The wrong kind of details: the components of wonder (aka lmp's rant)

[littlemanpoet]

Yup, this thread sure covers a lot of territory.

Not to mention poetic diction and evolution of consciousness, eh? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

[Kuruharan]

I was rummaging around in the back tunnels of the barrow and stumbled upon this gem. I thought this thread deserved a resurrection.

And I speak the magic words...

"HerenIstarion"

[drigel]

aaahh
Robert E Howards short story "Marchers of Valhalla" to me is a great example of what the writers skill of capturing wonder can do. In 30 some odd pages, he invokes what others fail to accomlish in a 3-4 hundred page attempt.

[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

And I speak the magic words...

"HerenIstarion"

lol

I must confess I haven't seen the thread before, so thanks indeed for bringing it up. I'm on my way through page one. Brief comment before I get to the end - sense of wonder may be worked up by characters too - but not if they act completely out of their character, but in a more half-expected or even hardly expected, but still believable way. Per instance, I never expected Eomer to let Aragorn & Co off, but I knew it could not have been otherwise once Eomer actually did let them go. Yet it was wonderfull all right.

More later. Or maybe not, and I'll keep quiet. Depends on what I'll find on pages 2 and 3

cheers

[Imladris]

An interesting thread and I somehow managed to plow my way through the whole of it....

What specific details are the right kind? What are the wrong kind of details? How much does it depend on the context of the story? How do you think the authors I've named so far handled this? What other authors are there to bring into the discussion?

As a few people on page one mentioned, the details should be subtle. If everything is described to the minutest detail, then that sense of wonder is destroyed because the author is showing off his knowledge. He's drawing attention to himself, in a way, and not to the story. Or he is telling you to look at water droplet in a whole sea of possibilities. Tolkien destroyed the wonder of the Silmarillion when he devoted an entire chapter to the geography of Beleriand. Too much detail...too much of the land revealed.

Myth/Faerie/Wonder must be veiled...they must not be disected and chopped to bits like some laboratory experiment. I believe that is where Marion Zimmer Bradley failed (miserably) in The Mists of Avalon. It is a well written story of Camelot -- yet the sense of mystery is lost in sordid details, and kingly nobility is destroyed with far too much attention to such things as blood lines.

I think that a main problem with modern fantasy/myth is too much attention (detail) to magic. Myth is not magic. Magic is a tool (at the same time though, it must not be mocked with details -- hence it becomes known and there is not magic at all). There is magic in Tolkien and Lewis, but that is not the main point of the story. Myth and wonder ought to point you to something greater.

I believe that George MacDonald pictured the sense of wonder perfectly in his sea of shadows in the Golden Key. Writer's should be like Mossy and Tangle...our stories are our search to find whatever beautiful thing cast that shadow.

[Kuruharan]

Brief comment before I get to the end - sense of wonder may be worked up by characters too - but not if they act completely out of their character, but in a more half-expected or even hardly expected, but still believable way.

An excellent point.

There is an interesting train of thought to follow here.

I think there is a fine line between characters acting in character and adding to the wonder and characters acting in character and detracting from the wonder. The danger is that characters could behave in a monotonous fashion.

On the other side, it is sometimes easier to tell when a character just goes berserk and ruins a story. (I mean, you wouldn't have Aragorn pulling out a phaser and yelling at Gimli to ready the photon torpedoes. Or, at least, not this side of the Reunification of the Entish Bow, but I digress.) Bringing this back to reality, I think unpredictability is a good thing, but difficult to handle properly.

[Kuruharan]

In looking up Letter 246 for this thread, my eyes happened to drift to Letter 247 where I found this delightful passage which I had scarce regarded before.

Part of the attraction of The L. R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist.

I decided to post it because it sums up what we are talking about here so well.