In-the-Moment Writing Mistakes

In-the-moment writing is an important part of immersive writing. It means writing all of the action as if it is happening in this instant, right now, as the reader watches. But it's hard to maintain this breathless style, and there are various common mistakes that tend to creep into your words.

1. Preemptive Summarization. There are lots of ways to accidentally have your viewpoint character look ahead into the future. In this way, the character becomes a kind of detached narrator, looking back (to the future), rather than in-the-moment. Some examples:
   • If I knew then what I know now, ...
   • It was the first odd thing that happened that weekend.
   • I wasn't to know what consequences this would cause.
   • How was I know that I'd meet the love of my life in this bar.
   • She didn't let me forget this for the next six months.
2. Post-Action Summarization. You often want an emotional reaction beat from your viewpoint character, where they react to dialogue or recent action. But you have to be careful that it doesn't become a kind of "summary" of what just happened in the scene. Let the reader see the results or effects or moral outcomes of the scene, without trying to over-explain them. An overlong emotional beat becomes a kind of excessive looking backwards, which breaks in-the-moment writing style.
3. Hidden Self-Reflective Narration. When you're writing in first person (or third person) there are some common ways that your viewpoint character accidentally becomes a narrator at a distance. Here's some examples:
   • I realized she was frowning at my comment.
   • I thought of what my mother's opinion would be.
   • I smelled the beautiful roses.
   • I saw him walking up the street.

   These all sound superficialy fine, and yet they turn the focus from the viewpoint character experiencing the action to instead being a separate layer between the reader and the story. These self-referencial verbs ("I realized", "I saw", etc.) should be written out. Here's some imperfect but better versions:

   • She was frowning at my comment.
   • What would my mother think!
   • The roses smelled fresh like .... (something)
   • He was striding up the street. Our eyes met.

   Focus on just writing the viewpoint character's sights, sounds, and thoughts, without reflecting them back onto your heroine. It's still first person, but it's like the character isn't aware that she's telling a story.

4. Narrator Speaks. The narrator has to be hidden for both immersive and in-the-moment writing. Any kind of non-immersive description by the viewpoint character breaks both the immersive and the in-the-moment style. Your viewpoint character is the narrator, and yet they are unaware that they are narrating. In effect, this is a kind of unreliable narrator, as they don't really express the fact that they're relating a story, although their dialogue and description of scenes, and even of their own emotional reactions to happenings, can be completely reliable (or unreliable, if you prefer).
5. Too Many Flashbacks. The use of flashback scenes can be important for backstory, but it's a risky thing to do when writing immersively. Consider if there's ways to drip-feed the backstory rather than breaking the in-the-moment style for a flashback. If not, then make it a brief flashback! (And if you must, then write the flashback in immersive style, even if it's in past tense.)