The best shoes are the ones you forget you’re wearing.

Have you ever tried to get around in shoes that were too small? How about broken shoes? You can try to walk a mile in another person’s shoes, but just try to walk any distance in shoes that are broken or that don’t fit, and you’re going to feel it.

Tonight, I moved a bunch of garbage to the curb for a big pickup, and I didn’t wear the right shoes for the job. They were running shoes, and while my feet are fine, I wound up having to walk through a bunch of dried weeds and urban jungle and wound up collecting a bushel of burrs. Steel toes boots would have been the correct footwear for the job, especially since I was moving some heavy objects. It was 108F out there, though, and I thought having breathable shoes would be better. I’m not sure how much breathing could happen when the shoes themselves were choking on burrs.

What else can I say about shoes? My favorite for the longest time were the boots I received during basic training. I don’t think I’ve ever owned another pair of shoes that fit me so well. I walked everywhere in them. They still fit fairly well, but the soles are so worn out that they’re no longer really practical.

Shoes provide clues about the wearer. The kind of person that regularly wears cowboy boots probably subscribes to a particular lifestyle. Combat boots can mean a variety of things, depending on how worn they are, and how the person is wearing them. Combat boots on a Hot Topic goth are going to look different than combat boots on a veteran or someone serving in active duty. Expensive running shoes might suggest a certain amount of disposable income, or at least, some priorities around that particular area of fashion. Generic, Walmart shoes suggests frugality or practicality. And then there are Crocs.

Armed with that information, including a description of a character’s shoes is another way of conveying information to the reader about the character without having to spell it out. What does it say about the antagonist when they walk into the scene, their shiny black dress shoes clacking sharply on the linoleum? What does it say about the protagonist when they pair knee-high leather moccasins with their denim duster? Maybe it’s nothing but affectation and flavor, but then again, there might be a plot point hidden in that detail.

Getting back to what I said at first about shoes, how the best ones are the ones you forget you’re wearing, I think there’s something similar with writing. The best stories, to me, are the ones you can fall into and forget that you are reading.

Not all writing is best when invisible. Poetry and flower prose is there specifically to draw attention to itself and dazzle the reader with all the charms it possesses. But when you fall into a novel and you’re behind the eyes of a character, trapsing through a world and adventure, danger and triumph, there is a disservice writing in such a way that the reader is pulled out of the story and forced to remember that they are, in fact, reading.

It’s something I think about when revising. Clunky sentences get in the way and pull the reader out, because they have to stop and focus on the writing in order to extract meaning. Overly clever sentences can do the same thing. And, as I alluded to in a previous post, unusual punctuation can cause a reader to step more lightly through the story, rather than fall into it and be absorbed.

That’s what I have to say about shoes.