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

[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.