By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal

For Father’s Day, my wife bought me a pair of virtual reality headsets I could enjoy with my sons. Yes, I’m spoiled. Let’s set that point aside.

The first time I put on the VR set, I was blown away. The digital world swallowed me whole. Stars flew by on all sides and coalesced into a life-size humpback whale that soared overhead. When the tail whipped close, I ducked. My son had to steady me to keep me from falling onto the couch. 

Since that first introduction, side by side with my boys, I’ve explored caves, played minigolf in space, worked out on the moon, fought warriors with a bow and arrow, and BASE jumped off a wintry mountainside. When considering all of this, I realized I’d had similar (and greater) adventures in books. The best stories are immersive like those VR experiences but to an even greater degree. So, how do we write such immersive stories that will swallow our readers whole? There is so much to say on that topic. This time, I’ll cover three simple aspects. Immersive writing is concise, limited, and natural.

Concise

Immersive writing trims the fat. The usual writing rules concerning passive voice, adverbs, and the like apply. If it’s wordy, it isn’t immersive. A wordy voice may seem to serve an academician hero, but even if your hero is an Oxford professor of Old English, she probably isn’t wordy in her own head. Spend some time in your own head. Listen to your thoughts and observations. Are they filled with weighty descriptions and verbose analyses? Probably not. Your character’s thoughts, unique to his or her voice, will be equally concise.

Bonus tip 

Trimming thought tags is one easy way to trim the fat in immersive writing. When you catch yourself using “he wondered” or “she thought,” tap that delete key. Consider the following three options:

Paul watched Margaret slam the door, wondering if she had ever loved him.

“Did she ever love me?” Paul wondered as Margaret slammed the door.

Margaret slammed the door.

Had she ever loved him?

The third set is more immersive, even though it separates Margaret’s action from Paul’s thoughts. This assumes we are in the middle of a scene in which we’ve established Paul as the POV character. To be immersive, we need only show the reader what Paul sees. We should display his thoughts rather than tell the reader about his thoughts. 

Limited

Immersive writing is limited in both scope and horizon. Limit the scope by limiting the number of POV characters. If you’re head-hopping through ten characters in ten chapters, your reader doesn’t have time to become fully immersed in the most important characters’ voices and vision.

Also limit the reader’s horizon by staying true to “close” or “deep” POV. When I play a fantasy board game, I can see the whole map. But when I play a game in the VR headset, I can only see what is visible on my horizon. Immersive POVs constrain the reader’s vision to what can be seen, known, etc. by the POV character. Stepping into another character’s thoughts or looking beyond the horizon to reveal unseen threats can destroy the immersion.

In a related way, immersive writing limits descriptions, more than limiting what the POV character can see. Limit descriptions to what the POV character can absorb in the moment. Read on for an explanation.

Natural

Immersive writing is natural. To write in an immersive way, we need to work at understanding how we as human beings absorb the world around us.

When a guest walks through your front door, do you take note of her shoe size, dress color, hair style, eye color, and whether or not she’s carrying a purse? Probably not, or not all at once. When you walk into a friend’s home for the first time, do you pause at the threshold and evaluate the carpet, the wall color, the furniture choices and arrangement, and cleanliness? Again, probably not (unless you’re my mother-in-law).

Take my first experience with the VR headset. While the whale and his tail bore down on me, I failed to notice the flying stars that formed him had also formed mountains in the distance and an equipment pedestal nearby. was too busy ducking and falling over to see the mountains, and the pedestal wasn’t even in my field of vision. I didn’t find it (behind me) until my next turn.

Likewise, your character will not often take in an entire room upon entering or evaluate a visitor from head to toe at first glance. Human beings don’t absorb the world that way. By throwing a full paragraph of new character description or scene setting at the reader, a writer breaks down the immersive illusion. Don’t do it. Let your POV character notice an item or two at a time. Work these observations into her actions, thoughts, and dialogue throughout the scene. That’s how we absorb our world—one piece at a time.

Use concise language. Limit POV scope and number. Let your character absorb her world in a natural way. These are a few tips for creating an immersive story. We should all work at this skill, because no matter how far technology has come, a good immersive story still trumps a VR world. 

As a former stealth pilot, James R. Hannibal is no stranger to secrets and adventure. He has been shot at, locked up with surface to air missiles, and chased down a winding German road by an armed terrorist. He is a two-time Silver Falchion award-winner for his Section 13 mysteries for kids, a Thriller Award nominee for his Nick Baron covert ops series for adults, and a Selah Award finalist for his Christian CIA thriller, the Grypyhon Heist. James is a rare multi-sense synesthete. Want to know more? Visit JamesRHannibal.com.