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. (more…)

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