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Dear Saxon Scribe,

Imagine you’re a Viking or one of those other early explorers of America. Since you were five, your grizzly uncle has told you stories about the time his vessel was blown off course and he spied afar off a coastland peeking through the mists.

Now, twenty years older, you sit on the prow of your boat and a wild country stretches out before you, stranger than any land your fathers have settled or your fathers’ fathers.

Years from now, you will sit around a campfire sipping your mead and tell in great gusts of breath with your eyes the size of walnuts how when you spied that shore, something settled over you. Something stronger than enchantment.

******

You imagined it. I know you did. Now here’s the wonder: that land is the same land where you wake up each morning and brush your teeth, the land where you take out the trash and hurry to get to church on time. It’s the land you don’t appreciate nearly enough.

It seems like we used to have more wonder when we were little, and now we’ve lost it. Seriously, when I was young, books that weren’t even that good thrilled me.

Yet, I assure you, that enchantment is still attainable. The problem is, it normally fades fast.

I recall a year or so ago when I started the original Mistborn trilogy. When I read the first chapter, I was enthralled. This world was so rich I cherished every new sensation of it. By the time I finished the trilogy, I was awed with Sanderson, I rated his character arcs as nearly matchless and I geeked out about so much…

But the charm was gone. It was cold. The world had captured my imagination yes…but it wasn’t intoxicating in the way the first chapter had been.

It no longer needed much exploring.

I experienced the same effect with the 100 Cupboards trilogy as well and really most any book I read that starts off with a charming taste of worldbuilding.

So, what’s the purpose of this post? Well, it isn’t to say any book that loses its first charm is horrible. While part of what killed the charm in the Mistborn trilogy was that the world was set up like an intellectual puzzle, that was also cool in its own way. I like intellectual puzzles!

But here’s the question: are we truly limited in how charming our stories can be? For instance, could Sanderson have kept his same characters, plot, and world, but wrote a story that had twice the charm? Ten times the charm? I do believe in a honeymoon stage, but I still think a book can be highly charming 500 pages in. Some books that come to mind that stayed charming all the way through: The Lord of the Rings, The Princesses of Bamarre, and, you know what, @kate-flournoy, you have a lot of explaining to do because your novel doesn’t really lose its charm either. I might also say Ben-Hur as a HF example, except I can’t remember that one very well.

So what do you all think? Is my theory correct? Is there anything else that contributes to a book’s charm? Most importantly, how can we make sure our story worlds keep their charm even after readers have explored them a good deal?

@ethryndal @corissa @raemarie @bama-rose @kate @r-m-archer @literatureforthelight @j-parkhurst @gabbyj @cassandraia @chalice @noahlitle @julianne @germaine-han @maddiejay @sesi @r-j-karas @rosemarylouise @msqueen8 @samuel @eden-anderson