Recommendations for freefall sensation?

Well, I just went on Youtube and there were several videos of people skydiving, which may help with the visual and facial expression aspect.

Aside from that, freefalling reminds me of a scene in A Series of Unfortunate Event's sixth book, where the characters fall through a pit-black elevator and the author uses a completely black page to "describe" the experience. But I guess the sky in your story wouldn't be pitch-black.

If you've ever been to an amusement park, there are several common rides that include short amounts of freefall. For example, a swinging ship ride, especially if you sit in one end, has a bit of freefall when the rider is at the highest part of the arc. The sensation of freefall is pretty well known for causing involuntary screaming even in those who have experienced it before, unless and until you get used to it.

As far as jumping from one cloud or floating island to another is concerned, I don't have any specific recommendations--but since that's inevitably fictional anyway, it seems best to me to use your own imagination there rather than following what someone else has come up with.

As far as real-life skydiving is concerned, there's a ton of information out there. Though I can't think of a specific book that would have what you want, I'm guessing that if you just google on "skydiving" you'll find plenty. Probably the closest real-life analogue to your scenario is skydiving out of a balloon; that's a somewhat unusual thing to do, but by no means unheard of.

I have been skydiving myself, and my first comment would be that the experience is likely to be very different for your MC depending on how experienced he is at making such jumps. In general, the first ten seconds or so are likely to be the most disorienting since you're basically in zero-gravity. An inexperienced jumper could easily get so confused then that he literally didn't know which way was up. (It happened to me!) After that, you're falling so fast that you can feel your weight against the air resistance. At that point, if you know what you're doing, you can control your movements quite well by positioning your body and using the force of the air. You can build up a pretty substantial horizontal speed if you want. On the other hand, if you don't know what you're doing then you're liable to start spinning around out of control and it can get pretty scary. (Again, it happened to me.)

Hope this helps.

Cloud jumping sounds as though it's normal for the character -no?

If he does it for fun, it's just the excitement of the movement -the air rushing past -the freedom - the thrill of making sure he reaches the next cloud or lower one or smaller one or whatever, I guess.

I'd go with the imagination instead of trying to copy sky-diving. If the character is cloud jumping I could imagine a lot myself without too-detailed prompting.

I'm not sure how that could be extended too much except perhaps for the manoeuvering but surely once you've jumped between two clouds....

What hazards are there to cloud jumping, if any, apart from missing and not finding one below it?

Does he jump between thunderclouds?

Just thinkin' aloud.

Hmm... thunderclouds are extremely turbulent. Jumping between those would be damn dangerous.

There are some accounts on the internet about what it's like to jump into a thunderhead. There was a pilot who had to do it and survived. I have his name somewhere at home. If I remember, I'll let you know.

There was a program on TV recently here covering a woman professional racing paraglider (Can't recall if it was Australia or not) who (with another competitor) got sucked into a thundercloud and carried around thirty-thousand feet up. Only she survived - and went back paragliding some days later in the same place.

Google - Ewa Wisnierska

First, you have to decide on how you want to treat gravity in your world since living on billows of water vapor would seem to require some gravity-modification. Once you decide on the gravity issue, you can use that to create the sensations of cloud jumping, since the skydiving free-fall in our world is totally gravity-dependent (also aerodynamic drag-dependent). It could be possible to bring some form of aerodynamic lift into it, together with a modification of gravity, and you can varing degrees of flight or glide possible.

In an imaginary world like this, you can get really creative with something like gravity, lift, and drag, and with the characters' reactions to them, and use of them.

Jessianodel said:

I'm asking for any book recommendations that describe skydiving or people living above earth on clouds/floating islands/trees/whatever. If they describe how to get from place to place, even better. Just anything that you think may help me get an idea of the feeling.

Btw, while my book is a fantasy YA, I really don't care if it's an adult sci-fi, or nonfiction about skydiving. I just need some descriptions on how it feels to free-fall.

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Jessie,

I recommend the novel Exhult by Joe Quirk. The story is about hand gliding, but the desriptions of free falling are beautiful.

The key is somewhat whether he's experienced or not. First-time jumpers get disoriented, sometimes scared. More experienced won't. In free fall in the sky, there's no suitable reference point for a falling sensation. You hear and feel a wind. You seem to float, not fall. It's hard to tell up from down unless you stare at the horizon. Your body moves strangely, air resistance affects it more than gravity.

Go to an amusement park with a parachute ride, the kind with a giant fan blowing up inside a tube. Close your eyes and you have the feeling.

Jeff

Fantasy people living in the clouds above earth may not be the same physically or react the same to air pressures as those living on earth.

Feels like your heart suddenly slams against the back of your chest, like it jumps into your lungs and stays there until you land.
An involuntary scream escapes your lips and you're not sure where it's coming from until you realize it's you; *you're* screaming.

I don't question that, but where folk live permanently above the clouds and go cloud-jumping, which suggests more than one direction of continuous jumping as opposed to one isolated jump into space and down to earth below you, maybe it's done for the experiencing of other effects and because they have certain special abilities. If it's fantasy the sky is the limit for imagination and it may have nothing to do with sky-diving.

It strikes me that this would be more like base-jumping than skydiving as the distance from cloud to cloud would not be as great (generally speaking) as from plane to earth.

So do these characters not have weight? What prevents them from just plunging through the clouds to their death?

I've been sky diving several times. As far as real sky diving is concerned, it feels like you're just hanging in the air. There's no real sense of movement. Once the shute opens, it's a whole different story---that's when you feel like you're falling.

I've done it once. All I can remember is the sensation of complete confusion after I opened my eyes and all I could see was blue. Complete blue everywhere.

Turns out I'd spun around after jumping and was facing up, not down.

luxisufeili said:

Well, I just went on Youtube and there were several videos of people skydiving, which may help with the visual and facial expression aspect.

Aside from that, freefalling reminds me of a scene in A Series of Unfortunate Event's sixth book, where the characters fall through a pit-black elevator and the author uses a completely black page to "describe" the experience. But I guess the sky in your story wouldn't be pitch-black.

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Love those books.

And maybe you don't neccessarily have to explain it like a typical Sky-diving experience. Be creative...just don't get too "purplish" (if you know what I mean).

If I were you, I probably wouldn't even describe the scene as a typical Sky-diving scene (especially if it's an important experience in your novel).