thinking in this realm.
I will no longer trouble with the term "suspension of disbelief." It indicates a rather reluctant tolerance for a story. Authors should not be striving to get their readers to suspend disbelief; we should try for this thing Tolkien calls Secondary Belief.
It is my understanding that Secondary Belief has been experienced by all of us who have experienced a story that we are passionate about, that speaks to us, or that we wish was truly real. It is the desire to jump into the Secondary World feet-first, not reluctantly or just to humor a friend or relative not with skepticism, but with passion and curiosity and eagerness.
I also have long loved Tolkien's terminology of Primary and Secondary worlds; on even on an academic level this validates my feeling that, on some level, the stories are true, must be true, because of how I feel about them or how they affect me, far more than the term 'fiction' ever has. A Secondary World has merit and is worthy of consideration. And it also plays into the fantasy of the fairy-story, with a hint or suggestion that it is true, somewhere out there that is inaccessible to us.
But also, this is a fun trick:
Real life - Primary World
Fiction - Secondary World
Fiction within fiction (e.g. a book that exists within the fictional universe - Tertiary World
...and so on. Each specific world is aware of the worlds below it, none of the ones above; therefore the characters of LOTR know and read fiction, of course, but are not aware that they themselves are fiction. Under this model, real life may not be the Primary World; we might be fiction ourselves and we just don't know it! That's fun to think about.
