Some stories, either in form of a book or a movie, seem so immersive that I feel as if I’ve transported directly into its universe. Other stories have some flaw that ruins the entire immersion and makes the story seem like a fictional piece of content. However I’m not able to pinpoint what the reason behind making a story immersive is. What do you think?
Edit: changed title
A massive one for me is pacing. If it feels like someone is telling me the story as it happens, I can pull myself right into the world, but if they spend two pages describing a room they just entered, I’ve already forgotten why they entered the room.
I love fantasy and scifi authors who get heavy into their world building, but yeah, sometimes when I find myself rereading a page for the third time because it’s a little too descriptive… Let my imagination do the work.
What I can abide is something like Tolkien’s appendices. There’s no narrative break, he’s free to pour out all his imagination in its glory, then I can take that and sharpen my imagination to see what he saw.
That’s fair … I guess the trick is to do relevant descriptions before stuff happens, or to keep it very brief
Sometimes I really like fleshed out descriptions, and sometimes they’re needed for the plot to make sense :-)