: Re: How to evoke wonder in the reader, when there isn't an incredulous character? A "fish out of water" character can serve as a reader proxy: whether it is a wondrous view, an unusual custom,

@Steve161

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For first person narration by one of the characters, the idea that they find nothing special in what they're seeing or doing can be used as effectively as specifically mentioning it to give the reader the impression they are in a different place to the world they know.

For third person narration, the narrator can be used as a proxy for the reader - remarking on the remarkable as if it was the reader who was experiencing it.

Secespitus makes a good point that these perspectives can change over time and with context, and contrast with memories of when things were new and surprising would be a nice way to illustrate the difference.

I've been trying to think of an example and keep coming back to the communicators in the original series of Star Trek. In early episodes Kirk would take out his communicator, turn a dial as if tuning it, then speak carefully into it. By the later series he was opening it with a flick of his wrist and talking as if he knew someone would be listening - while to the viewer in the Sixties and Seventies the idea of a personal communication device that people could carry around with them was nothing short of sorcery.

It's true that invoking wonder in the reader is a good place to start, but the experience a reader will value most is when they start to accept things the characters find unremarkable - when the reader becomes, for want of a better expression, one of the gang.

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