Follow Me And You’ll Be In A World of Pure Imagination

Part of teasing a reader into living in your world for a spell is to portray a believable world in which to live.

Sounds simple, right?

On the one hand: yes. On the other: fu-hu-huck NO.

Willy Knows Whats Up

All too often aspiring authors fall prey to the cardinal sin of exposition dumping. Nothing grinds a book to a halt quite like interrupting your rip-roaring narrative just to have one character experience diarrhea of the mouth for three pages to fill in the reader on the fabled history of the Sword of X’andrathura or whatever.

I mean good god, Garrett, they were in a battle not a lecture hall.

This happens a lot to first time authors and is "“Thanos pausing his standing army which was ready to conquer earth in order let heroes dramatically exit portals and reunite with their loved ones” levels of unbelievable cordiality from a villain.

His Kindness Allowed This Scene To Happen Though So He’s Forgiven

No, instead you want to layer your exposition and worldbuilding into the narrative as much as possible. Aside from “oversharing” much of what I see people struggle with online is, oddly enough, not the history of the world but the world itself.

A rather important part of the world we live in, you may (or may not) realize, is nature.

Look outside. Are there trees? Grass? What sounds do you hear? Birds? Wind? Cicadas? What do you smell? What did you just step in? Those last two may be the same thing. The fact is, you receive ofactory input every second. If you can’t describe those sensations for yourself how can you describe them for your characters? And if you can’t describe them for your characters how do you expect your world to seem real? To feel lived in?

The sad truth is if you don’t take time to reflect on how the sun feels on your skin or the difference between the glorious sensations of having a cold beer on a hot day and a glass of whiskey on a cold night, well….first of all you aren’t living. Secondly your writing is going to be flat and lifeless.

So go for a walk. Sit on that porch. Hunt, fish, day-drink. Go shopping (fellas free reminder to go take your gal shopping). Do whatever. Go live a little.

It’s the best thing you can do for yourself.

And your writing will thank you for it too.   

And Women I’m Sure