By Wil Forbis
“While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing is an insular experience and it’s easy to forget that it’s part of a transactional process between at least two people. A writer writes to have his or her work read by a reader. Without this communication, writing is just simple onanism.
Most writers understand this point, yet many obsess over the writing process while making little attempt to understand how texts are read. But it is during the reading process that a writer’s efforts succeed or fail. Without readers, there are no bestsellers.
In this article, I’ll ask you to observe some of what goes on in your mind when you read. Then we will examine how those observations can better the writing process.
Mental Movies
Peruse the following sentence and pay attention to what you see in your mind’s eye.
Tom reached for the gun.
At a bare minimum, I presume you saw a man reach for a gun. Can you describe what the man looked like? The color of his hair? What he was wearing? What kind of gun he reached for? (Was it a handgun or a rifle?) And where was the gun? On a table? In a chest or belt holster? Was anyone else with Tom?
We can ask broader questions as well. How detailed was your overall view of the scene? Did it seem elaborate, like a realistic dream, or fuzzy and undeveloped? Different people, after all, have different capacities for mental imagery*.
* British philosopher Aldus Huxley famously bemoaned the fact that he was a “poor visualizer” and that words did not evoke pictures in his mind. It was only through the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs that he opened up what he called the “doors of perception.”
There are no right or wrong answers here. And we should understand that the image I see in my mind upon reading the sentence is different from the image you or any other person sees. If a hundred people read the sentence, a hundred different mental movies will play in the Cartesian theaters of a hundred minds.
What can we observe from all this? That reading is a process during which mental imagery is constructed by words on a page. Writers are ultimately in the business of creating mental movies.
Let’s look at a different sentence.
Col. Tom McDaniels reached for the Berretta M9.
Ask yourself the same questions as above. Has the scene changed in your mind? Do you visualize a different appearance for this man, a different type of gun? It’s likely that some elements have evolved in your mental movie. All because we added some slight detail to the Tom character and to the gun.
We can start to see the power words give us as writers. With simple tweaks, we can change the mental imagery projected in a reader’s mind. The adage, “chose your words carefully” takes on added weight.
Now is a good time to consider use of vocabulary. Simple, common words will always be understood, but they might bore some members your audience. On the other hand, arcane, exotic words will confuse some readers while captivating others with richer vocabularies. Not everyone may know what a Beretta M9 looks like, for example, and this may be a point of confusion, effectively blurring parts of a reader’s mental movie. Conversely, readers familiar with military matters may experience a slight ping of pleasure as their interest pays off. We need to select our words with our intended audience in mind.
Other senses
So far, we’ve discussed how these sentences affect our internal sense of vision—our mind’s eye. Other senses can be affected as well. Prose describing an engine roar will produce a ghost of a sound in the reader’s mind. A sentence detailing a delicious steak dinner will evoke a taste sensation and may even prompt salivation. This speaks to the common advice that writers should use sensory words.
Words will also evoke other sensations, sensations that might be thought of as emotions. For some people, the inclusion of the word gun might elicit a certain tension or fear. This could be a subtle tightening of the gut, a partial pause of breath, or a stillness in the body. Very effective writing may create more overt sensations—a chill down the spine, for instance.
Readers construct mental images by reading words and deriving semantic meaning from them. But this is only one part of what happens when we read. We also apply rules of syntax to pull meaning out of sentences. We will discuss that and more in our next installment, to be posted in one week.
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