: Re: How to make the reader "accept" absurdity? A few examples of what I refer to as ridiculous scenes: A psychic gives the protagonist a business letter with only her name - no phone, no address

@Phylliss352

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I think the problem you're facing is that you're comparing the wrong things. Your quoted passage does not deal with the fantastic or the absurd, whereas some of the examples you've given clearly are.

What I mean is, your subject of "animal suicide" is something people have probably heard about. Certainly, studying animal behaviour is something people have heard about. People can relate to the concept of teachers, classrooms, and so on. At this point, the reader's brain is establishing conventions with regards to what they're reading, and unless you've established reasons for this aversion to discussing suicide, the automatic reaction is to discount it as unrealistic because they think the rules of this world apply to your world. For such subtle differences between your fictitious world and the real world, the reader needs conventions established very early on that justify what they read!

Contrast this with Being John Malcovich: who ever heard of such a scenario? It's nothing anyone watching the film can relate to as a concept, so the viewer tends to "go with it". The fantastic is made normal, and there is no attempt by the reader to discount what they're seeing. It just is, for whatever reason.

(Incidentally, what you outline for Synecdoche New York is, in my view, unlikely, but not impossible, which is very different to absurd, or fantastic.)

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