Making the Everyday Eerie
It's normal stuff, but it's weird as shit when seen through new eyes ... like those of your reader.
This is part of my “Art of Noticing” series, in which I learn, find, or discover the things around me that usually go unnoticed and turn them into an endless source of creative inspiration.
NOTE: The last of these “Noticings” blog posts will run on April 13th. I’m going to keep recording the 9-minute daily podcast on which these posts are based, though, so if you want to keep your dose of daily Noticings, be sure to subscribe to the Art of Noticing podcast here on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(You could also listen here on Substack, but that’s a miserable way to listen to a podcast so I don’t recommend it. Do yourself a favor and use a podcast app so you can listen on your commute or at the gym or something.)
My daughter and I recently took a father-daughter road trip from Austin to Kansas City. Because “road trip” means balancing “not taking forever” and “not rushing,” it took us about 13 hours. It was super fun. We bonded and stuff.
Mostly in Oklahoma and Kansas, we drove through vast fields of huge industrial windmills. I’ve seen that kind of thing before, but it’s always awe-inspiring. This time, my daughter commented that the whole thing felt almost post-apocalyptic. And you know what? It did.
Windmills are ordinary, but all it took was a bit of imagination to suddenly see ourselves as driving through a wasted landscape. We’re authors, aren’t we? We should be making that kind of mental gymnastics all the time.
Personally, I think I will going forward.
Here's how this "noticing" can influence my stories and art:
Making Familiar Settings Unfamiliar
Taking a tired, everyday setting like a backyard or office and describing it from a new perspective gives me an opportunity as a writer to ignite a sense of wonder and discovery in readers. Depicting the mundane as if I'm seeing it for the very first time opens my eyes to overlooked details that can add atmosphere to any settings.
Side note: I knew a guy once who took LSD occasionally for the same reason: To reset his “priors” and see the world as a child.
Bringing Out the Surreal
I love using description to highlight the surreal or magical qualities that already exist in everyday objects and places. For instance, I could show buildings looming in the distance like sleeping giants, or trees whispering secrets on the wind. It’s a little flowery, but what the hell.
Using this kind of eye to newness can help a writer see magic in the world around them. It can breathe new and imaginative life into the everyday scenes. It's all there already - you just need to tune your senses to see it.
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Nathan Pyle is really good at this. He makes short comics named "Alien Planet" that take things completely normal to us and changes the wording to point out how strange it is.