What I’m talking about is proof of life outside your characters in your world. Not in the sense of ‘talking to the cashier at the checkout’, but things like:
Graffiti etched into a desk your character sits in during an exam
Realising that someone has come along and arranged the cans on the shelf so the labels say something stupid
Dirty vans that have ‘wash me’ written in the dried mud
A coin that has been stuck into a piece of gum on a handrail
Little things that show the world still goes on despite whatever is happening to the characters.
This helps make the world a world, not just a setting. There are other people with other lives doing stupid, funny, dangerous, things that in no way impact the protagonist. You don’t have to dwell on them, they can only be mentioned briefly in passing during the set up of a scene, but it will help create life within the background of the story and give the characters a chance to briefly think about something other than themselves/their situation.
Like an open world video game where you find a scrawled grocery list on the ground, or a basketball and hula hoop both on a trampoline, or bullet holes that were once covered by now peeling wallpaper.
Those are my favorite aspects of games, books, and movies. They’re super easy to include too once you start noticing them irl.
left 4 dead wouldnt be the same without the graffiti on the walls of the survival shelters
uhhhm sorry about your boyfriend but… yeah he became one with the sea. yeah he controls the tsunami now it’s actually kind of cool he just doesn’t want to come home. yeah… sorry
BY THE SKIN OF HIS TEETH HES MADE IT OUT ALIVE!
You will be delighted to know a member of staff confirmed that this post is exactly why they added decimals.
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