Today we learn that if the reader cannot connect events to what has happened before, the lack of context prevents immersion from properly forming.
What I gleaned about the story: Twelve strangers wake up in a militarized trailer park. They’ve been placed here against their will, but only one will get out alive. And all the mayhem will be televised. Welcome to the next hit reality TV show, The Park.
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Details: The story opens with a letter to the POV character, in the form of a briefing note. It’s a simple orientation from the show’s producers, explaining the terms and conditions with which the person is about to join season one of the show. It’s a clever, in-story way to provide backstory for the reader, while at the same time orienting the character.
Analysis: After the introductory letter-to-player, we start the real action, when the first POV character wakes up. But then he says something rather odd – that he hadn’t actually signed up to play any game. The orientation letter, however, seemed to make reference to release clauses that had been signed in the past. At this stage of the game, it’s crucial for me to know whether the players are participating in a show they volunteered for, or whether they’ve been shanghai’d into it. So with this apparent contradiction, I had to jump back and re-read the letter and now I’m wondering whether I’m mis-reading it. And that means I’m not immersed, so I threw the flag.
Note: A bit further on, and several other POV characters have also commented about not knowing what’s going on, so I can only assume that the orientation letter contained a continuity error, or that its wording led me to a conclusion that wasn’t intended.
Analysis: Apparently, a research team has just invented some kind of uber-poweful energy cell, and each of the players in the game has been given one, which grants them some kind of power. But these tech devices aren’t just a single breakthrough—they appear to be 12 different breakthroughs all at once. Each character seems to get a different ability. One device creates an enormous fire, one appears to give the user telepathic or telekinetic abilities, and another makes the user invisible. This stretches credibility too far for me. In a fantasy realm, I’d be able to believe them. But in the context of a scifi story? That there’s some single new tech breakthrough that makes all of this possible? It’s too much for me to believe—especially when the most imaginative thing the inventors can think of to do with this techno-miracle is to create a game-show with it. I can conceive of other explanations for what might be going on, but the author has given me no hint to suggest that this is anything other than what it claims to be.
The solution, of course, would be to hang a lantern on it. Just have some character say, “Gee, isn’t this weird how we each have the same tech but each one does something different?” With that, I’d be confident that the author was well aware of the apparent credibility gap, and that he was asking for my patience while he unfolded the necessary plot elements. And I’d have happily complied.
But without such a lantern swinging from it, this is just a leap too far for my credibility sensor.
Note: The story unfolds in epistolary form, showing journal entries from each player, plus a series of emails and communiqués passed around among the inventors and television production staff. That’s not a problem, but trying to interweave a coherent novel from 15 or more different POVs is going to be a challenge. I’m intrigued, but growing a tad skeptical.
Analysis: I tried to hang on through all the log entries, emails, phone taps, and other records, few of which were any longer than a page or two. But I finally got lost somewhere around the 30th journal entry. Each one is headed with the time, date, and name of the character recording, but that’s not enough. The name tells me whose eyes I’m looking through, but it does nothing to reconnect me to the growing history of what I’ve already seen through that character. Especially since most of the names are so generic. I’m meeting a new character every page or two, and I’m not getting much with each glimpse to help me construct unique characters in my head.
Since every entry is written in 1st POV, the names simply don’t enter into my mental picture. I don’t think of the characters as Rita, Susan, Nathan, or David. Instead, there’s the guy looking after the sick kid, the woman who seems delighted by the challenge, and the one whose locked herself in a trailer. Just don’t ask me which name goes with which story, because they all just refer to themselves as “I.”
So the problem is that, with each new journal entry, we’re given a name, but that doesn’t help me recall which storyline it connects with. Presumably, this will get better over time, as I eventually get enough repetition to start cementing the names to the stories, but in the early going, there are just too many names to track, and their stories are too similar: Holy shit, what’s happening? I’d better hide until I figure this out.
Making the problem still worse, there is a distinct sameness to the voices with which the characters all seem to express themselves. There are one or two exceptions, who seem to have distinct concerns or manners of expression, but in a cast of at least 15 people so far, being able to distinguish three or four of them isn’t really enough.
So combining the voice problem and the name/label problem, I’m finding it very hard to keep track of what story history is relevant in each new scene. And if I have no context from which to understand what’s happening around me, I can’t really say that I’m immersed in the world.
Note: Despite the immersion failures, I’m enjoying this one and I’ll probably spend some more time on it, after the treadmill has wound down for the night. The journal entry structure and the audacity of the premise are both intriguing enough to keep my attention, for now, despite the problems noted above. I’ll let you know how things play out.
“At this stage of the game, it’s crucial for me to know whether the players are participating in a show they volunteered for, or whether they’ve been shanghai’d into it. So with this apparent contradiction, I had to jump back and re-read the letter and now I’m wondering whether I’m mis-reading it.”
My first thought when you pointed out that contradiction was that both the letter and the reaction to it are intentional in a kafkaesque way. Imagine if you’ve been told you signed up for this, but you know you didn’t–or don’t have any recollection of doing it.
Yes, this is certainly possible, Val. But the wording was important here. If the character had said he hadn’t signed any papers, I would have felt he was directly refuting the line in the letter about “previous release clauses.” But when all he says is that he didn’t sign up for any game, that could just be a euphemism for volunteering. The difference is very subtle, but to me it’s an important one. By directly refuting the existence of previous paperwork, the author would be hanging a lantern on the contradiction, telling us that he is aware of the mismatch and that we’re too trust him. But the chosen wording is unclear. It could be an attempt at lanterning, or it might not. And doubt breeds in that difference.
I know this sounds like an exceedingly thin distinction to make, but what happens when we read is a complex process, and subtle things can sometimes be crucial to the immersion experience. So in IOD reports, I try to explain what happened in my head as I was reading, even if those things were subtle. It’s not about me being impossibly picky, looking for tiny things to complain about, as some people conclude. It’s about me recognizing when something goes wrong and breaks my immersion. Then I go back and try to figure out what that was and report on it. Even if the cause turns out to have been minor.
I had the same reaction and would hope or assume that at some point in the book we would learn what actually happened. Of course, the rest of the writing and story would need to be sufficiently interesting enough to keep one reading.
Sometimes when you flag things, it does seem nit-picky to me, but if it disrupts your read, it’s a WTF based on the rules of the game. In this instance, I was curious enough to question it. :)
I like that you add the note about wanting to go back to read more in those instances where the story is compelling enough to do that despite the immersion breaks.