User blog comment:PullingoffMasks/How to do your fucking research/@comment-1988716-20140125232502

Random tip: I find that it's often a better idea to just word your sentences so you don't mention or allude to any implications regarding mental health or religion or anything that could go bad ways. Unless that's exactly what you're going for, it's generally a good idea to make sure the subject never enters the reader's head. This is actually a big part of keeping up willful suspension of disbelief: If your reader has no reason to think the question Is that possible in real life? then you're good.

Expanding off of that, here's a pet peeve of mine: "It's fiction, it's not meant to be real life!" The thing is, the reader doesn't think that way. But another thing is, the reader also doesn't assume everything works photorealistically. It's a strange balance. If you are going to have some really impossible things happening or even some questionable things, you have to first establish that they are possible in the world you have created. Consistency comes before realism in most cases.

..and plus there's the fact that most Fear- and Slenderblogs pretend they're really happening, and even if they don't pretend that overtly they generally give off this impression that they're set in the real world (or at least a real-world equivalent that has Fears in it). So in those cases, they can have Fears doing impossible things, and it works because the reader accepts that the Fears not working by our rules is the point. But the rest of the world in these blogs still gives off the impression that it's identical to our world in reality, so if something comes up that seems questionable the reader will question it.

My favourite analogy here is the Inception analogy. You are a foreign agent constructing your reader's dream and trying to plant information in their mind. The setting can be as absurd and unrealistic as you want and the reader won't question it, but once the setting is established if you start changing things the reader will notice.

Research is important, though only if you have to go down the routes that involve things worth researching. Unfortunately, those tend to be common tropes in horror blogs, so that's why this is a particular issue here.