Unreasonable Expectations? (Part 2 of 2)
In yesterday's post we discussed whether or not it's a reasonable expectation that protagonists should always be pushing the plot forward or otherwise taking decisive action in order to justify their place at the center of the book
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I was thinking that it's also part of the reason I love disaster movies. I know, as a movie-viewer, that a movie called VOLCANO is going to involve a volcano blowing up in downtown LA, so that's not the surprise. But I still feel the suspense as I watch all the characters stumbling around, gathering clues, realizing that yes, this is a volcano about to erupt.
Or in Titanic, knowing the iceburg is coming -- my tension comes not from the surprise, but from how the characters are going to react when it comes...
All of which is probably why I always like the first halves of disaster movies better than the latter parts after the disaster has become recognized and it's just a lot of running around.
Oh, which makes me think of a literary example -- Life as We Knew It. I knew what was going to happen with the moon (having heard it all over the internet as well as in the flap copy) but the characters don't, and so even though I was not surprised when it happened I was still very, very tense, anticipating it on behalf of the characters who didn't (couldn't) know what was coming.
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