From tie poes to fictive dreaming, what’s the connection?

Last Thursday’s post on Tie Poes was not just self-serving. That topic connects to Sunday’s post on fictive dreaming, which is the ideal state for both the writer to be in while writing and the reader to be in while reading. One of the main reasons I hate typos in my writing is because each time the reader catches one, they are jerked out of the story. They are wakened from their fictive dream. When this happens to me as a reader, I stop, reread to straighten out the kink, and then, though I read on, for the next few seconds a bit of my brain stays stuck on that error. Fictive dream good. Typographical errors bad.

As a reader, I’m also often pulled out of the story by impossibility. And today, I’m not talking about the big things that make you close the book forever … or throw it across the room. I mean the little things, like having a character put bread in the toaster and three lines of dialogue later, she’s already buttering toast. Something like that is certainly not enough to make me put the book down, but it’s a reminder that I’m sitting there with a book in my hands. None of this is really happening. I’d rather stay immersed in the story, lost in the world the writer created. I want transparency in the writing.

I’d like to say I’ve never written one of these little bugaboos, but since this post is non-fiction, I can’t. But because they are one of my pet peeves, I spend a lot of my writing time with my eyes closed. I like to visualize my character in action, so I can “see” that he’s still holding that tea kettle and therefore can’t pick up the cat with both hands.

I even spend a portion of it on my feet, speaking lines of dialogue as I cross the room to see at just what point I would reach for the doorknob. Sometimes I cheat a bit, I have the world’s slowest toaster—I could speak six pages of dialogue before my toast popped up—but I try to come close to realism.

Of course, it’s all right to expect the reader to assume some actions. If the character is driving somewhere, I don’t need a play-by-play of every turn of the steering wheel along the way. But I can’t ignore that your protagonist has just prepared lasagna from start to finish in the time it took to discuss the day’s weather. And I’ll roll my eyes if you describe a scene where a kid has just turned his iPod up to 11, but then overhears his parents’ conversation three rooms away.

Likewise, unless the book is fantasy, if the protagonist lives in Indianapolis and supports the local professional baseball team … well that’s sloppy research, and I just might send that book sailing across the room.