Immersion

[Straff Venture he/him]

From my viewpoint immersion is what truly makes a story. Its great to observe a well formed world but to truly feel touched by a book you really need to feel like you were standing there as the events unfolded. My question to you is: what attributes do you think a book (or any other format of story for that matter) needs to make a reader feel fully immersed?

Also, from a reader's point of view instead of a writer's, what makes your immersion into a story deepen? For me, if anyone is interested, I find being isolated from conversation helps my immersion into a story. For example, I remember the details of the Mistborn Trilogy, which I read while on holiday, more keenly than I remember most other books I have read.

Thanks

[Yamato]

Hmm. I really agree with you on most of the points here. I personally think that immersion comes form consistency, as much for the reader as the writer. The characters must be consistent for the world, the world must be consistent for the world and the characters must be consistent for the characters. In my opinion, world consistency is more important, I can kind of forgive characters sounding like modern people, because it's easier to identify with, and hard not to do. Of course, this is only one vastly important part of writing, a consistent book with cruddy characters and a terrible world will always suck, but for me, I have never loved a (fiction) book that was not consistent as much as one that was. That doesn't mean that I dont like books that are not consistent, it just breaks the immersion for me.

EDIT: HM looking back, this seems rather obvious... what I meant was it all has to mesh.

The second thing is behind the scenes stuff. One of the reason I love huge epicifyingly awesome doorstopper fantasy is because the behind the scenes stuff makes it feel like a real world. Books that feature the plot too heavily over the world are cool, but they make the world feel like a construct, which is never good for me. Sure, the plot can pull you in, but for me at least the world is what makes me feel like the author has crafted something important, or created a world in the pages. With a plot overmuch based book, it can be an awesome book, with a well constructed world and things happening behind the scenes is what gives the book a sense of magic, and a sense of reality. One of the reason I like Mistborn so much is that it focuses on plot, but also features a superb world that has tons of stuff going on if you really look.

(This is all my opinion. I may have stated it a little to much like it was fact.)

Edited November 18, 2012 by Yamato