Oh well... maybe next time. Now I get to shake my fist at his portrait on www.WritingExcuses.com for time-traveling in order to foil my master plan.
Let's get on topic. Today I would like to use this Wednesday to mix things up and try something else out before continuing with the current story. Today, I would like to talk about immersion.
What does it mean, immersion? In the world of storytelling of any sort, immersion is the process of cognitively experiencing a different state, independent of your current reality. Pretty simple, right? Basically, it means putting yourself into the shoes of the view-point character.
How does one do this? At what point does one become immersed? The answer is in the senses.
Where are you right now? Think about it and analyze it. Me? I am in my bedroom. How do I know? Well, I can see the four walls and my furniture. I can hear muffled traffic coming from the window. I can feel the carpet under my bare feet and the mattress I am sitting on.
These senses confirm the fact to me that I am in my bedroom. It's a fact because I can prove it with my senses. These senses are constantly rooting me into this world. I have described my 'scene' very roughly. Readers can enter into a book's world by imagining the same sensations as they are described, plus any they add on their own to fill in the blanks.
This is probably the biggest reason I get upset over movie portrayals of books: because the director was in his own version of the world than my version. In my version of the Mistborn trilogy, for example, Ham shares the voice of the generic Nord man in The Elder Scrolls video games. When the movies come out for that series, if they don't use the same voice, I will be thoroughly disappointed!
Anyway, back to the discussion. Want to visit my apartment? Let me create an elaborate scene to serve as your doorway.
The first thing I saw as I entered through the plain wood door was a matching plain wood flooring covering half of the open space; the other half was covered in a short-cropped, beige carpet. As I entered the apartment, I turned to close the door and flipped the stainless steel lock handle shaped like a semi-circle with a pot belly that hung beyond the lock mechanism. I heard the sound of it clunking into place.
At the far wall, a glass sliding door was closed and had vertical blinds pulled across it, which matched the carpeting. The blinds were slightly opened, granting a meager sight at the lawn out back and a concrete block wall. The wall to the left had two doors; three on the right, all hudled in on each other where the wood flooring paved a very short hallway. All doors were closed.
To my right stood an island counter, and beyond it, a series of cabinets were mounted to the wall and butted up against the ceiling. The smell of something slightly burnt wafted across my nostrils, and I turned past the cabinets, counters and sink to face a stove-top oven.
There lay the culprit: a slightly blackened pizza. Closer studying revealed peperoni and sausage had been laid asymmetrically across the pizza. It had already been cut into slices, so I helped myself. Hefting the the weighty slice which began to droop between balancing fingertips, I opened my mouth and swung the dangling cheese and sausage in. It was still warm, and the tangy pizza sauce pronounced itself nicely beside the savory meat and mozzarella flavors.
So there's my kitchen and living room area. The pizza, by the way, is not that fancy, at least in my version. It also burned the roof of my mouth just behind my upped incisors, in case you are interested in knowing such details.
Notice how the details of the apartment are sparse, and the sink is barely mentioned, while I give full attention to the pizza? It's just like a video camera. I rush over things, leaving a motion blur, only settling at certain spots that catch my eye. The pizza is obviously the star of the show, however, and, lucky for you, this camera is equipped with taste, smell, and touch delivery systems as well.
Now, let me create a new scene. This time, I won't blur over much.
"The cave walls were cold and damp, leaving moisture on my hands as I supported myself against them. I had to stoop over in order to progress, occasionally smacking the back of my head on rough or sharp protrusions from the irregularly shaped ceiling. Looking down the tunnel, it made me think of what the inside of a worm looked like, all wrinkly and bumpy and long and dark and covered with the occasional patch of green and tan lichen patterns.
The echoes of my tennis shoes dragging along an identically stone floor sounded hollow and strange, almost muffled. I began to feel claustrophobic. In the beginnings of my panic, I felt adrenaline dump right into my arteries like cold water. I began to move faster, sweating more than I should have been. My armpits grew damp and I felt sweat rolling down the sides of my face. One drop managed to veer into my eyebrow, where it held for a moment, before slipping down into my right eye.
The salt burned my eye and I tried to blink it away to no avail. Growing frustrated, I made the mistake of rubbing my eye with a dry-mud-encrusted forearm, not wanting to get the dirt from my hand in my eye, of all things. I pulled on my shirt roughly and scrubbed everything out of my eye and off my face very quickly, before pulling my shirt back down and huffing.
The shirt pulled at my back as I did so, and I was compelled by my discomfort to adjust the soaked patch of cloth before turning my attention back to the never-ending tunnel. Before I made it even five more feet down the cavern tube, a rebellious drop of sweat shot out of my pour and flew down my forehead, heading for the left eye. In a mad dash to intercept, I slapped my forehead, earning myself an angry headache, only to aide the drop in clearing the runway of my eyebrow, bypassing my nose altogether, and landing in a mouth currently producing curses.
It tasted salty.
I took several deep breaths of the warm, musty air before half-calming myself down, half- growing more claustrophobic. I took a second to consider if the tunnel had gotten smaller, but was rudely interrupted by a clacking noise. As is the case in any never-ending tunnel obviously made by doom worms, I had no way of telling whether the sound came from before me or behind me, only that it wasn't closer than three yards, nor farther than a couple miles, give or take a few inches.
It was then that I noticed my feet were moving to the sides back and forth beneath me. Then they were above me and my back felt the full impact of various edges careening with my spine. All I could remember for a long while was not wanting to get up. That, and the smell of wood smoke.
Did I get all of the senses? Sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Check! So, did you experience that tunnel? Did you feel and see and smell and taste and hear the same things in your mind? If you did, you were immersed in the scene.
In conclusion, if you are writing a story, but are having trouble finding a sense of connection to it, even though your ideas are marvelous and dialogue is fantastic, perhaps you should consider spicing things up and building all five bridges of sensation to the equation. It takes some thought to get started, but if you keep at it, you'll find it rolls out easily and people's mouths will water when you describe the succulent juicy taste of that first bite of sweet watermelon, or squirm in their seats when you enlist details of how it felt when your main character got a millimeter deep paper cut right across the edge of her lower eyelid. Do I even need to describe how that feels?
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