Feeling This

Sometimes I think about a concept I'll call 'the elusive story.' You know when you read a book that has this mystique surrounding the background of certain characters, or the world they are in? There are hints about how things are as they are, a glimpse into the lives of the individuals in question. But there's never anything concrete. It's all left up to the reader.

In writing, I've begun to think about the feel of a story, what it elicits in the minds of the readers. The most poignant moment I had was realizing exactly how strongly I could embrace a feeling beyond happiness or sadness. The world of the book, in a flash, was so real in my mind. It was a sense of nostalgia for something I was experiencing for the first time. What a fantastic skill, to give that overwhelming sense to someone through written story! I admire it, both as a reader and as a writer. This is far from diminishing the strength of character and skill with the written word that it takes to bring forth the standard range of human emotion for something or someone, either fictional or non-fictional. But it opened my mind to the possibilities.

So rarely do I get to experience these feelings in storytelling. So rarely, in fact, that it got me thinking about the frequency with which such feelings come about in general - then extrapolating that out to what it takes to carry over that experience in written form for someone else to consume and feel so utterly. It settles into your gut and tingles at the forefront of your brain. It's visceral. It's astounding.

It's the scene that drapes over your head like a sprawling realm of stars that dazzle with their surprisingly intense glow. It's the beating heat of the sun on a rolling desert landscape tossed in cutting winds. It's a gentle clearing with soft green light filtering through a lush canopy, their air buzzing and warm. It's a roaring storm that crackles in the atmosphere, with great forks of plasma slicing through the roiling indigo night.

It grips you.

The elusive story takes only the smallest, carefully placed details to fill out the world in your mind. Somehow, it's not too flowery or verbose, and yet it brings you there, wherever the story is going. It takes a fantastic amount of skill and experience to handle stories like threads in a tapestry that rests on the shoulders of the readers as a comfort. And every author that manages it does it a little differently. It's what encourages me to write the most. It's what I aspire to.