to expand -- though not to transcedence

[marycatelli]

One of the problems of the settings - brought up by rhinemouse-- is that such locations ought to be superlative, as ought their inhabitants.  Angels and devils tend to be quite inadequate.


Not that they're alone in that.  Bringing gods on stage is another part of it, one I've held forth on before.  Uncanny and inexplicable moments can sometimes work better because they are short and sweet and do not need to carry the burden of characterization or world-building as more developed scenes or characters do.

Any form of the transcendental and unearthly is hard to pull off, especially at length.  Prose that can handle most things is not up to it, for one thing.

Another is the same problem that plagues trying to depict a sage, namely the chance to show off the depths of your shallowness.  Many writers grab the chance with both hands.  The transcendental must rise above ordinary, quotidian existence.  Some writers' form of it makes one wonder what they think mundane existence is like.

Needless to say, making the transcendental lecture, and combine the problem of transcedence with wisdom, is a spectaluar chance to write deadly prose.  There really is no way to manage it without either truly profound things to say or masterly rhetoric that manages to sound wise.  Very few writers can pull off either.

Comments

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

The extraordinary becomes quite ordinary after the third hour.

[marycatelli]

How true.

Part of the problem is that you have to vary things to keep the reader awake. Hard enough to ascend the peaks for a moment. Much hard to hop from one to the next, keeping the altitude without staying in one place.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I very much agree. Our experience of transcendence tends to be in momentary glimpses; if those glimpses were the stuff of daily life, they wouldn't be transcendent. So to set a tale in heaven is essentially to make heaven just another locale, just another neighborhood. A very good neighborhood, but still.

[marycatelli]

How true.

Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.
Robert Frost