Many times when writing, I get a very specific image in my head of the way I want something to look, or the way I want something to move. Particularly with actions where objects are moving in a very specific way, I want to describe them accurately so that most readers would see the same thing that I’m seeing in my head. The problem is, I don’t want to come off as sounding too technical (the object slid along its Z axis and suddenly stopped and rotated 45 degrees on its Y axis), and I also don’t want to be so vague that a later sentence contradicts what they were seeing in their head.

Is this just a psychological thing that I need to get over and stop worrying about, and just write to the best of my ability and edit when I hear critiques/comments from readers, or is it a skill that I need to improve?

  • frog 🐸@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    Just write to the best of your ability. Writing is a written medium, not a visual one, so unlike a film, TV series, or game, you can’t guarantee that a reader will always see exactly the same thing as you. The imagination is a funny thing, which runs a full spectrum from aphantasia (an inability to imagine at all) to fully photorealistic “movie in their head” mental images. Nothing you write will ever allow those on one end of that spectrum to see what you’re seeing, and writing all the details to make the other’s mental images 100% accurate will bog down your writing with a lot of detail that just isn’t relevant to the story. Also, the more specific you make your descriptions in an attempt to beam what you’re seeing into the readers’ heads, the denser your prose becomes, which risks losing readers with average reading comprehension skills.

    If there’s a specific aspect of the movement that’s very important, then describe it as best as you can. Readers don’t need, and won’t remember, irrelevant details. If they do picture something incorrectly and something you write later contradicts it, then they’ll edit their mental image and/or go back to check what you wrote earlier. I do this all the time when reading if it turns out I’ve pictured something incorrectly, and I’d say I have a pretty average visual imagination: I can picture things fine, but I don’t have a “mental movie” that creates photorealistic detail. You could describe something in massive detail, and my mind will generate an Impressionist painting, not modern CGI.