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One of the strongest advantages of the medium of the written word (as opposed to, say, movies) is that you can describe something that is impossible to experience, and readers will still accept it....
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-30T17:15:28Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38541 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:41:11Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38541 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
One of the strongest advantages of the medium of the written word (as opposed to, say, movies) is that you can describe something that is impossible to experience, and readers will still accept it. Terry Pratchett's novel _The Color of Magic_ has several great examples of describing a color beyond what we'd be able to see. Notice how all of his descriptions focus on the subjective experience of seeing the color and its importance within the setting, even though you couldn't picture what octarine looks like in your mind's eye: > It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. > > But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple. * * * > [W]izards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic colour of which all other colours are merely pale shadows impinging on normal four-dimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish-yellow purple.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-08-27T14:45:58Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 1