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 :-)
Following the rules established by the setting is a big one. If I’m constantly thinking “Wait what? That’s not how that works?” I’m getting pulled out of the story. The rules can be fantastical but they should be consistent. If the established rules are broken, it should framed as or acknowledged as such. Breaking established rules can be a plot point, that’s fine, but just fudging it to move the plot forward is a problem.
Characters acting in line with their characterization. Characters obviously change, and that includes making choices that are otherwise out of character- but those should be treated as such. I’m talking about the more mundane, unacknowledged flip flopping that obviously just pushes a plot forward.
Characters in entirely fictional settings should have some thought put into their values. A character from a post-apocalyptic setting that’s reformed into a medieval type culture should not talk like or have the values of an American in 2026. Or, an American teenager in 2026 who talks like an out of touch Boomer (because they were written by one) is similarly distracting.
In anything other than pure comedy having restraint with quips and humor. Not every character should be a snarker, and snark shouldn’t be used to undercut moments meant to be taken seriously. The tone depends on the characters, and too much tonal whiplash is immersion breaking.
In positives, if it is an entirely fictional setting, some thought to how it works goes a long way. I don’t need to know the math on logistics, but if a small isolated fictional settlement has an obvious food and water source that passes the eyeball check for plausibility then it removes a potential distraction for someone wondering how it works. This applies to money, governments, currency, all sorts of things. There doesn’t need to be a total breakdown how it all works but creating at least the appearance of functioning systems makes a setting more real.
A lot of this is subjective, and almost all stories can be criticized for some of this, but there’s a breaking point which a majority of audiences is probably going to find themselves not getting into the story.
Consistency with the established setting and characterizations. Nuance and intentionally breaking consistency is fine as long as there is some kind of a plausible reason. It can be ridiculous and random, as long as it makes sense in the setting.
Nice try Sam Altman
The worldbuilding. When you are given a full picture of the universe where the plot takes places, it’s easier to fully immerse yourself in it.
I think it boils down to things that get your imagination going, where what is presented lines up really well with what you are thinking and are inclined to be interested in, and avoids stuff that prompts you to discard your own thoughts as irrelevant. There’s also a sleight of hand factor; one thing I notice in a lot of good writing is that it draws your explicit attention to one thing, while simultaneously giving you the more important (for immersion purposes) information indirectly. This mimics how things work in reality, where you experience a lot of things that prompt you to passively piece together what is happening. That indirect information should be both dense and intuitive, there’s so much there that you can’t see the seams where the creator intended to present a piece of information, but you also can absorb it without explicitly considering each detail.
Atmosphere
Deficiencies in one area can easily make up for strikes in another and so there’s no way you could possibly give a good answer to this other than to say the whole just works.
As little tropes as possible.
