My theory, informed by my reading on writing and my consumption of other writers talking about writing in different formats (articles, videos, hey tumblr posts too, etc.), is that comparing the story in your head to the story you’ve written is more like comparing apples and oranges than you might think.
Or, more accurately, comparing an apple pie to an orange. That is to say what they are made of is wildly different.
When you imagine a scene in your head, it’s based on your imagination, sure, but your imagination is fuelled by your experiences. So your scene is maybe set at the pool, but really you feel like you’re at that one pool you used to go to when you were young. Even if it doesn’t look the same, all that nostalgia, all the sensations that came with being at that pool, thrum in the image in your head.
And the image isn’t static, always shifting, infused with memories, and fantasies, and that unique pool smell that I think is different for everyone, and fight me if you want to, but it does not boil down to “chlorine”, that pool smell that you get a whiff of on the first day of school sometimes who knows why. The one that’s indescribable.
You’re seeing the scene and it’s friends just hanging out talking about whatever but it reminds you (on some level) of the best “never have i ever” game you’ve ever played which is really the only good one you’ve ever played cuz those games are never as fun as you think they’ll be but that one time, that one time at the pool with young!you and your young!friends sharing young secrets and confiding and connecting to each other like you haven’t with anyone who isn’t your relative before, that was great, and it felt a certain way, you were on the precipice of your entire lives, and that’s PRESENT in the story in your head.
When you embarrass your character, as a loving writer does, you know exactly which part of his gut is twisting. And what it tastes like. And when they drag their nails on the table, you feel your own scratch at the surface and that specific way they snag in the dips of the woodgrain. When they chug a cold glass of water your body recalls how refreshing that is, how sometimes you feel the liquid spread through you system in an impossible way. This is all happening in your head. Microseconds of sensation.
However you feel about buses influences how you imagine a scene in a bus. And if lemonade is the epitome of summer for you, that’s there, in your head, when you make your characters drink some, eat burgers, play poker, whatever it is, it’s there. In your head and heart and skin.
How do you stack up words against your rich history, against all these sensations, against the significant things (and the insignificant ones you still attribute meaning to) that feed your story, that make it vibrant and 3D and lush. How do you compare a fruit that’s plucked from a tree and made of fiber and water and a slew of vitamins or whatever, to a pie, that’s constructed in steps, forged in fire like you, that’s ingredients transformed, made of fruit and sugar and milk (maybe? i dont actually know what goes into a pie) AND dough (that’s in turn made of a bunch of stuff)(im thinking maybe this is where the milk goes).
The point is. You can’t compare. Or you shouldn’t.
And the thing is you don’t have to. Notice how nobody sees—or can see—the story in your head but you? Notice how no one is comparing the finished product to it but you? Notice how everyone has their own experiences, and how their own imaginations bring your words to life in their heads, in their way. That masterpiece doesn’t look like the one you thought up—it can’t because you are not the same—but it’s the most curated version of what they could have pulled from your story for them. Coloured by their existence and who they are.
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s art, or human interaction, or life or something.
