H is for Hallucinations (and #Haiku) #atozchallenge

That's what stories are, right? Shared hallucinations?

If you do them right, anyway, you suck the reader in so for a while, the protagonists problems loom larger in the reader's mind than their own, and the beautiful forest or dreary dungeon or wherever that the story is set is more real than the kitchen or bedroom or "throne room" that the reader is actually sitting in.

All the techniques of writing--point of view, plot, characterization, even grammar--all of that is just the foundation--the scales and vocal warmups, the finger exercises, if you will.

What matters to the reader is being sucked into the hallucination. They only care about the grammar or point of view if it jars them out of the illusion of being there.

So here's to creating the best possible hallucinations out of imagination and pixels!

H is also for Haiku, and it is poetry month, after all:

The blank screen awaits
I could write anything here
But first, I must start