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Post Script: "I'll spin a coin in the madhouse while I watch you drowning." - John Foxx

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All that the writer will know already lies with in them.

It is their personal experience which draws it out. Some event strikes this subconscious quarry like a seismic event and stirs up a chunk of their essences which rises to the surface of their consciousness and come out as an episode on the written page. The slower this rise to the surface the greater the presences of the experience on the written page.

I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut who said Fiction is the first virtual reality. The Writer is God of his universe, a Shiva in a cerebral landscape. Writing is one of the few arts where the sensory interpretation is dependent on the user.

Visual arts and music exist regardless of a viewer yet the written word is only the potential of the communication. The written word on the page is analogous to the paint in the tube or the keys of a piano waiting for the pianist to play upon, whether it is heard or not. The mind-movie, the interpretation of the written word, may also be seen differently by every recipient.

A painting of a red sunset will appear identical, in theory, to every viewer yet a written description of a red sunset may appear different in the minds eye to each individual who view it. This is not to say that other forms of art may contain a communication above their surface interpretation, yet this is also true of the literary arts.

Apart from a user interpreting and assimilating the contents of the written word according to the users experience, the user must then assimilate the connecting dots between how the author, the god of the fictional universe, has orchestrated the relationships between the characters, their selves and their environment. It is my personal belief that a part of the power of fiction lies in that what the author wishes to communicate can be readily ascertained due to the users participation in reconstructing the fictional world according to the readers perception filtered through their own experiences.