The Original Interactive Experience

Imagine an interactive game that allows you to define the appearance of the world and the characters inhabiting it just by willing it to happen. Imagine one where you can stamp your own interpretations on the actions of every character, and on the interactions between them and every other character – one where you can even read the characters’ thoughts.

Imagine a game that allows you to see things that can’t be drawn by any artist, no matter how talented, and in which you can visit places and have experiences impossible to portray visually.

It turns out that this amazing interactive experience exists, and in fact has been around for hundreds of years.

It’s called a book.

I don’t usually talk about writing (I know there’s people out there who know far more about it than I do). I’ve seen lots of commentaries on the craft of writing, the nuts and bolts of how to build compelling characters, write realistic dialog, and show vs. tell, but I haven’t seen much on this magical relationship between a writer and their audience.

It’s common to think of the act of reading as just absorbing everything on the page, but it seems to me that it’s actually much more than that. A book is really a contract between the author and the reader. The author provides a framework and a set of subtle cues as to what’s happening in a story. The reader knows that it’s up to them to fill in the blanks – to imagine what a character looks like, to imagine the beauty of a garden, the grandeur of a castle, or the vastness of space, the heartache of a betrayal.

Compare this to a movie, a video game, or any other ‘visual’ experience. Yes, they are an assault on the senses, and they can be spectacular, but they are always somebody else’s vision, not the vision of the viewer. As impressive as that vision might be, it can never match the personal interpretation we, as readers, imprint on what we read through our own imaginations. Every reader’s impression of what she or he reads is different, and every reader casts a story with characters born from his or her own unique experiences in life.

As an aspiring author, I always try to keep this contract in mind, to provide the cues that fulfill my contract with the reader, but to remember the collaborative nature of the contract, and allow space for them to ‘fill in the blanks’ with their own imagination.