How Imaginations Take Over the World (And Your Writing)

So this post is going to be a sort of follow-up of the ideas I expressed in my last post, "When Your Imagination Is 'Wrong'", so if you haven't read that yet click the link and go do that.

A lot of the time when I'm writing or editing, I find that one of my biggest problems is with description. I have this frantic urge to describe EVERYTHING with perfect, insane detail. I'll use multiple sentences just to describe the walls of a room; I'll use a boatload of adjectives to describe a single action. I'll spend tons of time trying to put onto paper everything I see in my head, because I want the reader to see what I see.

And this, I've come to realize, is stupid. Why? Well...

REASONS WHY WANTING THE READER TO SEE WHAT YOU SEE IS STUPID

Reason #1: The reader will NEVER see what you see.

Everyone is different, therefore everyone has a different imagination, therefore everyone pictures things in books differently. Have you ever looked up "fan casts" for certain books? Everyone has a different idea of who the actor should be for which character, based on how they picture the character themselves.

For example, a lot of people pictured Peeta like this:

While I picture Peeta more like this (although now that I look at them both, they look reaaally similar):

Source

Reason #2: The reader's imagination takes what's written and runs with it, anyway.

Just go read the comments on my last post... even though characters are clearly described a certain way, people picture them differently. What's the point of describing something obsessively if your readers aren't even going to picture what you describe?

Reason #3: Imaginations don't need a lot of help to imagine stuff.

In one of the first Harry Potter books, I remember J.K. Rowling described the Gryffindor common room in about one sentence, and the gist of it was "there were some cushy armchairs." There was barely any description at all, and yet I had a perfectly formed, complete and detailed picture of the Gryffindor common room. J.K. Rowling gave me a sentence, and my imagination did the rest.

Reason #4: An author's book, as I said in my last post, does not belong to the author. It belongs to the reader.

So if you want the reader to see what YOU see, you're being like my nine-year-old egotistic author self that I talked about in my last post. You should just let the reader see what they see, whether it's the same as your vision or not, and be cool with that.


So, as far as description goes, I have learned that you really don't need as many words as you think you do.

Just look at this description-overloaded sentence of some story of mine I wrote years and years ago:

She raised her glistening silver sword into the thick black night.

The note in my edits beside this was: "adj. much???"

And now, in conclusion I shall provide you with this summary:

1. Imaginations are cool.
2. Less words are cool.
3. Books belong to their readers.
4. I used to be in love with adjectives, and that was a mistake.

And a really good example of awesome, minimal description (oh my goodness, more adjectives - apparently I am not yet over them) is the book Sold by Patricia McCormick... which is an awesome, compelling book that you should really add to your TBR list.

Oh and follow me on twitter! @AlyssaSherlock. Have a great day.

When Your Imagination Is "Wrong"

So a few days ago I finished the second draft (yay!) of this story... er, book, I guess... that I've been working on for a while. The first draft sucked and I showed no one (and I will show no one), but once I finished my second draft I sent it off to my best friend and favourite person to send stories to.

Of course, after a couple of years of only me knowing about this story and the characters in it and such, I wanted to talk about it. One of the things I wanted to know was how my friend pictured the characters, purely for curiosity's sake.

There was one character that I clearly described as having darker skin, dark hair and dark eyes. My friend said she pictured him as being blonde. Even though I clearly described him as, well, not blonde.

And to be honest, when I first read The Hunger Games, I pictured Katniss blonde, I don't know why, even though she's not. I'm sure there's lots of people who picture characters differently than they are described, even if things like hair colour and such are clearly described. Yeah, sometimes our brains just skip over stuff when we're reading. But I think more of it is just our imagination taking the story and running with it. It's us as readers using our imagination to make it our own.

That's one thing that I really love about books. There is so much that YOU have to do. You have to read it, you have to process it, you have to imagine everything, YOU have to bring everything to life. Yes, it's a lot of work (for some people maybe :D). But it's worth it, and I think all the more because of all that work that we put into the experience of reading.

When I was, I don't know, nine years old, I remember one time after school I was waiting for my parents to pick me up or something, with one of my friends. I was talking about some story I was working on, that she might have read, and I remember she pronounced one of the character's name's wrong or something, and I corrected her, insisting that because I wrote it, MY interpretation of the story was the RIGHT one. (I had a very big ego as a young writer apparently).

Since then, my view has flipped. Now, I don't think that author of a book holds the "right" interpretation of the book they wrote. I also don't think that a book, once given to people to read, belongs solely to the author anymore.

Anyway, an interpretation is just that - an interpretation. Each reader is different, and each reader's imagination creates things in a different way. That's why I think even if the author clearly describes someone's hair as blonde, it's completely fine if maybe someone imagines that character as having red hair.

Just some thoughts.

Have you ever imagined something in a book different than it's described?

Oh! And... I got twitter (although I'm still learning how to use it...). You can follow me @AlyssaSherlock, so I can follow you!  Have a great day!