Novels as roller coasters, novels as gardens

[nancylebov]

green_knight posted about kaath9's take on plots and roller coasters-- it isn't just a matter of more and less tension, it's a matter of appropriately placed surprises, with a corollary that you need more than one sort of surprise.

e_moon60 suggested in comments that a novel is also like a landscaped garden, which makes sense to me-- she put the emphasis (she's talking about the more subtle surprises in the "slow" bits, but it reminds me of the small pleasures which need to be in a larger context, but which are a lot of why I read fiction.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The commenter with the landscape garden was E. Moon (e_moon60), not eBear.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting me know. My apologies.