z

Young Writers Society


Reality Check



User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Wed Jan 15, 2014 7:41 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Hey! Hey you! Yeah, you, over there in that head.
Man, long day, huh?
Have you ever wondered if you're in reality? Mmm, I know, scary thought. Just to let you know, not all of us are! See, some of us around these areas are writers, and others are characters. You just might be a character in any sort of fiction!
You could be in a story, a movie, a comic, a manga, or even a song! Just imagine, your entire life might just be within the boundaries of the writer's words, and you'd never know!

Here, take this survey to see what you're in, or if you really are in reality. After each section, I'll give you a rough estimate of what you might be in, if some of these questions can't be answered, or are answered negatively.


Section I: Determine the Depth of your Reality.

Spoiler! :
This simulated reality is based in five senses, Audio, Visual, Olfactory, Palate, and Textile. Here are some questions to determine how fleshed out your fiction is, or, if you're in reality, how to add to your fiction.


A: Audio
1) What can you hear?
2) Are there cars?
3) Can you determine how far away that last noise was?
4) When someone talks to you, what pitch is their voice? Are they: nasily/breathy, low/high, rich/dull, loud/quiet?
5) Seriously consider how many voices are the same in your world, is it more than a fourth of the people you know?

Spoiler! :
If you can't hear anything, don't freak out! You might just be in a book. Sometimes people read without an internal voice at all and they don't think to make your voice different from your arch enemy. Other times people get specific voices stuck in their heads when they read due to things they watch or favorite characters.

If you answered 1, 2, and 5 negatively, you might be in a book.
If you couldn't answer 4, or 3, it's undetermined.
In reality, people can have a really hard time figuring out how far away a sound is. I know I can't.
They also have a hard time qualifying the type of voices they hear, which is why 5 is a better determiner. Most voices are unique, even if it is not something you can explain.

Because there is audio in movies, tv, recordings, and other such media, you might be in one of those. The best way to check is olfactory senses.


B: Visual
1) Think of your favorite color. How many items do you have of that color?
2) What's the layout of your favorite place? home? country/county/city/state?
3) Can you draw me a map to your nearest food source? water source? bathroom?
4) What is the terrain like?
5) Can you remember the eye color of three of your friends?

Spoiler! :
Could you do it?
Again, this category is mostly for finding out if you're in a book. Sometimes if you're in a book you can't see the ground you're standing on even though the sky is shiny. Out of all the senses, this is the one which writers pay a great deal of attention to, so the questions might be rather inconclusive.

1) If you could answer this with an exact number, you're probably in a book. In reality people are collectors and since it's their favorite color, they probably have no idea how many items they actually have of that color. They might have a mental catalog of some of them, but not all of them. The flip side is if your writer couldn't think of anything that you had of that color, or didn't take the time to count them in their head, you might get a false positive.
2)-3) These go together. Most of the time you might know what a little place looks like if you're in a book, but how to get from one place to the next, how many corners, exactly, what the street names are, or the land-markers, might be missing. If you couldn't do either of these, and you're not location-ally challenged [I feel your pain], then you are probably in a book.
4) If it's smooth, bumpy, rocky, carpet, soft, hard, sticky, details details details. the more details you can get about what the ground looks like, the more likely you are in reality. Most of the time in books, video games, movies, and so forth, feet are very neglected, though horizons are not. They give a vague reality of the ground's look, and leave it at that.
5) If you could, you're fictional, or really interested in eye color. Most of the time people don't actually know the eye color of even their family members. Writers, however, spend a lot of time with the symbols of the eyes and their importance. Most give details about eye colors before characters would even be close enough to see one and other's eyes.


C: Olfactory
Good old smell!

1) Well, when was the last time you walked into a room and smelled rotting eggs?
2) What smells worse, your armpits or your breath in the morning?
3) Any stinky secrets you want to share? Did you let it rip in an elevator yesterday?
4) If you smell vanilla and plug your nose, then eat an apple, what do you taste?
5) What do your friends smell like?

Spoiler! :
Smell is another sense which is neglected by writers, interestingly enough. Not only do they not send their characters to the bathroom unless it's important [almost all media unless they're doing it on purpose to prove they DO do it,[that has become a thing]], but you can't smell!
This is the only scents (^.-) which can give away, for sure, if you're in a movie. Sometimes actors try to play like they can smell something, and you might react to something like that too, but you can't really smell it, come on, can you? can you?
Books are one up in this category. You can have smell in books, although they don't always include it unless someone's cooking, or there is a point.

Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all just to get you thinking about things you smell every day. If you can't answer them, you're probably in a movie. If you can answer them, but you never think about it, that's probably normal.

Question 4 is a bit of a science mystery. Because your olfactory bulbs are closely related to your taste buds [palate], if you smell something, that's what you taste. You actually have to smell things in order to taste them. If you plug your nose and swallow medicine, as long as you don't open your nose until after all of it is gone [and I mean all of it], you won't taste a thing. Liquid medicines leave behind residue on the tongue which makes this theory easier to say than do. (I probably have some of this science wrong.)


D: Palate

1) What did breakfast taste like?
2) Describe the taste of mold.
3) Lick the nearest sanitary object, well?
4) What is the worst thing to stick in your mouth right now that is close by?
5) What words would you use to describe cake?

Spoiler! :
While this is another movie mystery, people eat popcorn and other sweets at the movie theater, so if you're constantly eating/tasting sweets, you might be in a movie. As for books, this ranks down with smell. However, most of the time people in reality don't really know the taste of things either.
1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 all could be described both in books, and in reality because of the language used to describe food to each other: delicious, moist, rich, heavy, light, airy, vanilla, garlic, salt, zesty, etc.
In reality, 3, and 4 are going to be much easier to answer, unless your writer has a very good visual map of where things are, what they are, and enough knowledge to answer the impromptu questions. 4) Most of the time trash is close by. Used tissues, shoes, clothes, empty bottles, old things, and other such unsanitary objects are going to make it on the list in reality, while things like mud, dirt, poo, and extravagant things are more likely to make it on in a book, simply because they're uniquely worth mentioning unless you're reading this from a trash heap, or your personality creates an active trash heap. With 3) things are a little more complicated. Sometimes the nearest sanitary object won't be an object in reality and the writer has to be inventive with the taste. In reality, some things don't have a taste, so you might get a sword tasting like metal, when some metal is coated so it doesn't produce a residue to taste. These, like the rest of it, are not fool-proof.


E: Textile

1) What was the last callous you got on your hands? feet?
2) What is the itchiest part of your body right now?
3) Do you have any noticeably dry skin? Do you use lotion?
4) Do you prefer to drink hot or warm things? eat hot or warm things?
5) What are five different textures you can feel right now without moving much?

Spoiler! :
1) Blisters, which typically result in callouses are really annoying. They stick around for a while and they stick out. Most people will remember where the last one that formed is at.
2) Itching is neglected! People need to itch more. Itching is good. People tell us not to itch, the fools. In books, movies, and otherwise, itching is neglected. In reality people are supposed to be non-itchie as well, but I've found this to be false idealism.
3) Humidity is a factor in most stories that only shows up if it's absolutely necessary to make it rain, or it's going desert.
4) These sorts of preferences are well known by reality, but how much do you actually see them?
5) Five is a lot of information overload for stories [Actually all/most of these details are basically information overload if they're included in the actual text. These aren't supposed to be added to stories, just added to the mental catalog of the writer as things they can be aware of to add if they want something unique to say for passing time to make credible, realistic pauses in dialogue, action, and so forth.] which makes it free game.


Section II : Test your Boundaries

Spoiler! :
Now that you know how deep your reality is, let's see how much more information we can get out of it. These next ten questions are made to push the limits of your observation skills utilizing the five senses.

These are all just options that you can do at your own discretion to help you become more aware of your world. If you're in a story. Each one has things that will be easy or hard for people in or out of stories. For example: #4 is going to be harder for people who are not in stories with accuracy. #2 might be difficult to figure out for someone in a story.


1) Close your eyes and try to change your thinking voice. What about your voice did you change? [use audio question 4 if you need terminology.]
2) What is the white-noise you currently hear? Is it more than one thing?

3) Glance at an area, your desk, wherever, and describe as many things as you can by proximity/color/size[pick one], and then check. See if you were thinking of the object you described. Don't name them. Don't look, glance. The more familiar you are with the area, the easier this will be.
4) If you don't live alone: catalog where each person and pet is in your house at this moment. Describe with as much detail as desired.

5) What does your shirt smell like?
6) What is the most vivid memory of smelling something you have? What memory is it connected to?

7) Describe the taste of the food you hate the most.
8) Describe the taste of a food you have never eaten, but you have smelled.

9) Close your eyes and find something that hurts, or feels good and describe it's location, what it's touching, and the internal feeling of the muscles/aches/pains.
10) Close your eyes and disorient yourself, then find and identify something via touch.

Section III: Debriefing

Thank you for reading/playing along. This is just something I wanted to do for fun. You can use it as a tool to help flesh out your characters, your worlds, and your own observation skills, or you can all ignore me and never do anything. I'd love to see your responses if you wanted to post. You could also add to the lists above with questions and reasons why it might be harder for someone to perform on your question one way or another.

Including all this information in movies, stories, or other media is really unnecessary. The stories are about the character's and the details which move our stories ahead. In mystery stories, sometimes details can be overwhelming and people will feel hopeless when they try to figure out what actually happened. Other times, mystery stories don't have enough details to hide the clues for readers to find.

Choosing what you include in your story is very important to your character's outward appearance to the audience. With that said, knowing preliminary details about your setting, characters, habits and quirks can help flesh out a story and make them seem like real people instead of fictional characters. The key is to balance how much you include of their reality, with how important it is to the audience. This list is just a reminder that there is more than only sight to play with when you're creating your checklist of things you might want to include and I hope we can use it to help flesh out our fabricated realities.
  








Perfection is lots of little things done well.
— Marco Pierre White