Writers truly and sincerely appreciate their readers. All of them do. Even the douchebag writers who just do it for the money -- cause without you buying their books they might as well be on Wattpad trying to become the year's best Watty.

Writing is a lonely hobby or profession, though, regardless of why you are doing it. It's even lonely for me and I co-author a lot of projects with my wife. If I'm not co-authoring with her then I'm world-building a new setting for her to populate with characters.
But at the end of the day -- or beginning of the morning -- we're usually both working on different projects, and we're so immersed in our own fictional universes that we've alienated ourselves from the other.

I think that's why true writers and, to a certain extent most artist, are socially awkward people 'cause we spend so much damn time in our own made-up worlds we lose connection with the real world around us.

Avid readers -- I mean real Twilight Zone, Time Enough At Last -- readers probably experience the same phenomena.


So, as a reader, what elements of a good story get you so lost in the fictional universe that you become alienated from the real world and real people around you?