Your brain is a prediction machine. Feed it the smallest detail — a person staring at the ceiling at midnight — and it constructs an entire emotional landscape. Two teenage children? Your mental model of someone shifts. Sketches itself in.
This is autocomplete for storytelling.
Jonathan Haidt nailed it: “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” We’ve evolved to detect patterns and make predictions faster than conscious thought. It’s survival machinery. We see a shadow at dusk and our brain fills in the threat before we even know we’re scared.
Good writers understand this utterly. They don’t describe everything. They can’t. The moment you try to exhaust description, you lose the reader. Instead, they lay a foundation — specific, vivid, true — and let the audience’s own neural machinery do the heavy lifting.
A woman walks into a room. She notices the scratched corner of the desk first. What does that tell you about her? Nothing… until it does. Your brain is already filling in the gaps. Is she observant? Anxious? Someone who notices damage? You’re co-authoring the moment without realising it.
This is why Ju-Jitsu Writing works. You’re not fighting the brain’s tendency to complete patterns — you’re using it.
The inverse is equally true. Tell someone everything. Describe every wrinkle, every fleck of colour, every interior thought. Somewhere around the third paragraph, they stop reading. Not because the writing is bad. Because you’ve removed their job. You’ve made them passive. Their brain knows there’s nothing left to predict, nothing to construct, and it quietly exits the theatre.
The best storytelling isn’t the most described. It’s the most suggested.
Ground your story in concrete details. Let the brain handle the rest. That’s autocomplete. That’s why brevity is power. That’s why a single true detail — lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling — can create an entire world your reader will defend as their own.
You’re not doing all the work. Your reader is. You just know which walls to leave unfinished.