Day 135

There is always something to see, especially when you are told, ‘nothing to see here, move along’.

…

What lies beneath.

That’s the question every thriller/mystery writer wants to get to the bottom of by the end of the story.

As a rule, it’s never really what you see or what you think you see, but it can be hiding in plain sight.

Someone once told me that we are trained to see what we want to see, often not what it is that’s there in front of us. 

Like reading a story with spelling errors, gaps, and bad punctuation, our eyes gloss over those errors because we’re trained to read words quickly using only a few letters.

It’s why we sometimes misinterpret words and find ourselves up that proverbial garden path.  I know I have done it myself.  I know those apps that predict the word you want to use but invariably display the wrong one are as flawed as our eyes and brains can be at times, so I try not to use them.

A good detective looks beneath the surface to see what others don’t.

You look at a shop window and see several products on sale at ridiculously low prices.

A detective looks at the same store window and sees the third dress along on the rack of sale items had a blood stain on the bottom hemline, and deduces the dress was worn by the murderer of a bystander.

Someone in the shop, customer, or employee had a case to answer.

Then, sometimes, we can’t see the wood for the trees.  It’s an interesting expression but quite true.

Any time I visit a new place, I try to get as much visitor information as possible, and then, based on the description, go visit.

How many times have I been disappointed?  A few.  What they sometimes describe is the ambience, which may be there when there are fewer people about, but not when there are so many you cannot enjoy the view, the sidewalk cafes, and most of all the ambience.

This is translated into your writing, and I like the idea of depicting a place so that if you decide to go there, you see what I see, and not necessarily what the brochures tell you.

Then, of course, there is ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.  That is not easy to convey in words, but I’m working on it.

One day!