Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Can a scene be written to be disorienting and not be too confusing to readers?

I've written a scene in a short story where the character and her party are suddenly attacked in the night. It's written in first-person and the character had just been shaken awake from a nightmar...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by Trynda E. Adair‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:24:52Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/23773
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Trynda E. Adair‭ · 2019-12-08T05:24:52Z (about 5 years ago)
I've written a scene in a short story where the character and her party are suddenly attacked in the night. It's written in first-person and the character had just been shaken awake from a nightmare; so I had purposefully written it to be disorienting. One of my beta readers and my editor have commented on how it reads confusing and seems like some details have been missed in my excitement. At first, I was very excited to hear this from them, because that's exactly how I had wanted the scene to feel. But I started to wonder if, perhaps it was too much and hard to follow.

I would think that some details would be missed and even with some combat training, the character would have been out of it having just been woken up suddenly.

So I guess I wondering how a scene can be written from a disoriented character's perspective, and not alienate readers?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-07-12T03:17:32Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 7