What is Suspension of This Belief? Start Here
An overview and navigation guide for one of Substack's fastest-growing fiction communities
Hello writers of fiction!
Suspension of This Belief was born out of frustration. Frustration with the lack of visibility of fiction on Substack. Frustration with the amount of non-fiction and clickbait on the fiction explore page. Frustration with how hard it is to gain momentum as a small publication.
I’m Niccolò, author of Adventure Story, and I created SOTB to give fiction writers a place to amplify their audience. Initially this publication was a simple monthly newsletter blast showcasing fiction. Two months after launch, SOTB already surpassed the 500 subscriber mark, and I realized that the fiction community on Substack has a much greater need that I originally thought. I have plans for how to help fill that need, but before I get into that I want to recap how we got to where we are and share a few links for new readers to get caught up.
Fiction Blasts
SOTB has published three fiction blasts so far, which you can access for free here:
Our upcoming July blast will be the first themed blast, curated by my new Editor in Chief
of , another up-and-coming pillar of the fiction community on Substack. Keep your eyes peeled for Gods and Monsters in your inbox after the long weekend. Here are a couple testimonials:During my time on Substack, I’ve been pretty unsure about its viability as a platform for publishing fiction. But being featured on Suspension of This Belief’s May Newsletter blast has not only given a noticeable boost to my work, but to just about everyone else who was featured. Substack has a lot of potential as a platform for fiction, and it’s through initiatives like this that the potential will be realized.
Niccolò Hilgendorf’s Suspension of This Belief significantly helped boost my serial novel, The Glaciermen, in terms of visibility for new readers, including subscribers—and in turn I’ve discovered other writers to add to my own reading list. I can’t wait for the next blast to do my part in boosting the other worthy fiction authors out there!
The support and response from the community on these newsletters has been overwhelming. I thank you all for your help in spreading the word and engaging with these blasts, in particular our very generous paid subscribers
, and . Right now the paid tier for SOTB is donation-based, but soon we will be rolling out many exclusive benefits to reward our paid subscribers. If you haven’t already, please consider supporting this initiative with a free or paid subscription:Now, on to the future! Here’s what’s coming up for SOTB this summer:
Monthly Fiction Blasts
We will continue to curate a list of the best fiction and blast it to all subscribers to increase the visibility of your writing. I’m playing with the idea of themed blasts in addition to an all-inclusive call for submissions. More likely than now, due to volume of submissions, there will be more than one blast in a month. I’m going to need some help - 66 submissions is too many just a few people to review (shoutout to
and for helping me curate the June blasts) - so if you’re interested in getting involved as a editor, send me a message! We can use all the help we can get right now.Guest speakers
I’m going to start bringing on guest speakers for a podcast section (or at the very least a written transcript) to share writing advice and industry insights. Whether you write short stories, novels, serials, or anything in between, there will be something for you. If you’d like to be a guest speaker for SOTB please reach out - I’m starting to build my list for August which is when I plan to release the first one of these. The first one will likely be free but future interviews will be paywalled. I think these will be a huge source of value for us and I’m very excited about it!
Community events
We’re going to start hosting community events and writing challenges from SOTB. I’ve been very inspired by
‘s and would like to do something in a similar vein. I want to kick off a tournament-style serial challenge with a community voting element and weekly eliminations. Maybe that’s a bit overly-competitive, but it’s all in the spirit of fun and driving engagement and I think it could really work. Let me know in the comments if you have thoughts.Daily writing prompts
Get your creative juices flowing with daily writing prompts in the SOTB chat! I want our chat to be a safe and creative space to hang out and warm up for writing. I may have to paywall this section at some point to keep out the trolls, but for now it’s free. If you haven’t already, please stop by and introduce yourself, and don’t forget to link to your publication.
Seeking Volunteers
Building a community of this size is a lot of work. I’ve been lucky enough to get some help already from a few good Substack friends, but if this is going to be sustainable I am going to need a lot more manpower. If you’re interested in getting involved, even in some small capacity, please reach out! I can’t pay you (yet) but I can shout you out and offer some visibility for your publication as thanks.
That’s all for now! Thanks for being a part of this and please help us out by sharing this post and most importantly recommending Suspension of This Belief - recommendations are Substack’s most powerful growth feature and it only takes a few seconds. The faster we can grow SOTB the faster we can carve out a bigger space for fiction on Substack. Something about boats and a rising tide. You get the idea.
Until next time!
-Niccolò
Community shoutouts:
byDid I miss you? Let me know and I’ll shout you out in the next one :)
All very exciting stuff! I’m particularly excited for the serial tournament. It’s such a novel idea and will be a fun way for the community to engage with each other!
Bravo, Niccolò, Keyon, and the rest of the crew! Looking forward to checking out everyone's projects.