I chose music school over college, but would like to sound smart and use the right terminology when I'm asking questions here and I was curious . . . Is there a term for the action the reader has to imagine that's happening while the narrative is somewhere else? The action going on off-screen, or off-stage or . . .
Just kind of a self-taught guy here trying not to sound stupid, so I appreciate the replies, thanks. *heads off-screen*
Yeah, you'd never actually use "off-screen" in writing. "Meanwhile" would do just fine for that, but your initial post sounded like you wanted the term for use in general conversation.
This is, word for word, the phrase I was thinking of four posts above, but I decided to have some fun with it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, aunt Martha is lying dead in a ditch. I had to add this... something my father would say in thew voice of an old style radio announcer. Meanwhile is a good word. ~Mordred
I was actually talking about outside the book even, like the technical term, as in asking a question of your fellow writers, "I've got this scene and then while it's going on there's some action going on elsewhere . . . " Hey, there it is, the "action going on elsewhere".
If it doesn't appear in the book at all, it only exists in your imagination. If it is alluded to indirectly, but never fully exposed to the reader, it is a peripheral event, i.e. it lies on the periphery of the story. If it is a scene that is revealed eventually to the reader, either in it entirety or in pieces, it's a scene not yet exposed. If there are special terms for these cases, I'm not aware of them yet. They probably aren't that important to know.
BINGO! There it is, I was starting to feel silly for asking, but . . . peripheral event That's exactly the correct terminology I was hoping to learn! "Scene not yet exposed," another good term to know, thanks!
