When I read, I’ll fill in the blanks to make sense of things, and when the text isn’t clear. Without realizing it, we fill in the blanks to connect the dots when the information doesn’t seem to click. With the limited information we’ve gathered from the book, we use inductive reasoning to put things together, to give it cohesiveness and a reality that we can identify with.
But sometimes we might fill in the blanks with the wrong data–the wrong assumptions. I’ve done this many-a-times in which I’ll assume the characters of a story are in a certain environment when they’re not, or that they know each other when they don’t. Or I might assume an event has taken place when it hasn’t yet, or that a character knows a bit of information when they don’t.
Reading often involves self-correcting and getting the information right and consistent to form an understanding of the plot and characters. We naturally bring a bit of ourselves into the story: what we understand of what a word means or what a place or an environment should look like. But we also get tired when we read, so we’re not always one hundred percent focused, which can cause us to miss or forget information that might be relevant later on.
Thus, we have to fill in the blanks to follow the story. If we don’t, we’re not really using our imagination to transform words into images, sounds, and ideas that are unique to us–that have meaning to us.
Fallton Havenstonne 