If a plot-significant element behaves in a consistent yet markedly unrealistic way, you can expect even the most patient audience member to eventually want some answers about why it does, if only because they assume things are Like Reality Unless Noted.Ĭonsistency itself, too, can be taken too far or rather, it can be misapplied. However, much like any other trope, too much of it can be unhealthy. Without it, any instance of a wizard casting a fireball would quickly degenerate into an Info Dump of quasi-physics and pseudo-science. The substitution of mere internal consistency for a bona fide logical explanation is a Necessary Weasel of Speculative Fiction. Even whether it's explained at all doesn't matter: depending on your audience, even "it's magic!" can be a satisfactory explanation, as long as the magic behaves consistently. This is such a fundamental part of an audience's perception of a story that if you establish a fictional "rule" that isn't quite like reality, and then later break this law to make things act the way they actually would in Real Life, people will likely be distraught. You can have the tech guy of La Résistance explain in oblique terms involving the word "nano" why the Evil Empire's fairy dust superweapon needs an hour to recharge after activation, and the audience will nod its collective head and smile but if you later have that superweapon fire twice in succession, you just made a Plot Hole and they'll all be at your throat.
No matter how fantastic the events in a piece of fiction, their Internal Consistency is what makes or breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Or at least, they do, if the writer knows what he's doing. Works heavy on speculative elements, such as Science Fiction and Fantasy, often have an assortment of fantastic intangibles we cannot even dream of encountering in Real Life-yet act in a completely consistent way, as if governed by imaginary rules of physics.
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