I don't know if anyone has done this in real life. For example, say in a story your character is walking down the street. Bumps into someone who drops something. Then the character and the guy he bumps into start arguing about who's fault it is. A bunch of dialogue... and then something happens and the reader finds out that none of this really happened, it was all just something he imagined happened. What are some of the ways one would go about pulling this off in an actual story without confusing the reader? The only idea I can think of is to have someone interrupt him thinking by saying something, and then the character snaps back to the real world and the reader now knows that was all in his head. There's that and then just the completely direct "But none of this happened, it was all in his head" line. That just sounds too corny though.
You could let it be ambiguous, blend fantasy with reality, let the reader wonder whether it was in his head or not...
what viewpoint are you wtiing? i have a similar thing in my novel where the character imagines what he shoudl do in a certain situation, but as its in first person its easy to get across the idea its imaginary, i write the scene initially and then reveal this to be simply the imagination at woek it is porbably harder to seem natural in third person however.
If your character is drown in thoughts at that moment it would make sense to suddenly be shaken up and start arguing...
I think you might be confused with what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the situation where an event happens that launches the main character into a heated conversation with another character in the story. They go back and forth for a significant amount of time. And then the author writes something that lets the reader know that this whole sequence was imagined by the main character. The reader doesn't know its imagined until after the fact. They pulled this off a lot in the movie "Next". The movie was about a guy who could see a few minutes into the future. So constantly scenes would happen that we would find out at the end of the scene were just visions of him looking into the future.
Well, you must continue with the event, as you say, connected with reality so the reader does not know that it is happening only in the characters head. So a proposed ending of the situation: we suppose that he is imagining and argument about dropping something and arguing with the another person about whose fault is it. So after the fight, you can end it with his win, and after he returns it into his pocket,he pulls it out again so to see that it is not there. He will then regain memory of the non existing event and understand everything. He can just let out a sigh or just walk quietly into the night. Just an idea, hope it helps.
"It was at this point that I realized the man was a shrub and the woman was a ****zu in the middle of it's ritual." Dude, I have no clue what your trying to do but that's the best I could come up with.
