anthrodisiac
Weirdo Archaeopteryx
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2025
- Posts
- 3,678
There is a school of thought that stories should be as immersive and all-consuming as possible, to the point where the reader isn't even reading the words you wrote or how you wrote it, but is taking in the writing at a conceptual level — reading the concepts behind the words, not the words themselves. You want the reader to consume the underlying meanings rather than the words used to convey them. Less like they're reading, more like they're experiencing.
There's a non-standard term I use a lot: plinkage. The gist is that a reader is immersed in your story, but something stops them. Sometimes it's a hard stop, like they have to go look up the definition of a word (I recently had this with "enervated," which I knew to be a plinker but kept it in anyway); sometimes it's a little thing, like a word being used just one or two too many times. It doesn't fully stop them, but it does act like a tiny bump that nudges them out of the story and shifts their focus to the mechanics of how the story was written. Once a reader accumulates enough plinkage, they're pulled out of that rich story world and remember, "Oh yeah, I'm reading a book with words and sentences and paragraphs."
Plinkage is why I tend not to use words most people don't know the definition of. I'm not overly interested in showing off my own prowess or my expansive vocabulary.* Instead, I value creating as immersive an experience as possible for the reader. Does it mean I never use those larger words that tend to plink? Not at all, I absolutely use them when it makes sense to me to do so. Sometimes, it's the exact perfect word, and it fits with the narrative voice (see On Writing: Voice), so it's the obvious choice. The choice about whether to use a plinker comes with a cost-benefit analysis, not just looking at that one instance of "can I get away with a tiny plink?" but whether you've kept the amount of adjacent plinkage low enough that this won't add to the friction.
To be clear, invisibility and story immersion isn't the same thing as smoothness, or even flow. You can have sharp, jagged constructions and still keep immersion, like if you have a scene with high tension and want to instill unease. Invisibility is about crafting your words, sentences, and paragraphs in a way that doesn't cause interruptions to the reading experience. There are many things that plink at a reader. To name a few of the big ones:
But let's address the other school of thought when it comes to immersion. What I've discussed so far is story immersion, which is about immersing the readers in, well, the story. The other approach is craft immersion, which emphasizes giving the readers a literary experience, where they immerse themselves in how the story was crafted. They stop and admire a well-constructed sentence, or marvel at the beautiful prose, the delightful word choices. These stories tend to be geared toward the more literary readers, many of whom prefer a stop-and-smell-the-roses approach to reading, whereas story immersion tends to be the focus for those who want to be subsumed within the world you create. To put it another way, craft immersion is about immersing the reader in language, while story immersion is about immersing the reader in the world. For craft immersionists, literary element is just as much part of the experience as the story element.
Of course, it is possible to do both. Those that value craft immersion are also creating vibrant worlds with rich characters. What they're doing is adding an additional layer atop the story, one that, if not carefully managed, can somewhat abstract the reader from the story. So while story and craft immersion aren't mutually exclusive, it is a mighty fine line to walk, and the balance is often one that works better for certain readers than others; it's a rare story that manages the balance between story and craft immersion for the vast majority of readers.
These are but a few aspects to invisibility and immersion. What ways do you use to keep the reader engaged and immersed? Do you value craft or story immersion more? Any other thoughts, opinions, insights, etc. are more than welcome.
*The working title was originally "Do Readers Actually Care About Your Stupid Pretty Words?" but I don't think everyone would get that it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I don't want to seem like I'm attacking that type of writing, because these threads aren't about putting down any one way of writing, but opening it up to discuss all the different ways one can write a story.
There's a non-standard term I use a lot: plinkage. The gist is that a reader is immersed in your story, but something stops them. Sometimes it's a hard stop, like they have to go look up the definition of a word (I recently had this with "enervated," which I knew to be a plinker but kept it in anyway); sometimes it's a little thing, like a word being used just one or two too many times. It doesn't fully stop them, but it does act like a tiny bump that nudges them out of the story and shifts their focus to the mechanics of how the story was written. Once a reader accumulates enough plinkage, they're pulled out of that rich story world and remember, "Oh yeah, I'm reading a book with words and sentences and paragraphs."
Plinkage is why I tend not to use words most people don't know the definition of. I'm not overly interested in showing off my own prowess or my expansive vocabulary.* Instead, I value creating as immersive an experience as possible for the reader. Does it mean I never use those larger words that tend to plink? Not at all, I absolutely use them when it makes sense to me to do so. Sometimes, it's the exact perfect word, and it fits with the narrative voice (see On Writing: Voice), so it's the obvious choice. The choice about whether to use a plinker comes with a cost-benefit analysis, not just looking at that one instance of "can I get away with a tiny plink?" but whether you've kept the amount of adjacent plinkage low enough that this won't add to the friction.
To be clear, invisibility and story immersion isn't the same thing as smoothness, or even flow. You can have sharp, jagged constructions and still keep immersion, like if you have a scene with high tension and want to instill unease. Invisibility is about crafting your words, sentences, and paragraphs in a way that doesn't cause interruptions to the reading experience. There are many things that plink at a reader. To name a few of the big ones:
- Words the reader is unfamiliar with, so need to look up or search for context clues in order to figure out what's going on.
- Repetition of uncommon words.
- Awkward sentence/paragraph construction.
- Too many of the same type of sentence constructions in a row.
- Overuse of literary techniques.
But let's address the other school of thought when it comes to immersion. What I've discussed so far is story immersion, which is about immersing the readers in, well, the story. The other approach is craft immersion, which emphasizes giving the readers a literary experience, where they immerse themselves in how the story was crafted. They stop and admire a well-constructed sentence, or marvel at the beautiful prose, the delightful word choices. These stories tend to be geared toward the more literary readers, many of whom prefer a stop-and-smell-the-roses approach to reading, whereas story immersion tends to be the focus for those who want to be subsumed within the world you create. To put it another way, craft immersion is about immersing the reader in language, while story immersion is about immersing the reader in the world. For craft immersionists, literary element is just as much part of the experience as the story element.
Of course, it is possible to do both. Those that value craft immersion are also creating vibrant worlds with rich characters. What they're doing is adding an additional layer atop the story, one that, if not carefully managed, can somewhat abstract the reader from the story. So while story and craft immersion aren't mutually exclusive, it is a mighty fine line to walk, and the balance is often one that works better for certain readers than others; it's a rare story that manages the balance between story and craft immersion for the vast majority of readers.
These are but a few aspects to invisibility and immersion. What ways do you use to keep the reader engaged and immersed? Do you value craft or story immersion more? Any other thoughts, opinions, insights, etc. are more than welcome.
*The working title was originally "Do Readers Actually Care About Your Stupid Pretty Words?" but I don't think everyone would get that it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I don't want to seem like I'm attacking that type of writing, because these threads aren't about putting down any one way of writing, but opening it up to discuss all the different ways one can write a story.
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, but couldn’t get into it).
