Believing Is Seeing is a short story collection by Diana Wynne Jones. It contains her trademark humor, about characters that find themselves in strange magical or science-fiction situations. They take it well, and try to find solutions to their problems.
The following stories are compiled in this story:
The sage of Theare
The master
Enna Hittims
The girl who loved the sun
Dragon reserve, home eight
What the cat told me
nad and Dan adn Quaffy.
Tropes for this collection include:
- Bittersweet Ending: "The Girl Who Loved The Sun" features Phega finding out that the sun cannot love her more than any tree, and she gives up her humanity. Yet she is at peace with the decision, and her suitor becomes a hog to accompany her.
- Instant Book Deal: Subverted. It's mentioned that F.C. Stone had written dozens of novels before she got to Starship Candida. She was in the middle of successful enough to keep an editor, but not to keep a readership. This is Truth in Television.
- I Just Write the Thing: F.C. Stone starts with a page on her word processor, and becomes interested in what caused a mutiny on the Starship Candida. It's her first success.
- Men Can't Keep House: Subverted; Danny helps his mother with some of the chores like cooking because he thinks her effort is terrible. She notes that the spices make her nose run.
- Must Have Caffeine: F.C. Stone drinks cups of coffee late into the night to get her writing done. She even puts it in her stories.
- Off with His Head!: Anne makes out Enna and Spike as proactive heroes in the making, with Enna using a magical sword to chop off her parents' heads. She finds out that this makes Enna Ax-Crazy when the latter comes to life from her drawings.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: F.C. Stone finds out that Adny used her to stage a coup that turn a matriarchy into patriarchy. He lied to her about his intentions. She is briefly troubled about the ethical implications of this but is concerned that he wasted what would have been a veritable morning of writing. F.C. decides that what's done is done and to hope he wouldn't succeed.
- Reset Button Ending: "The Master" ends with the vet waking up just as she faces an angry, woman-eating wolf. She then gets a call about an emergency in the countryside, only to realize that it was her dream. So she writes it down, in the hopes that it will either give her the strength to win this time or that someone will know what happened if the wolf Annie gets her by the throat.
- Tough Love: Danny does this to his mother so that she'll write a good story. He braids up her typewriter letters and makes her buy a computer, telling her what to get. It ends up working; her next book, written on the word processor, is a success.
- What Were You Thinking?: Chrestomanci asks the officials in Theare this. He says that by trying to avoid their destiny, they only came to meet it and caused disruption to their own world.
