Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I’ve been thinking about “immersion” lately. A lot. It’s infected my daily thoughts, disturbed my reading, and stymied my writing.

If I was searching for someone to blame, I’d have to pick Jefferson Smith and the “Immerse or Die” project he runs over at CreativityHacker, but since it’s been an interesting and illuminating intrusion, I’ll thank him instead.

Immersion is that willing suspension of disbelief a reader brings to each new book. Readers know that the people in my books are not real, and that the events within my pages never really happened. They voluntarily set aside their logical, common-sense disbelief in the truth of my tale as they dive into my books, swim through the worlds and words of my description, and give their hearts to characters I’ve conjured out of nothing but air and brash intention. This is the contract between us, reader and author: they agree to pretend for a time that my stories are real, and I agree not to burst their bubble. It is a trust that I, as author, must handle gently, because when it is breached, it cannot be rebuilt.

I’ve had two occasions to experience such a breach, recently. Both times I was reading a book I truly wanted to enjoy, but in both situations the writing and I just did not get along.

The problems in the first book were varied. Typos were left uncorrected, a paragraph switched from third to first person and back, clichés sprouted like weeds, and some of the attempts at similes were downright laughable. I didn’t even make it out of Chapter 2.

The blame for this, sadly, can only be laid at the author’s feet. Each of these flaws is either a direct result of the words the author chose, or is an error the author should have caught in the various stages of editing. As a reader, the grammatical and typographical errors–even though they’re the easiest to notice and fix–I’m more likely to overlook. I mean, every book has them; they’re inescapable, so if I come across one here and one there, I’m not going to toss the book aside. But when they hit me rat-a-tat, one after another within the first few pages–the pages that should be the cleanest in the entire book–it’s a clear sign that the author hasn’t done the job properly.

As for the flaws in the writing, well, there’s nothing that can be done for that, really. Obviously, the author, the beta-readers, the author’s agent, and any editors who read the prose were satisfied with it. I, on the other hand, found the dialogue to be clumsy, the whiz-bang neologisms the author employed (it was a sci-fi novel) incredibly trite, and the aforementioned similes were not only stunningly malapropos but also anachronistic to the world the author was trying to create. Conceivably, you could chalk these up to stylistic preference, but you’d have to explain to me what style could possibly benefit from such poor writing.

The second book was the opposite case. It was well-written, well-paced, and the prose totally consistent with the characters and world of the book (this one was historical fiction). So, what kept me from becoming immersed in the story? After all, if there weren’t typos or obvious flaws, what was the problem? Well, it was in first person–not my favorite–and it was in present tense, and to be honest, I have a problem with present tense.

Simple past is the default tense for storytelling. He did this; she did that. It’s the natural way to tell a story about something that has already happened, and it is so hard-wired into our brains that it sort of…disappears…as the story unfolds. We read it in past tense, but we imagine it as if it’s happening before us. He did this and she did that, but in our minds, he does this and she does that. When you put the prose into present tense, you’re messing with that default, which makes the language you use more obvious, and that messes with the reader’s immersion. Here, as a reader, I cannot divorce myself from my writer half; the writer in me sits up and starts asking questions. Why is it in present tense? What is the author trying to say or do with this stylistic difference?

Other readers likely have no problem with first person present tense, but for me, it puts a wall between me and the book. I know this story isn’t happening now and I cannot make myself believe that it is. The only thing the author could have done to make it more difficult was to use second person present tense: You do this, then you do that. I wouldn’t have made it past Page One on a book like that. As it was, I had enough trouble that I never became immersed in the tale and, after plowing through a third of the book, set it aside.

I know that the problems I had with immersion in this case were all my doing. The author did a fine job of world building and story telling. The problems I experienced were all of my own creation.

These experiences affect me as I sit down and put pen to paper on my own novel. I know I’ll work diligently (later) to fix any mechanical problems, so I don’t worry about those, but the story telling, the story building…these things deserve consideration. Pacing, dialogue, narrative style, and more, each are the result of choices I make as an author, and I think they should be conscious choices.

I want the words on the pages of my books to envelop the reader, I want them to draw you in, not keep you at arm’s length. I want you to miss your bus stop, to be oblivious to that ringing phone, to be so engrossed and immersed in the action I describe that you can see it, hear it, taste it.

I want you to go under and never regret it.

k