Re: OT: Wildepad

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:11:27 GMT, throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Wayne Throop)
wrote:

> Note that the digressions and questioning of
>the premise you get here are directed to "suspension of disbelief" in
>your target audience.  If the protagonist has an internal monologue
>about "gee, this is a really really stupid way for those future guys to
>proceed", and that's what your audience would think, you win. 

There is a matter of focus. A person reading the story isn't going to
see the premise as clearly as when it's laid out here. They
concentrate on the characters' actions/reactions much more than on the
situation, and how the protag got into that situation is far more
important than any details of that premise.

Lawrence Block (in _Telling Lies for Fun and Profit_) calls it 'icebox
thinking' -- "You might finish a Ludlum novel properly breathless and
ready for bed. A couple of hours later you might wake up hungry, and
on the way back from the icebox it might occur to you that there was
no reason for the Estonian nationalists to put cyanide in the hero's
peanut-butter cookies."

You can take *any* novel and find holes in the premise. The reason you
don't see them when reading is that they become part of the
background. 
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