FifthView
Vala
Helio,
A lot of this depends on the book in question and simply whether the awesome thing fits. Whether it fits in general and whether it fits in the story at the particular point you are inserting it.
The idea about a winged human giving birth while falling might easily fit within a fantasy world but might be entirely wrong for the book. I think DOTA mentioned that the character who'd be dying is a secondary character. Maybe having something that stretches the bounds of believability, something that awesome (or wondrous), happen with this character would be out of place and beside the point for this character.
Maybe having an overabundance of awesome things happen, like every chapter or even every scene, would be too much. You want to save the Battle for New York, with a portal opening in the sky and aliens appearing, until the end of the Avengers movie. Meanwhile, many scenes of that movie involve standing/sitting around and talking. So pacing matters too.
I guess I'm saying that we pick our battles with reality according to what works for the tale we are telling.
So maybe that birth scene would be absolutely wrong for the book.
But what to do with the awesome idea?
Maybe we could use it in a way that doesn't draw the same kind of scrutiny, transplant it elsewhere. The tale of birth might be a tale about the birth of a legendary hero, a historic founder, a demigod or a god in that world. This might fit rather well, considering the fact that these winged humans ... are winged.
If Athena can be born from Zeus's head, then our winged humans might have a story about a legendary figure being born as his mother is falling to her death.
Or maybe we can transplant the myth to the present: The death of this secondary character occurs off screen, but our MC encounters tales of her death. So it could become like an urban legend. One old woman says she saw the murder; the poor mother gave birth to her child while falling and was trying to grasp the babe, pull it close, to protect it. It was a horrible, horrible thing to see. Another person says, No, the babe was rescued and is now being hidden away somewhere. Another: It's the return of Yosep, the legendary hero of yore who was also born that way. The point of these tales would be to show how the tragic murder is causing reverberations through society; its "realism" is largely beside the point.
So. I think that eliminating an idea simply because it stretches credulity—i.e., our own credulity because we've never heard of such a thing—preemptively shuts down so many potential paths before those paths are explored.
As an aside, the interesting thing about this topic is how the two options in the title of this thread aren't enough. There's also, "It happens on Earth—But don't do it!" Our own Earth is full of wonder and awesomeness and strange things. I don't have personal experience with LOTS of things that happen on Earth.
A lot of this depends on the book in question and simply whether the awesome thing fits. Whether it fits in general and whether it fits in the story at the particular point you are inserting it.
The idea about a winged human giving birth while falling might easily fit within a fantasy world but might be entirely wrong for the book. I think DOTA mentioned that the character who'd be dying is a secondary character. Maybe having something that stretches the bounds of believability, something that awesome (or wondrous), happen with this character would be out of place and beside the point for this character.
Maybe having an overabundance of awesome things happen, like every chapter or even every scene, would be too much. You want to save the Battle for New York, with a portal opening in the sky and aliens appearing, until the end of the Avengers movie. Meanwhile, many scenes of that movie involve standing/sitting around and talking. So pacing matters too.
I guess I'm saying that we pick our battles with reality according to what works for the tale we are telling.
So maybe that birth scene would be absolutely wrong for the book.
But what to do with the awesome idea?
Maybe we could use it in a way that doesn't draw the same kind of scrutiny, transplant it elsewhere. The tale of birth might be a tale about the birth of a legendary hero, a historic founder, a demigod or a god in that world. This might fit rather well, considering the fact that these winged humans ... are winged.
If Athena can be born from Zeus's head, then our winged humans might have a story about a legendary figure being born as his mother is falling to her death.Or maybe we can transplant the myth to the present: The death of this secondary character occurs off screen, but our MC encounters tales of her death. So it could become like an urban legend. One old woman says she saw the murder; the poor mother gave birth to her child while falling and was trying to grasp the babe, pull it close, to protect it. It was a horrible, horrible thing to see. Another person says, No, the babe was rescued and is now being hidden away somewhere. Another: It's the return of Yosep, the legendary hero of yore who was also born that way. The point of these tales would be to show how the tragic murder is causing reverberations through society; its "realism" is largely beside the point.
So. I think that eliminating an idea simply because it stretches credulity—i.e., our own credulity because we've never heard of such a thing—preemptively shuts down so many potential paths before those paths are explored.
As an aside, the interesting thing about this topic is how the two options in the title of this thread aren't enough. There's also, "It happens on Earth—But don't do it!" Our own Earth is full of wonder and awesomeness and strange things. I don't have personal experience with LOTS of things that happen on Earth.
Last edited:
Myth Weaver
Inkling
Scribe
