Talking Heads Are Bad (not the band) So How Do You Imagine Yourself In a Scene.

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A lot of time I’ll be reading scenes in books and it will be two characters talking and I’ll only have a vaguely general idea about where they are. Maybe it’s a house but what room? Maybe it’s a bedroom, but where are they in the bedroom? Standing? Sitting? On the floor? On a bed? On a cool futon with a face of Taylor Swift on it?

Maybe I won’t have an idea at all. We call this evil happening the talking heads syndrome.

Cue scary music here.

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

WHAT IS TALKING HEADS SYNDROME?

It’s where there’s a lot of dialogue going on but there’s no actual anchor for the characters. It’s like they are floating in space blabbing at each other. There’s no physical world placement. No setting. No senses.