Actually, LJLand, how about some input...?

[anghara]

One of my Worldcon panels is this:

Making Writing More Vivid and Memorable
Participants: Alma ALEXANDER, Jean LORRAH, Kirsten (KJ) BISHOP, Jay LAKE
How can a writer make their story particularly vivid or memorable? Show, don't tell? How else do writers bring their writing to life? Why do some passages stay with us after the book is done, but others are gone a month later. Panelists are welcome to bring their favorite passages.

So - open thread, if you'll have one - what makes YOU cry, scream, smile, laugh, get angry or feel awe (or anything else you care to mention) when you're reading a book? Pointers to favourite passages welcome, and I may even use a few on the panel to flesh out my own. Have at it - I look forward to seeing what moves you...

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Clever turns of phrase are always good. Who has read The Hitchhiker's Guite to the Galaxy and not remembered the phrase "they hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't"?

[ramblin-phyl.livejournal.com]

Bill Johnson summed it up for me in his book "A Story Is A Promise." His premise is that a plot recounts the action. The story is how the characters fullfil the promise of a human truth set out in the opening paragraphs.

It's that element of Human Truth that grabs me. When character live up to their portential, even if they die trying, that's what brings out the emotion in my reading.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

This was nonfiction, and I don't have a citation for it:

During the 1970s, the Wall Street Journal had an article on the problem of getting reinsurance for Bolivian aircraft. The accident rate was rather high. One detail made this stick in my mind: street signs in La Paz (the capitol) were made of aluminum from wrecked airplanes.

It's the small telling detail which is likely to hook me. Not the only thing, but a major one.

[artimahadanna.livejournal.com]

Definitely if you've related with the character thus far and then they are thrown into a situation to which you can also completely relate. I'm also a sucker for simply beautifully-written prose, or unique observations that you can nod your head at and say 'why didn't I think of that?'.

[keilexandra]

I will never, ever forget the ending of Guy Gavriel Kay's TIGANA. It's heart-breaking and right at the same time.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Oh, TIGANA's on my list. For *so* many reasons...

[keilexandra]

Oh good!

[celtic-songster.livejournal.com]

I think moments when I realize the author is getting out of the way of the character and letting the character speak for himself, not trying to put in fancy tricks or intelligent-sounding sentences or somethihg, are amazing, like:

He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow paper, which he unfolded. "There is my passport, yellow as you see. That is enough to have me kicked out wherever I go. Will you read it? I know how to read, I do. I learned in the galleys. There is a school there for those who care for it."

Part of one of Jean Valjean's speeches in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables where you can just see Jean being nervous at hospitality; it's not clean, just honest.

[madam-silvertip.livejournal.com]

Black humor, for one.

Passion--an author who believes in something strongly, not necessarily an idea; passion in presenting how existence is for him or for her.

Empathy for suffering.

Characters whom I can believe in.

A strong sense of place.

Openness to more than one point of view (didacticism usually turns me off, but not always, depending on how many of the abovementioned features are there).

[madam-silvertip.livejournal.com]

Two good examples, for me, are the extraordinary sense of place in Vonda McIntyre's two postholocaust novels, "The Exile Waiting" and "Dreamsnake." She brings to life a culture that is at once alien and hauntingly familiar, and describes a ravaged world beautifully. I could have read ten more books set there, but she wisely decided not to write with angst all the time.