This post is anecdotal and only indirectly related to writing.
When something is unclear, or when an image is incomplete, our minds try to fill in the missing piece on their own. It's how it works for me, and I'm pretty sure it works the same way for most of the rest of you as well.
Terry Pratchett made use of this a lot in his stories. He often explains how the inhabitants of his world just completely ignored things they didn't expect to see, or that were too out of the ordinary to readily accept. That's perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but the theory as such is sound. We, as humans, like it when things fit in neatly with how we perceive the rest of the world to be.
The other day, I experienced this very clearly in person.
I was out jogging, and ahead of me on the trail a girl shows up running the other way. At first I don't notice anything odd about her, except she seems to run in a strange way, as if slightly off balance. Perhaps she's favouring one leg over the other? Other than that she seems ordinary enough: fit, healthy, good looking, and bit tired from the effort.
It's just that thing with her running that seems a little bit off.
And then, just as we pass each other, I notice she only has one arm.
Seems like a pretty big thing to not notice, right? If someone is missing an arm, that's not really something you have to stop and think about in order to figure out.
Only, I wasn't really thinking, or looking very closely. I'd run a fair while. I was pretty tired and my main focus was on getting home to my shower and my bottle of water, not on counting how many arms people have. I had enough presence to notice something was off about the girl, but as she wasn't particularly important to me at the time (other than as something not to run straight into) it took me a while to register.
So, how does this tie in with writing?
For me, personally, it really highlights how easy it is to flesh out an incomplete image based on my own preconceived notions of what I think I'm seeing - or reading about. Sometimes you don't have to describe something in great detail in order for the reader to know how it looks. You really only need to highlight the things that break off from the ordinary.
When something is unclear, or when an image is incomplete, our minds try to fill in the missing piece on their own. It's how it works for me, and I'm pretty sure it works the same way for most of the rest of you as well.
Terry Pratchett made use of this a lot in his stories. He often explains how the inhabitants of his world just completely ignored things they didn't expect to see, or that were too out of the ordinary to readily accept. That's perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but the theory as such is sound. We, as humans, like it when things fit in neatly with how we perceive the rest of the world to be.
The other day, I experienced this very clearly in person.
I was out jogging, and ahead of me on the trail a girl shows up running the other way. At first I don't notice anything odd about her, except she seems to run in a strange way, as if slightly off balance. Perhaps she's favouring one leg over the other? Other than that she seems ordinary enough: fit, healthy, good looking, and bit tired from the effort.
It's just that thing with her running that seems a little bit off.
And then, just as we pass each other, I notice she only has one arm.
Seems like a pretty big thing to not notice, right? If someone is missing an arm, that's not really something you have to stop and think about in order to figure out.
Only, I wasn't really thinking, or looking very closely. I'd run a fair while. I was pretty tired and my main focus was on getting home to my shower and my bottle of water, not on counting how many arms people have. I had enough presence to notice something was off about the girl, but as she wasn't particularly important to me at the time (other than as something not to run straight into) it took me a while to register.
So, how does this tie in with writing?
For me, personally, it really highlights how easy it is to flesh out an incomplete image based on my own preconceived notions of what I think I'm seeing - or reading about. Sometimes you don't have to describe something in great detail in order for the reader to know how it looks. You really only need to highlight the things that break off from the ordinary.