ID 24450426 © Dirk Ercken | Dreamstime.com
I mentioned in the Editing Rant: What did you see? (7/14/2026) “readers have an easier time of visualizing what is there rather than what is removed.”
But as a writer, you often need to write about something that is no longer there. A clue that went missing, something missing that becomes a clue. It could be someone missing or the loss of the senses of smell. The Point of View character could be blindfolded or temporarily deaf. Someone might have been pickpocketed, or “Dude, where’s my car?”
WRITING EXERCISE: Write about a void. Something is missing: an object or a person or something that had been registering on one of the senses. Per normal, this is an exercise. Keep it under 500 words and post below if you want.
My attempt: Silence of the Forest (7/19/2026) is based on the lack of sound. This is a device often used in fantasy: The FoResT GOes siLENT!! But often you don’t “hear” it go silent because nothing was heard before. Yes, the characters might have been talking, but the readers haven’t been told about all the noise the forest is making all the time. The fact it went silent isn’t impactful. I wanted to see how it would work if I built sound into everything within the story. How do you think it worked, specifically in relation to help the audience hear the forest go silent.
If something goes silent, then yeah, you’d start with talking about the noises you hear first. These are the sorts of things that the writer needs to plan out.