Help with Middle/Close 3rd person POV
playfu...@gmail.com
to slide the camera smoothly between close and middle third person. I
got an interesting crit on some of my work. And I'm just a little
confused by it. The crit is in all caps.
Basically I'm trying to get a sense of some good rules to follow on
how to work middle/close POV. It seems like the most powerful. The
rule I was following was that you could go into one person's head per
scene, not more. This crit seems to not like a sliding camera coming
in and out.
1) SUB: Sensing that he was the only one in his tower that understood
the joke, he stroked his own short black beard, wondering what to say
next.
CRIT: IF THIS IS IN WALTER'S POV HE CAN'T SEE HIS BLACK BEARD AND
UNLESS HE'S THINKING OF THE BLACKNESS OF IT WHICH IS UNLIKELY THIS
NEED TO BE DESCRIBED FROM SOMEONE ELSE'S POV.
2) SUB: "Stop!" Walter yelled and staggered back at the verbal
assault. His hands shook, so he clasped them behind his back to hide
the tremors. Books were so much easier than people and so much
quieter! "Alright. I sincerely apologize. Things have just been so
busy. I owe you my life. It is the least I can do for you. Tea?"
Together the red headed knight and dark haired wizard sat
quietly in the study, trying to figure out a solution to a simple
problem of the heart. Fifteen minutes passed before Walter spoke
again.
CRIT: YOU'VE KIND OF SWITCHED POV'S HERE. FIRST WE'RE IN WALTERS HEAD
NOW WE'VE KIND OF GOT A NARRATOR GOING ON HERE.
---------------
So I just looked over Nancy Kress's book on View point. She mentions
that you can do it with third person middle distance. She gives this
example.
Paul peered into the darkness--where was Jake? He'd told that screw
up to meet him here at midnight! They had only a few minutes between
dog patrols to climb the fence. They had been planning these things
for weeks, and Paul needed Jake to pull this thing off. Actually,
his whole life he had needed Jake, and Jake had hardly ever come
through, not even at the beginning. When Paul had been born, Jake
had been six, and Jake had tried to strangle him. The brothers were
not close. No O'Riley had trusted any other relative.
The last three sentences show the camera pulling out and giving more
than close third person. Now this doesn't mean my transitions are as
smooth as this but I think it is doable. Thoughts?
Logan Kearsley
news:1172272543.6...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> I'd like to get some help on POV. Basically I'd like understand how
> to slide the camera smoothly between close and middle third person. I
> got an interesting crit on some of my work. And I'm just a little
> confused by it. The crit is in all caps.
>
> Basically I'm trying to get a sense of some good rules to follow on
> how to work middle/close POV. It seems like the most powerful. The
> rule I was following was that you could go into one person's head per
> scene, not more. This crit seems to not like a sliding camera coming
> in and out.
>
> 1) SUB: Sensing that he was the only one in his tower that understood
> the joke, he stroked his own short black beard, wondering what to say
> next.
>
> CRIT: IF THIS IS IN WALTER'S POV HE CAN'T SEE HIS BLACK BEARD AND
> UNLESS HE'S THINKING OF THE BLACKNESS OF IT WHICH IS UNLIKELY THIS
> NEED TO BE DESCRIBED FROM SOMEONE ELSE'S POV.
Depends on the context. If you have not previously established that his
beard is black, or the last time was a good while ago and you want to get in
some extra re-inforcement of the image, this is a perfectly good place to
slip in the description. Or, if it's a running joke sort of thing that the
beard is always refered to as the _black_beard, or if the character himself
is for some reason especially conscious of his beard (vanity or what have
you), it's good. If, on the other hand, we already know that his beard is
black and it's not immediately important, you could leave it out with no
loss.
I would also say that, depending on it's length, it seems perfectly
plausible to *me* that he could see his own beard, but that's rather
irrelevant I think.
> 2) SUB: "Stop!" Walter yelled and staggered back at the verbal
> assault. His hands shook, so he clasped them behind his back to hide
> the tremors. Books were so much easier than people and so much
> quieter! "Alright. I sincerely apologize. Things have just been so
> busy. I owe you my life. It is the least I can do for you. Tea?"
> Together the red headed knight and dark haired wizard sat
> quietly in the study, trying to figure out a solution to a simple
> problem of the heart. Fifteen minutes passed before Walter spoke
> again.
>
> CRIT: YOU'VE KIND OF SWITCHED POV'S HERE. FIRST WE'RE IN WALTERS HEAD
> NOW WE'VE KIND OF GOT A NARRATOR GOING ON HERE.
We've only been away from Walter for two sentences, and that was to
establish time passing, so it's a bit hard to say. If we immediately come
back to Walter saying or thinking or doing something, or observing someone
else doing something (which seems to be indicated), referencing him in the
interim as the "dark haired wizard" (I assume they are the same?) might seem
a bit strange, but justifiable as a parallel to the "red headed knight". If
we were to switch over to the knight's PoV here, you'd need some more text
to do the transition, just because you seem to be setting it up to go right
back to Walter and I'd need to be pulled away from that expectation. Or, you
could put in a complete scene break and go someplace else at this point.
-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
Patricia C. Wrede
> to slide the camera smoothly between close and middle third person. I
> got an interesting crit on some of my work. And I'm just a little
> confused by it. The crit is in all caps.
That's not surprising. POV tends to be a perrennial problem.
> Basically I'm trying to get a sense of some good rules to follow on
> how to work middle/close POV. It seems like the most powerful. The
> rule I was following was that you could go into one person's head per
> scene, not more.
That's the usual technique for doing tight-third-person; so far, you're good
to go.
>This crit seems to not like a sliding camera coming
> in and out.
Well, part of that is probably because "sliding the camera in and out" is
usually an omniscient-viewpoint technique, and what you seem to be trying to
do is tight-third (aka, third person personal, third person subjective,
third person...oh, heck, do a Google Groups advanced search on my name,
rasfc, and "Viewpoint" as the subject, and you should come up with at least
one of the versions of the viewpoint handout. If you can't find it, lemme
know and I'll repost it; it ought to help some with the various terminology,
at the very least.)
> 1) SUB: Sensing that he was the only one in his tower that understood
> the joke, he stroked his own short black beard, wondering what to say
> next.
>
> CRIT: IF THIS IS IN WALTER'S POV HE CAN'T SEE HIS BLACK BEARD AND
> UNLESS HE'S THINKING OF THE BLACKNESS OF IT WHICH IS UNLIKELY THIS
> NEED TO BE DESCRIBED FROM SOMEONE ELSE'S POV.
One of the problems with third-person viewpoint in general is that too many
people get hung up on minutia like "but he can't see his own beard." Even
if you are doing tight-third, there's a continuum when it comes to the
narrative -- you can have really highly "filtered" narrative that's clearly
and solidly given through the eyes of the POV character (this is sometimes
referred to as "first person with the pronouns changed"), all the way up to
nearly camera-eye narrative that's unfiltered.
The problem isn't so much that you can't do this sort of thing; it's that
you have to be *consistent* about doing it. If you're going to do really
tight, filtered narrative, "zooming out" is unlikely to work at all well; if
you're doing unfiltered narrative, "zooming in" is likely to seem awkward.
Unless you are really sure you can make variations work, you're almost
certainly better off picking a distance and staying there. You are *very,
very* unlikely to be able to go from heavily filtered to unfiltered back to
heavily filtered narrative in consecutive sentences, much less within the
*same* sentence, unless you have put a whole lot of advance work into
getting the reader used to the technique. And it's still going to make a
lot of people uncomfortable unless you're doing omniscient.
My take on this:
> 1) SUB: Sensing that he was the only one in his tower that understood
> the joke, he stroked his own short black beard, wondering what to say
> next.
With this sentence taken out of context, the phrase "his own short black
beard" does stick out for me, but that's mainly because you have too many
adjectives piled up. Your instinct is good -- it is often *much* more
effective to work physical description into action or narrative this way,
rather than stating flatly "He had a short, black beard" as part of a
descriptive passage that half the readers will skip. But unless somewhere
in the preceeding paragraph or two you've had somebody else stroke his long,
brown beard, or had someone make a disparraging comment about beards, or
unless the joke that nobody has gotten has something to do with beards, then
having this POV stroke "his own short black beard" is a bit much. "His
beard" will do nicely; you can work in color and length somewhere else.
Your other trouble here is that this sentence is jumping from internal
thoughts to external physical action/description and back to internal
thoughts; this tends to make the action/description (stroking the beard)
stand out more than it otherwise would, because it's sandwiched between two
internalization bits. That means that anything the least little bit odd or
uncomfortable about the way it's phrased is going to stand out, too...and it
means that unless you have some really good reason for emphasizing the
beard-stroking, you want to keep it understated as much as you can, because
it's already getting emphasis from its positioning.
> 2) SUB: "Stop!" Walter yelled and staggered back at the verbal
> assault. His hands shook, so he clasped them behind his back to hide
> the tremors. Books were so much easier than people and so much
> quieter! "Alright. I sincerely apologize. Things have just been so
> busy. I owe you my life. It is the least I can do for you. Tea?"
> Together the red headed knight and dark haired wizard sat
> quietly in the study, trying to figure out a solution to a simple
> problem of the heart. Fifteen minutes passed before Walter spoke
> again.
>
> CRIT: YOU'VE KIND OF SWITCHED POV'S HERE. FIRST WE'RE IN WALTERS HEAD
> NOW WE'VE KIND OF GOT A NARRATOR GOING ON HERE.
Again, I'm not sure this is really a viewpoint problem as much as it is one
of phrasing. It's not clear to me from this passage, for instance, whether
there are two people present -- Walter and someone else -- or three (the
knight, the wizard, and Walter).
What you're clearly trying to do with that problem sentence is provide a
quick transitional narrative summary to get over fifteen minutes of awkward
silence. Transitions are often awkward; I personally hate writing them like
the plague, and therefore am in favor of leaving them out whenever possible.
In this case, it's clearly possible -- presumably the reader already knows
what these people are doing here, so going from "Tea?" straight to "Fifteen
minutes passed in awkward silence before Walter spoke again" works just
fine.
> So I just looked over Nancy Kress's book on View point. She mentions
> that you can do it with third person middle distance. She gives this
> example.
>
> Paul peered into the darkness--where was Jake? He'd told that screw
> up to meet him here at midnight! They had only a few minutes between
> dog patrols to climb the fence. They had been planning these things
> for weeks, and Paul needed Jake to pull this thing off. Actually,
> his whole life he had needed Jake, and Jake had hardly ever come
> through, not even at the beginning. When Paul had been born, Jake
> had been six, and Jake had tried to strangle him. The brothers were
> not close. No O'Riley had trusted any other relative.
>
> The last three sentences show the camera pulling out and giving more
> than close third person. Now this doesn't mean my transitions are as
> smooth as this but I think it is doable. Thoughts?
What you have there, in those last three sentences of the Kress example, is
an awkward mini-flashback-within-mini-flashback, which could be either still
in quite-tightly-filtered third-person or else an omniscient zoom-out, as
well as in "middle distance third." To know which it is would require more
context, which of course isn't given. As an example, I think the flashback
aspects make it confusing, especially since the tense switch isn't clearly
signaled (because the last thing in simple past tense is "They had only a
few minutes...").
If you're going to read how-to-write books, I *STRONGLY* recommend reading a
whole lot of them, not just one or two, by as many different authors as
possible. Many how-to-write books are written by authors who have finally
found *their* way of working, the process that suits *them*, and the way of
looking at writing that helps *them* see and deal with *their* particular
writing problems...and now that they've found their One True Way, they're
ready and eager to proselytize.
The trouble is, there *is* no One True Way to write. Even the terminology
isn't standardized, for heaven's sake. Reading a wide selection of
how-to-write books will help you with any tendency to take one writer's
notions too seriously (which is almost always a bad idea because the odds
are that *your* way of working, process, etc. isn't going to be the same as
*their* way, so taking their way as Gospel Truth can screw up your writing
for *years* if you let it).
Patricia C. Wrede
29,029 words and counting
R.L.
/snip/
Yours above seem to need some special contexts to work, but at least
they're smooth. Fwiw, I don't like Kress's example below at all, it seems
quite clunky in places.
> So I just looked over Nancy Kress's book on View point. She mentions
> that you can do it with third person middle distance. She gives this
> example.
>
> Paul peered into the darkness--where was Jake? He'd told that screw
> up to meet him here at midnight!
Okay so far; deep in Paul's pv.
> They had only a few minutes between
> dog patrols to climb the fence.
Could be okay if joined closer with the next sentence, which could still be
Paul's thoughts.
> They had been planning these things
> for weeks, and Paul needed Jake to pull this thing off.
Could still be Paul's thoughts, though the voice is changing.
> Actually,
> his whole life he had needed Jake, and Jake had hardly ever come
> through, not even at the beginning.
This is sounding less and less like Paul's immediate thoughts: the voice is
very much changed.
> When Paul had been born, Jake
> had been six, and Jake had tried to strangle him.
Even if the voice were changed, I'd have trouble believing Paul's thoughts
had drifted this far from the current situation.
> The brothers were not close.
This is totally out of Paul'ls thoughts. He might have thought 'had never
been close', but that would still be way out of his voice.
> No O'Riley had trusted any other relative.
This is way too far, unless Paul is pretty dissociative. :-)
> The last three sentences show the camera pulling out and giving more
> than close third person.
Okay, Kress was doing it on purpose. But I still think it was darn clunky
and unlikely to fit in any real story.
> Now this doesn't mean my transitions are as
> smooth as this but I think it is doable. Thoughts?
Just from what you posted, I'd say your instinct is better than Kress's and
you should be reading different how-to's. :-) Or simply reading some
published fiction that does it well. Let's see, Emma Lathan is quite good
with pulling out of one pv and into another. I don't recall whether Tamora
Pierce changes pv, but her transitions are marvelously smooth. Maybe
Dorothy Sayers.
Jonathan Cunningham posted an excerpt here a while back that did the
opposite: began further out and zoomed in very smoothly.
R.L.
--
del...@sonic.net
http://houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com/
missing some posts lately
Hardware problems again!
Jonathan L Cunningham
> On 23 Feb 2007 15:15:43 -0800, playfu...@gmail.com wrote:
> /snip/
> > So I just looked over Nancy Kress's book on View point. She mentions
> > that you can do it with third person middle distance. She gives this
> > example.
> >
> > Paul peered into the darkness--where was Jake? He'd told that screw
> > up to meet him here at midnight!
>
> Okay so far; deep in Paul's pv.
(snip)
> > The last three sentences show the camera pulling out and giving more
> > than close third person.
>
> Okay, Kress was doing it on purpose. But I still think it was darn clunky
> and unlikely to fit in any real story.
>
>
> > Now this doesn't mean my transitions are as
> > smooth as this but I think it is doable. Thoughts?
>
> Just from what you posted, I'd say your instinct is better than Kress's and
(snip)
> Jonathan Cunningham posted an excerpt here a while back that did the
> opposite: began further out and zoomed in very smoothly.
Did it? I wonder which that was!
I've been reading this thread and wasn't going to comment, but since I'm
here:
I find I can't write easily if I worry too much about POV. If you are
like me, I'd say to agree with R.L. and trust your instincts. You'll get
better (and better control of POV *without* concentrating on it) with
practice.
But if you trust your instincts, it's very important (IMHO) to get
*someone* to crit your work and give you feedback. You can still trust
your instincts on whether the crit is any good or not - sometimes the
feedback will be obviously correct, or at least highlight some bit which
you aren't really happy with yourself. Then you can trust your instincts
how to fix it.
Referring to Patricia's post: she mentions omni a couple of times in
relation to zooming in and out. It *may* be - this is just a thought -
that you find omni more natural.
Patricia has said, several times, that it's easier to screw up [my
phrasing] with omni. But has also said that it's often more natural for
a beginning writer. After *trying* to rewrite stuff in 3rd, I came to
the conclusion that *for me* it's easier to learn how to avoid doing
omni badly than it is to learn how to write[*] in close 3rd.
YMMV, but it's a thought.
The received wisdom is that agents/editors/readers/critics expect 3rd,
but AFAICT that's a current genre fashion in SFF, not true of other
genres, and not true of a lot of very successful SFF anyway. So I
wouldn't (and don't) worry too much about going for omni. A good omni
novel has more chance of success than a less good 3rd person novel.
But you have to decide which it's going to be.
Jonathan
[*] Writing first person is more natural -- I can't see any reason why
I, personally, would write a whole novel in a single tight 3rd POV. But
it might be a way in to writing a novel with several tight 3rd POVs,
which feels (to me) more natural than several different 1st person POVs.
(Not saying there is anything wrong with other approaches: just that it
may be easier to start with what feels natural.)
Poliwog
wrote:
> R.L. <see-...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> > On 23 Feb 2007 15:15:43 -0800, playfulmi...@gmail.com wrote:
> > /snip/
> > > So I just looked over Nancy Kress's book on View point. She mentions
> > > that you can do it with third person middle distance. She gives this
> > > example.
<begin rant>
What the bloody HELL is all of this CRAP? 'Close middle distant third'
vs 'Distant close omniscient' or whatever goobledegook these people
are spouting? Get rid of these beta readers before they eat you alive
and you spend years trying to forget this shit. Either it works, or it
doesn't. Yours does. There IS a bit of obsession with hair color that
you need to fix, but your POV works fine for any NORMAL reader who
hasn't polluted their mind with this writing-guru excrement. In the
immortal works of The Mighty Thor, "The true guru is inside you!"
Seriously folks, can you imagine, say Avram Davidson or Dunsany or
Cliff Simak or whomever you admire thinking, "Gosh! I'm in close
distant intermediate third here. Can I switch to high midrange third?
Oh God, I'm going to block. Aaaaagh!" No. They would just write the
scene, read it aloud a few times, and say, "Yeah. That works." or
"Hmmm. Sounds a little jarring there. I think I have to let Melvin say
this so we get what he's thinking..."
I checked out Ms. Kress. She can write, no question. So if this works
for her, fine. I'll bet, however, that she does NOT think about all
these various POV definitions while she IS writing.
playfu...@gmail.com
Thanks again for the wonderful response. I did look up your previous
posts. There was one thing that I'm trying to work through that I
didn't find that you covered. Basically it is the difference between
using he thought and declaritives...and how these relate to the
limited omniscient view.
In one of your thoughtful articles, you wrote.
*Gods, but I hate the prince's birthday,* Jon thought as he hurried
toward
the kitchen. *If the little twerp isn't adding forty more people to
the guest
list at the last minute, he's demanding fresh peaches out of season.
I wonder
what it is this year?*
How are things changed if these are declared without "Jon thought?
Basically I took your advice and went through all my books on writing
then I went through two published authors. Here is what I came up
with. I hope it isn't to obnoxiously long. You might want to just
skip to the Orson Scott Card section.
How to write a damn good Novel by James N Frey.
Frey describes Limited Omniscient Point of View, which is the right to
only get into certain characters heads. I was a little frustrated by
his description of this because it only had one paragraph. There was
no discussion of the openings of scenes or camera zooms.
The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
"A common problem is a viewpoint character with no real viewpoint, no
voice, no originality." Hmm, I think this just about hits the nail
on the head and what my original critter was saying. He gives the
example of Howard Stern who is often loved or hated or both but always
gives an emotional response. I've been thinking about this, and I
think Ican bring Walter the wizard more to the front of the story
telling.
"Third person ('he') is most frequently used because it can be both
intimate and detached at the same time." Ok this I don't get. I
understand how it can be intimate in the sense that everything is told
from the POV character's perspective but I don't understand what he
means by detached. I'm not sure what he is talking about and there
is not example. Is he talking about zooms or just the fact that scene
breaks allow us to visit other people?
Techniques of the $elling Writer by Dwight V. Swain
"That is, your reader will live through your story as some specific
character experiences it. He will see and hear and smell and taste
and touch and think and feel precisely what that person sees and hears
and smells and what have you." I like Swain.... His book rocks.
Yeah, he doesn't give examples of bad writing. He just suggests a
strong way to do it. He likes close third or limited omniscient,
sheesh why doesn't anyone name these things.
Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
I like what they have to say about the voice matching the character.
The descriptions of close third need to match the language and outlook
of the person telling it, otherwise you lose the reader.
Then they start talking about distance, which I'm not getting. "How
much you allow your viewpoint character's emotion color your
descriptions." Hmm, I find this confusing. I think what they are
saying that a calm controlled POV character would give similar
descriptions whereas an enthusiastic, chatty girl would give a
different set. Their use of distance is odd for me...seems more like
the how it is told rather camera position.
Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight
Knight is much more specific about the camera. He says there are two
modes to third person, subjective and objective. In subjective mode
"you can't tell us what he looks like, and you can't tell us anything
he doesn't know." In objective mode, "you can't tell us anything
directly about his feelings, internal workings, or thoughts."
Basically the camera stays outside. Basically he is talking about
close or distant third. A mirror might be used in close third to
describe self.
Now what he says about sliding, and again it is just lightly covered.
Limited omniscient is useful when "you do want to describe your
central character from the inside and out. Once you have done this in
your opening paragraph or two, you may have got all you wanted from
the limited omniscient viewpoint, and in that case you can slide
unobtrusively into a single-character viewpoint and stay there."
Here we go again. It is okay to start out distant, then close in.
But not okay pull back out in the same scene or mid scene? I
understand the need for scene set up. Objective or distant third is
great for that. "A guy sits down at the bar between two rednecks and
says..." This whole diving into the character from outside then not
being able to pull out is a bit confusing.
Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
Card wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Ender's Game. His
book on writing drives me a little batty. He talks about distance in
much the way Renni Browne and Dave King do, calling it light-
penetration versus deep penetration. Basically, it comes down to the
difference between using things like "What a terrible dress, he
thought" instead of "What a terrible dress!" This is more than a
little confusing to me.
Card says that the can describe the action like that of a smile from
the outside rather from inside when he uses distancing items like "he
thought" or "he knew." As an example of deep penetration he gives
this: "Pete forced himself to smile. 'Terrific.'" And for light
penetration he writes, "'Terrific,' Pete said, smiling."
Hmm, he goes on to say that camera can describe other people's actions
with it is light-penetration but not so much when it deep. For
example, "Nora studied Pete's face for a moment, then glared." Versus
deep which is given by "As usual, Nora could read his mind despite his
best efforts to be a cheerful, easy-to-get-along-with hypocrite. She
glared at him." I guess I'm not getting why adding "he thought" to
the POV can allow a description of what someone is doing. Both light
and deep have the term she glared, so that is out. The only
difference seems to be he is having an emotional reaction to her in
one and he is observing her in the other. Am I confused? Can limited
omniscient describe something the character can't see or isn't
watching? (I have the feeling the answer is yes if no one notices.)
Ok on to the writers.
1) In a chapter 25 of Rowling's Harry Potter: Order of the Phonex, I
see we have limited omniscient but Harry is very, very observant.
This would be Card's light penetration right?
"He was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed
about that he laughed, which he realized a split second too late was a
mistake."
"Harry watched Hagrid go, feeling miserable."
Now what becomes interesting is Rowling makes this narrator very
observant.
"Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap was strong, in
her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione..."
"Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to
seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's drink and thrust
it up her nose."
"She said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione"
Now the question is this really Harry observing or a narrator? Can
the narrator stick themselves in a little more by use the "he thought,
he feels, he realized?" Is this the trick to use things like as
though... ?
2) "Game of the Krillihitchkin" by Robert J Santa. Ok, so I just
reread his story closely trying to figure out POV. The first
paragraph is distant third by relates to the wizard Halder who is
unnamed at the time. The second paragraph goes as follows which to me
has nothing to do with character.
"The snow in the caldera was visible everyday of the year, even during
the hottest of summer months. It rose from the mountain like pollen
blown from a flower and settled as a dew in the valley below, a valley
that was lush and green and perfect for herding goats or planting
wheat. It has been a lifetime since a single hoof had ventured into
that valley."
The remaining paragraphs start getting closer to the wizard. "Halder
knew that if he attacked with such intensity again he would be forced
to retreat."
Then a few paragraph's later we are super close to halder. "Had the
dragon smiled at him?" The story stays close for the remaining of the
scene.
We then stay close in for the remaining scenes as well until we see
the dragon doing something Halder can't see. It completely works.
Dunno I guess the caldera second paragraph could be stronger from the
mage's perspective but basically we have a transition from very broad
to he thoughts to very close. Then at the end we pull back to see
the dragon doing something. I wondering if the key here is that
limited omniscient can move from out to in and out again but only at
the beginnings and ends of stories. In this particular story I
didn't see Card's distinction of "he thought" to exclamation of
thought except as a transition. Omni describing something, he
thoughts, then declarations of thought.
Thoughts?
Ben Crowell
> Patricia has said, several times, that it's easier to screw up [my
> phrasing] with omni. But has also said that it's often more natural for
> a beginning writer. After *trying* to rewrite stuff in 3rd, I came to
> the conclusion that *for me* it's easier to learn how to avoid doing
> omni badly than it is to learn how to write[*] in close 3rd.
I've done omni a couple of times, and I think I'm starting to get the
hang of it, but it still seems much more difficult to me. Often there
are logical reasons to choose a certain POV, and if no choice is
imposed on you, I don't see any reason to deviate from close third.
If your protagonist is going to die at the end, you can't do first
person past tense, and you probably don't want to do close third,
either, unless you're prepared to finish the story at the exact moment
of death. If a lot of the story revolves around misunderstandings
between people, or lots of people saying one thing but thinking another,
then omni may be more natural. I recently read a really nice story
on critters that was done in omni, and it was very clear that omni
was the right choice; it was mainly about a teenage kid growing up in
a small town, but to make the story work, it was necessary to describe
events that had happened hundreds of years before, and also to describe
things from the POV of some aliens. To me, the attraction of first
person is that the narrative voice is the same as the voice of one
of the characters. I recently did an SF hardboiled detective story
in first person, and it was a lot of fun to write in that style. OTOH,
if there isn't going to be anything uniquely fascinating about your
character's voice, then the motivation for first person may be weak.
One disadvantage of first person is that it's absolutely impossible
to move the camera in or out, or to sneak in omniscient digressions,
whereas in third, if you're skillful, you can do those things and
make it seem natural.
playfu...@gmail.com
> <begin rant>
[snip]
OMG, too funny. Thanks. What a cheerful, funny rant. Who can argue
with Thor?
So I picked up 12 books on writing. I read them all in about 3
weeks. I couldn't type a word for another 4 weeks after setting the
last one down. The rules and suggestions where overbearing. Some
of the books were just plain wrong. Did it hurt my writing? Nah,
just slowed me down for a bit.
I guess the reason why I'm having this discussion is I'd like to be
able to go back after the muse takes me and make better choices on
editing. I want to understand it perfectly I guess. Card talks
about an argument he had with an editor in which the editor complained
about POV switches in a battle. Card asked well did you get
confused? The editor answered no. Card asked why then would a bunch
of TV kids get confused--tv is all about POV switches? The editor
let the changes stay.
There are a couple of other reasons to learn it. I'm noticing that
critters tend to flag problems but inaccurately describe what the
problem is. Oh this is problem x, when really it is problem y. The
more I know about writing the better I can fix stuff, help others,
etc.
The last reason and this might be a little strange is I'm trying to
write for my readers. Currently they are only the critters. I've
taken on a challenge to make them like my stories first. If they are
getting annoyed with POV, might as well see if I can work on the story
until that is no longer a distraction for them. Of course, can't
please everyone...
Thanks again.
Darrin
Brian M. Scott
<playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:1172341626.8...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
[...]
> "Third person ('he') is most frequently used because it
> can be both intimate and detached at the same time." Ok
> this I don't get. I understand how it can be intimate in
> the sense that everything is told from the POV
> character's perspective but I don't understand what he
> means by detached. I'm not sure what he is talking
> about and there is not example. Is he talking about
> zooms or just the fact that scene breaks allow us to
> visit other people?
He may simply be pointing out that third person is
inherently more detached than first or second person. First
person tells the story from the inside, and the rare second
person directly puts the reader inside the story; third
person makes the reader an observer, though it can be used
to make him a very close observer.
[...]
> Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
> I like what they have to say about the voice matching the
> character. The descriptions of close third need to match
> the language and outlook of the person telling it,
> otherwise you lose the reader.
> Then they start talking about distance, which I'm not
> getting. "How much you allow your viewpoint character's
> emotion color your descriptions." Hmm, I find this
> confusing. I think what they are saying that a calm
> controlled POV character would give similar descriptions
> whereas an enthusiastic, chatty girl would give a
> different set.
That's matching the voice to the character, not distance.
To quote Nicky, distance refers to 'the proximity to a given
characters thoughts and feelings'. At one extreme you get
nearly a first person PoV with third person pronouns:
virtually everything is strictly filtered through the
consciousness of the PoV character. At the other extreme
you get a view from a camera resting on the PoV character's
shoulder.
[...]
> Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
> Card wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Ender's Game. His
> book on writing drives me a little batty. He talks about distance in
> much the way Renni Browne and Dave King do, calling it light-
> penetration versus deep penetration. Basically, it comes down to the
> difference between using things like "What a terrible dress, he
> thought" instead of "What a terrible dress!" This is more than a
> little confusing to me.
> Card says that the can describe the action like that of a smile from
> the outside rather from inside when he uses distancing items like "he
> thought" or "he knew." As an example of deep penetration he gives
> this: "Pete forced himself to smile. 'Terrific.'" And for light
> penetration he writes, "'Terrific,' Pete said, smiling."
This example has nothing to do with 'he thought' and 'he
knew'; the difference is that the second version tells us no
more than a video recording would, while the first tells us
some of what was going on in Pete's head at the time.
> Hmm, he goes on to say that camera can describe other
> people's actions with it is light-penetration but not so
> much when it deep. For example, "Nora studied Pete's
> face for a moment, then glared." Versus deep which is
> given by "As usual, Nora could read his mind despite his
> best efforts to be a cheerful, easy-to-get-along-with
> hypocrite. She glared at him." I guess I'm not getting
> why adding "he thought" to the POV can allow a
> description of what someone is doing.
I don't understand: there's nothing like 'he thought'
present in either version.
> Both light and deep have the term she glared, so that is
> out. The only difference seems to be he is having an
> emotional reaction to her in one and he is observing her
> in the other.
In the first version we see no more than a camera would see.
In the second, we're told what's going on in his mind. (The
second can also be read as showing what's going on in both
minds; depending on what surrounds it, it could equally well
come from something written in omniscient.)
[...]
> Ok on to the writers.
> 1) In a chapter 25 of Rowling's Harry Potter: Order of the Phonex, I
> see we have limited omniscient but Harry is very, very observant.
> This would be Card's light penetration right?
Judging by the quotations below, it would be fairly deep
penetration. We're told a great deal about his thoughts and
feelings.
> "He was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed
> about that he laughed, which he realized a split second too late was a
> mistake."
> "Harry watched Hagrid go, feeling miserable."
[...]
Brian
playfu...@gmail.com
Thanks so much for the reply.
> I don't understand: there's nothing like 'he thought'
> present in either version.
Here is the whole thing scenerio.
Light:
Pete waited fifteen minutes before Nora showed up wearing a vivid blue
dress that Pete had never seen before.
"Do you like it?" asked Nora.
It looks outrageous, thought Pete, like neon woven into cloth.
"Terrific," he said, smiling.
Nora studied Pete's face for a moment, then glared. "You always want
me to be frowsy and boring," she said.
###
Deep:
Pete wasn't surprised that Nora was fifteen minutes late, and of
course she showed up wearing a new dress. A blue dress. No, not just
a blue. Vivid blue like neon woven into cloth.
"Do you like it?" asked Nora.
Pete forced himself to smile. "Terrific."
As usual, she could read his mind despite his best efforts to be a
cheerful, easy-to-get-along-with hypocrite. She glared at him. "You
always want me to be frowsy and boring."
---------------------------
Card talks about the tag of "he thought" as a distinction for
distance.... One is colorized by character where the other is not
but both still give us some of what he is thinking. I'm not getting
what freedom light would give you. The only thing it is going to do
is hide the character a lot more but still dive in when necessary.
It doesn't seem to be giving any more camera movement or is it? Is it
giving you the ability
> Judging by the quotations below, it would be fairly deep
> penetration. We're told a great deal about his thoughts and
> feelings.
hmm, I would have thought light. Interesting but I guess there is the
colorization of the actions of others; there is just never the
exclamations by Harry who is always in the "he thought" mode.
Darrin
Ben Crowell
> On 24 Feb 2007 10:27:06 -0800, "playfu...@gmail.com"
> <playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in
> <news:1172341626.8...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> [...]
>
>> The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
>
> [...]
>
>> "Third person ('he') is most frequently used because it
>> can be both intimate and detached at the same time." Ok
>> this I don't get. I understand how it can be intimate in
>> the sense that everything is told from the POV
>> character's perspective but I don't understand what he
>> means by detached. I'm not sure what he is talking
>> about and there is not example. Is he talking about
>> zooms or just the fact that scene breaks allow us to
>> visit other people?
>
> He may simply be pointing out that third person is
> inherently more detached than first or second person. First
> person tells the story from the inside, and the rare second
> person directly puts the reader inside the story; third
> person makes the reader an observer, though it can be used
> to make him a very close observer.
I think the idea is that third can be more detached than
first, for the obvious reasons, but it can also be more intimate,
because you can have the illusion of interfacing directly to
the person's thoughts. In a first-person narrative, there is
a narrator who's coming between the reader and his own thoughts.
If I describe my thoughts to someone else, I'm going to filter
it heavily. I'll insert justifications and rationalizations.
I'll fail to report thoughts that are embarrassing. I could
even intentionally lie to you.
Ben Crowell
> Now what he says about sliding, and again it is just lightly covered.
> Limited omniscient is useful when "you do want to describe your
> central character from the inside and out. Once you have done this in
> your opening paragraph or two, you may have got all you wanted from
> the limited omniscient viewpoint, and in that case you can slide
> unobtrusively into a single-character viewpoint and stay there."
> Here we go again. It is okay to start out distant, then close in.
> But not okay pull back out in the same scene or mid scene?
When the first paragraph is clearly in omni, the reader registers that
fact, and tends to accept psychologically that there is an omniscient
narrator for the rest of the story. Even if certain passages read as
though they were close 3rd, it's still in the reader's head that that
intimate psychological perspective is temporary.
When the story starts out in a specific character's POV, and then
later on makes omniscient statements, it tends to be jarring. Often,
it reads as though the writer either (a) was careless about POV, or
(b) couldn't think of any other way to introduce a piece of information.
You've built up a sense of identification with the POV character, and
then broken it.
Poliwog
wrote:
> Poliwog,
>
> > <begin rant>
>
> [snip]
>
> OMG, too funny. Thanks. What a cheerful, funny rant. Who can argue
> with Thor?
>
> So I picked up 12 books on writing. I read them all in about 3
> weeks. I couldn't type a word for another 4 weeks after setting the
> last one down. The rules and suggestions where overbearing. Some
> of the books were just plain wrong. Did it hurt my writing? Nah,
> just slowed me down for a bit.
>
Yeah. Which of the twelve was by some damn hair stylist? (Mine's a
major babe, at least.)
A fellow writer spent hours (well, an hour) talking about this
wonderful book by James Frye. At the end of his speech, someone said
that she had read Frye, and loved it. "Oh no," said the fellow writer.
"That was his FIRST book. In THIS one, he says all the stuff from the
first book was WRONG!" And these are the gurus we're supposed to
follow? In the equally immortal words of Harlan Ellison, "Scroom."
Les
R.L.
/snip/
> The last reason and this might be a little strange is I'm trying to
> write for my readers.
That's my wired-in attitude too, more or less, troublesome as it may be.
> Currently they are only the critters.
Grrrr! Bzzt! First one would have to catch the right critters _for this
kind of story_. Maybe I've missed something in this thread, but finding
critters who understand the genre and like one's natural approach etc etc
can be very difficult.
> I've
> taken on a challenge to make them like my stories first. If they are
> getting annoyed with POV, might as well see if I can work on the story
> until that is no longer a distraction for them.
Ooooh, I think that can be a very bad idea for many many reasons....
R.L.
/snip/
> 1) In a chapter 25 of Rowling's Harry Potter: Order of the Phonex, I
> see we have limited omniscient but Harry is very, very observant.
> This would be Card's light penetration right?
>
> "He was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed
> about that he laughed, which he realized a split second too late was a
> mistake."
>
> "Harry watched Hagrid go, feeling miserable."
>
> Now what becomes interesting is Rowling makes this narrator very
> observant.
>
> "Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap was strong, in
> her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione..."
>
> "Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to
> seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's drink and thrust
> it up her nose."
>
> "She said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione"
>
> Now the question is this really Harry observing or a narrator? Can
> the narrator stick themselves in a little more by use the "he thought,
> he feels, he realized?" Is this the trick to use things like as
> though... ?
Probably. Imo Piers Anthony does some really smooth 'omni figleafed as
tight third', especially where the tight third pv is Esk, iirc.
His DRAGON ON A PEDESTAL has more obvious omni and change of pv characters,
all done well.
R.L.
> playfu...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Now what he says about sliding, and again it is just lightly covered.
>> Limited omniscient is useful when "you do want to describe your
>> central character from the inside and out. Once you have done this in
>> your opening paragraph or two, you may have got all you wanted from
>> the limited omniscient viewpoint, and in that case you can slide
>> unobtrusively into a single-character viewpoint and stay there."
>> Here we go again. It is okay to start out distant, then close in.
>> But not okay pull back out in the same scene or mid scene?
>
> When the first paragraph is clearly in omni, the reader registers that
> fact, and tends to accept psychologically that there is an omniscient
> narrator for the rest of the story. Even if certain passages read as
> though they were close 3rd, it's still in the reader's head that that
> intimate psychological perspective is temporary.
That seems to be the safest way to head off complaints.
> When the story starts out in a specific character's POV, and then
> later on makes omniscient statements, it tends to be jarring. Often,
> it reads as though the writer either (a) was careless about POV, or
> (b) couldn't think of any other way to introduce a piece of information.
> You've built up a sense of identification with the POV character, and
> then broken it.
But some good books begin in a tight third to get the reader's interest,
then zoom out a bit. The opening of THE GOLDEN COMPASS is very skillful, it
begins with an exciting event that can be read as tight third, but there
are hints of a wider view.
Patricia C. Wrede
"Poliwog" <wog...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172338750.6...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...
> What the bloody HELL is all of this CRAP? 'Close middle distant third'
> vs 'Distant close omniscient' or whatever goobledegook these people
> are spouting? Get rid of these beta readers before they eat you alive
> and you spend years trying to forget this shit. Either it works, or it
> doesn't.
Well, yes and no. Mostly yes; "Either it works or it doesn't" is the one
really true "rule" I've ever found for writing (besides "You have to write
stuff," which is more of a definition than a rule, really).
But I think you're neglecting two possible things: First, while one may not
need to know this stuff in order to write a scene, one does need to have
some sort of acceptable terminology to *talk about* a scene that's been
written. Which is what critiquers do. And it's usually a lot more helpful
to the writer if a critiquer can say something specific about what they
think is wrong, rather than just "That third sentence bothers me" or
"There's something wrong with this bit."
Second, some of us *do* need an intellectual understanding of the mechanics
and techniques and structures in order to be able to ignore them while we're
writing. Or to put it another way: there are intuitive writers and there
are analytical writers. I'm over on the analytical end -- I found learning
some terminology and concepts *enormously* helpful in straightening out my
intially very sloppy viewpoint problems.
If Darrin is over on the intuitive end of the writing spectrum, then you're
probably right and he needs to ignore this sort of crit entirely. But if,
as seems likely to me from his posts, he is more towards the center of the
spectrum, or over toward the analytical end of things, then what he needs is
probably going to end up being some level of clear, intellectual
understanding of how this stuff works. It's *possible* to get this sort of
understanding by studying other people's stuff in a vacuum and making up
your own terminology, but it's a lot harder and slower to reinvent the wheel
from scratch than it is to just look at what other people have figured out
about it and then put together your own version.
> Seriously folks, can you imagine, say Avram Davidson or Dunsany or
> Cliff Simak or whomever you admire thinking, "Gosh! I'm in close
> distant intermediate third here. Can I switch to high midrange third?
> Oh God, I'm going to block. Aaaaagh!" No. They would just write the
> scene, read it aloud a few times, and say, "Yeah. That works." or
> "Hmmm. Sounds a little jarring there. I think I have to let Melvin say
> this so we get what he's thinking..."
Well, actually, some writers do the first and some do the second. Never
having discussed the matter with those particular writers you mention, I
can't say what their particular processes were like, but it's not as
out-of-the-question as you make it sound.
> I checked out Ms. Kress. She can write, no question. So if this works
> for her, fine. I'll bet, however, that she does NOT think about all
> these various POV definitions while she IS writing.
Haven't discussed it with her, either. Speaking for myself, though, I *do*
think about things like that when I'm writing; I just don't bother with the
terminology (except, usually, at the very start of the book when I'm trying
to decide whether I'm going to default to my usual filtered-tight-third or
play around with something different). But knowing the various viewpoints
is part of the reason I'm *able* to go straight from "Something's wrong
here..." to "Let's just make that a direct thought..." without consciously
going through the intermediate steps of "Oh, the viewpoint shifts from close
to distant and back to close in three sentences. That's too fast; it's
jarring. Can I keep it all close, or should I do more at the distant level?
No, I want to keep it close. Let's make that distant bit into a direct
thought, then..."
This is one of those areas where mileage varies, sometimes *a lot*.
Patricia C. Wrede
29,111 words and counting
J.Pascal
<crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
> playfulmi...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Now what he says about sliding, and again it is just lightly covered.
> > Limited omniscient is useful when "you do want to describe your
> > central character from the inside and out. Once you have done this in
> > your opening paragraph or two, you may have got all you wanted from
> > the limited omniscient viewpoint, and in that case you can slide
> > unobtrusively into a single-character viewpoint and stay there."
> > Here we go again. It is okay to start out distant, then close in.
> > But not okay pull back out in the same scene or mid scene?
It's okay to do whatever works.
> When the first paragraph is clearly in omni, the reader registers that
> fact, and tends to accept psychologically that there is an omniscient
> narrator for the rest of the story. Even if certain passages read as
> though they were close 3rd, it's still in the reader's head that that
> intimate psychological perspective is temporary.
>
> When the story starts out in a specific character's POV, and then
> later on makes omniscient statements, it tends to be jarring. Often,
> it reads as though the writer either (a) was careless about POV, or
> (b) couldn't think of any other way to introduce a piece of information.
> You've built up a sense of identification with the POV character, and
> then broken it.
This is a nice explanation. I'd probably summarize the issue as
setting
expectations. The only real crime is being unclear. The only real
problem is pushing the reader out of the story. If the reader is led
to
have certain expectations something contrary to those expectations
will have extra emphasis. If you want emphasis at that point, use
it.
If the reader is distracted from what you do want them paying
attention
to, then fix it.
The fact is that only a very few potential readers will notice if
you've
used 1st or 3rd or even past or present. A POV slip from close to
distant 3rd is going to go right under the radar.
Consider the black beard thing. I'd agree with Patricia, (usually a
safe
thing to do), and suggest that what's jarring about that bit is the
extra adjective and maybe the placement of the description or
something
else other than whether or not it is technically a POV goof. A
person
may not be looking at the color of his beard, but he certainly knows
what color it is.
Okay, maybe a blind person wouldn't know.
I suppose what I'm trying to get around to saying is that all you
really
know for sure when someone tags some bit of what you've written is
that
for some reason that bit caught their attention in a negative way.
You
don't know why, you only know what they think caught their attention.
They might be right about that or they might be wrong. They might
point out some mistake you made and be right about that mistake but
still be wrong about why that bit caught their attention.
-Julie
Graham Woodland
You've mentioned this book as a good illustration before, I think; and the
trouble with this is that I think Xanth jumps so high over the shark with
that particular opus that, even if I still possessed it, I wouldn't be able
to bring myself to engage it sufficiently to appreciate many points of
technique. It may even be the case that I'm not alone on it.
Nonetheless, I seem to recollect many earlier instances in the Xanth series
where omni figleaved as tight third actively annoyed me, since it looked
like annoying point-of-view wobble with the author occasionally surfacing
in a mind where he patently did not belong. So it looks like mileages are
definitely varying here.
--
Cheers,
Gray
Brian M. Scott
<see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
<news:1sqliitdu134w.6k6kz47bbqx5$.d...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> But some good books begin in a tight third to get the
> reader's interest, then zoom out a bit. The opening of
> THE GOLDEN COMPASS is very skillful, it begins with an
> exciting event that can be read as tight third, but there
> are hints of a wider view.
It can be read as a rather distant third or as omni.
Brian
Patricia C. Wrede
<playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172341626.8...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com...
> Patricia,
OK, I'm gonna rearrange this for...I was going to say clarity, but I think
it's just basically on a whim.
> Thoughts?
First, stop reading how-to-write books.
I know, I said previously that you should read a bunch of different ones, if
you have to read any at all. Emphasis on "if you have to read any at all,"
please. You've read a bunch of them, enough that if you were going to have
gotten the basic idea -- which is that THERE IS NO ONE TRUE WAY, everybody
does stuff differently, and you have to find the approach that works *for
you* -- you ought to have started putting it together by now. Instead,
you're getting tangled up in trying to reconcile all of them. So quit
reading about writing and go *write*. Practice is the important thing,
anyway.
> Basically it is the difference between
> using he thought and declaritives...and how these relate to the
> limited omniscient view.
>
> In one of your thoughtful articles, you wrote.
>
> *Gods, but I hate the prince's birthday,* Jon thought as he hurried
> toward
> the kitchen. *If the little twerp isn't adding forty more people to
> the guest
> list at the last minute, he's demanding fresh peaches out of season.
> I wonder
> what it is this year?*
>
> How are things changed if these are declared without "Jon thought?
Internal dialog works the same as external dialog, when it's explicitly
quoted. Which means you have three basic ways of crediting it: 1) You can
use a speech tag ("he said/she said" in the case of spoken/external dialog;
"he thought/she thought" in the case of internal dialog); 2) you can use
stage business to indicate the speaker; 3) you can leave the identification
of the speaker(s) to context (this includes naming names in conversation --
"George, why did you do that?" "I don't know, Alice." -- as well as the
common setup where two people are talking and after the first couple of
exchanges, you can give several more without naming the speaker, because
it's assumed that they continue alternating).
The bit you quoted above is an example of #1. You could repunctuate it as a
stage business credit quite easily: "*Gods, but I hate the prince's
birthday.* Jon hurried toward the kitchen. *If the little twerp isn't
adding forty people...*"
In a highly filtered tight-third-person viewpoint, you often don't need to
indicate direct thoughts with italics or punctuation; you can just leave it
as "He hated the prince's birthday. If the little twerp wasn't adding forty
people to the guest list, he was demanding fresh peaches out of season. Jon
slammed the kitchen door, wondering what unreasonable demand would be coming
up *this* year." It's obvious, from context and syntax, that most of that
is Jon thinking, not a more distant narrator commenting on Jon's feelings.
In terms of *which* technique to use -- whichever one feels right and
comfortable to you for the particular passage in the particular story you
happen to be writing.
<snip a bunch of summaries of stuff about viewpoint from writing books>
> Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight
>
> Knight is much more specific about the camera. He says there are two
> modes to third person, subjective and objective. In subjective mode
> "you can't tell us what he looks like, and you can't tell us anything
> he doesn't know." In objective mode, "you can't tell us anything
> directly about his feelings, internal workings, or thoughts."
> Basically the camera stays outside. Basically he is talking about
> close or distant third. A mirror might be used in close third to
> describe self.
>
> Now what he says about sliding, and again it is just lightly covered.
> Limited omniscient is useful when "you do want to describe your
> central character from the inside and out. Once you have done this in
> your opening paragraph or two, you may have got all you wanted from
> the limited omniscient viewpoint, and in that case you can slide
> unobtrusively into a single-character viewpoint and stay there."
> Here we go again. It is okay to start out distant, then close in.
> But not okay pull back out in the same scene or mid scene?
I think you're getting confused about the difference between viewpoints and
techniques. This is especially easy when you're talking about third-person
viewpoints because a) the terminology isn't standardized and b) you get
people who divvy it up and people who don't, and the ones who divvy it up,
divvy it in different ways.
From one angle, third-person viewpoint is all the same thing, just as
first-person and second-person are. It's *all* omniscient, because you're
the author and you know it all; whatever you're doing on the page is just a
set of decisions you've made about what you're willing to show the reader,
from what perspective. I personally don't find this a particularly useful
way of looking at third-person, but some people do.
From another angle -- which is the one I take in my POV handout -- third
person viewpoint is a continuum that can be divided up into subsections,
from filtered-tight-third to fully omniscient. (I *really* don't find
"limited omniscient" a useful term, because IME it's the least clear of any
of the many possible terms for various sorts of viewpoints.)
In either case, you have the viewpoint, which is third-person, and then you
have various writing techniques you can use that are related to the
viewpoint. In first-person, for instance, it's really easy to have the
narrator insert judgements and comments and backstory into the narrative,
because that's what people *do* when they're talking. It's a lot harder to
make that sort of thing work in tight-third, even in highly filtered
tight-third. In omniscient, you can have the narrator remark on things that
are going on elsewhere at the time, or on what is going to happen to a
particular minor character in the future; you can't do that in most
first-person (unless you're doing retrospective or memoir-style stuff),
because the first-person narrator wouldn't *know* those things at the time.
Sliding the camera around and zooming in and out are *techniques*. They
work best in the camera-eye to fully-omniscient end of the third-person
viewpoint range. The closer you get to the highly-filtered
tight-third-person end of third-person viewpoint, the harder they are to
make work, because those techniques are not well-suited to those viewpoints.
One of the many alternative terms for "tight-third-person viewpoint" is
"behind-the-eyes" -- and if your viewpoint is supposed to be sitting behind
someone's eyes, you *can't* zoom out or move around without violating that
viewpoint. Not without some very fancy footwork indeed, to make it work.
I
> understand the need for scene set up. Objective or distant third is
> great for that. "A guy sits down at the bar between two rednecks and
> says..." This whole diving into the character from outside then not
> being able to pull out is a bit confusing.
The reason the "zoom in" technique works *as an opening* is that when you're
opening a story, you haven't established the viewpoint yet. So you can
start the reader off up in outer space, and drop him down to a particular
continent, then a city, then a building, then a room in that building, and
finally settle behind your POV character's eyes, and have it work. But it's
a technique for *introducing your POV*, so once you've made the introduction
and you're settled behind your POV's eyes in tight-third, that's where you
stay. Because the *story* is in filtered tight-third; you're just using the
*technique* of a zoom-in opening.
When you're telling the story in *omniscient*, OTOH, you can use the zoom-in
opening, focus on one character for a short while, then zoom out and go off
in another direction. The trick here is that you can't *stay* with the
particular character for very long, or your readers will start interpreting
your viewpoint as tight-third instead of omniscient and they'll be jarred
out of the story when you repeat your camera-zoom in reverse. But in
omniscient, what you're calling camera-zooming and sliding techniques are
fairly common, because the viewpoint *isn't* stuck behind one character's
eyes, or over her shoulder, or whatever. It's omniscient.
> Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
>
> Card wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Ender's Game. His
> book on writing drives me a little batty. He talks about distance in
> much the way Renni Browne and Dave King do, calling it light-
> penetration versus deep penetration. Basically, it comes down to the
> difference between using things like "What a terrible dress, he
> thought" instead of "What a terrible dress!" This is more than a
> little confusing to me.
That's because the difference between "What a terrible dress, he thought"
and "What a terrible dress!" is a matter of style and emphasis, more than it
is technique. Some writers like using speech tags; some hate them. Some
like setting off internal dialog in italics; some loathe using
"typographical tricks." There aren't rules for this stuff. There's only
what you think works, for your book.
And again: THE TERMINOLOGY IS NOT STANDARDIZED. Card's whole "light
penetration" vs. "deep penetration" is one of those things that makes sense
to him, but I don't think I've seen those terms elsewhere. Consequently,
this is one of many times where my advice would be: if you find this way of
looking at things helpful, use it. If you find it confusing or unhelpful,
forget about it as fast as possible and move on to something else.
> Card says that the can describe the action like that of a smile from
> the outside rather from inside when he uses distancing items like "he
> thought" or "he knew." As an example of deep penetration he gives
> this: "Pete forced himself to smile. 'Terrific.'" And for light
> penetration he writes, "'Terrific,' Pete said, smiling."
See comment on terminology, above.
For my money, the difference between the stage-business version and the
speech-tag version isn't one of "penetration"; it's one of content. That
is, "Pete forced himself to smile. 'Terriffic.'" indicates that Pete is
deliberately, and with some effort, disguising his real feelings, whereas
"'Terriffic,' Pete said, smiling." or the more comparable "Pete smiled.
'Terriffic.'" indicate that Pete genuinely thinks this is a fine idea. The
content is different.
>I guess I'm not getting why adding "he thought" to
> the POV can allow a description of what someone is doing.
When you're doing a filtered-tight-third-person, the reader is supposed to
see things through your POV character's eyes. Unless your POV character is
a telepath, his view of other people is therefore limited to what *he* can
see (facial expression, body language, actions) and hear (tone of voice).
If you want to get something specific across, such as that a non-POV
character has just remembered something or is angry about something *in
particular*, and you feel you *can't* trust your readers to pick up on it
unless you comment, then your only real option is usually to have your POV
character make his/her own judgement or interpretation of the body language
or facial expression he/she is seeing.
For instance, you can have the POV *see* another character scowl, bite her
lip, then turn away, but any *interpretation* of that body language (like
"She'd probably remembered just in time that it was *her* fault the door had
been unlocked") has to be the interpretation your POV character would make.
Which also means that if your POV doesn't *know* that the person he's
watching was the one who'd left the door unlocked, he can't have the above
thought.
> Ok on to the writers.
>
> 1) In a chapter 25 of Rowling's Harry Potter: Order of the Phonex, I
> see we have limited omniscient but Harry is very, very observant.
> This would be Card's light penetration right?
I have no idea, since as I said, his examples seem to me to be more about
actual content than about how "deeply" the author has "penetrated" into the
POV's feelings.
> Now what becomes interesting is Rowling makes this narrator very
> observant.
>
> "Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap was strong, in
> her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione..."
>
> "Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to
> seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's drink and thrust
> it up her nose."
>
> "She said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione"
>
> Now the question is this really Harry observing or a narrator?
That's Harry, and it's not *observation,* it's *interpretation.* We don't
really *know* that Rita wants to grab that paper umbrella and shove it in
Hermione's face; all we know is that Harry *thinks* she looks mad enough to
do that. There's no "he thought" in any of these examples because Rowling
is using a filtered-tight-third that's been really solidly established, so
she doesn't need to keep reminding the reader that this is all "what Harry
sees" and "what Harry thinks." It's implicit in the viewpoint.
> 2) "Game of the Krillihitchkin" by Robert J Santa.
Haven't read it, so I can't comment. It sounds like the zoom-in to
tight-third opening I described above, though.
R.L.
> R.L. wrote:
>> On 24 Feb 2007 10:27:06 -0800, playfu...@gmail.com wrote:
/snip/
>>> the narrator stick themselves in a little more by use the "he thought,
>>> he feels, he realized?" Is this the trick to use things like as
>>> though... ?
>>
>>
>> Probably. Imo Piers Anthony does some really smooth 'omni figleafed as
>> tight third', especially where the tight third pv is Esk, iirc.
>>
>> His DRAGON ON A PEDESTAL has more obvious omni and change of pv
>> characters, all done well.
>>
>>
>
> You've mentioned this book as a good illustration before, I think; and the
> trouble with this is that I think Xanth jumps so high over the shark with
> that particular opus that, even if I still possessed it, I wouldn't be able
> to bring myself to engage it sufficiently to appreciate many points of
> technique. It may even be the case that I'm not alone on it.
I find engagement with a story distracts me from analyzing technique at
this level. If I'm engaged, interested, I want to skim along without
nitpicking.
> Nonetheless, I seem to recollect many earlier instances in the Xanth series
> where omni figleaved as tight third actively annoyed me, since it looked
> like annoying point-of-view wobble with the author occasionally surfacing
> in a mind where he patently did not belong. So it looks like mileages are
> definitely varying here.
Sounds like noticing the same fact but feeling a different emotional
reaction to it. In general I like omni, and rather admire a well-crafted
figleaf. More to the point, Xanth sells to an audience that might be
supposed to be most allergic to omni or any sort of pv variation -- so
Anthony seems to be getting away with it.
Graham Woodland
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:20:27 +0000, Graham Woodland wrote:
>> R.L. wrote:
>>> On 24 Feb 2007 10:27:06 -0800, playfu...@gmail.com wrote:
> /snip/
>>>> Can
>>>> the narrator stick themselves in a little more by use the "he thought,
>>>> he feels, he realized?" Is this the trick to use things like as
>>>> though... ?
>>>
>>>
>>> Probably. Imo Piers Anthony does some really smooth 'omni figleafed as
>>> tight third', especially where the tight third pv is Esk, iirc.
>>>
>>> His DRAGON ON A PEDESTAL has more obvious omni and change of pv
>>> characters, all done well.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> You've mentioned this book as a good illustration before, I think; and
>> the trouble with this is that I think Xanth jumps so high over the shark
>> with that particular opus that, even if I still possessed it, I wouldn't
>> be able to bring myself to engage it sufficiently to appreciate many
>> points of
>> technique. It may even be the case that I'm not alone on it.
>
> I find engagement with a story distracts me from analyzing technique at
> this level. If I'm engaged, interested, I want to skim along without
> nitpicking.
>
Yes, I can see that, but it's hard to rate 'good use of technique' in a
place where that technique isn't doing its job for me.
>
>> Nonetheless, I seem to recollect many earlier instances in the Xanth
>> series where omni figleaved as tight third actively annoyed me, since it
>> looked like annoying point-of-view wobble with the author occasionally
>> surfacing
>> in a mind where he patently did not belong. So it looks like mileages
>> are definitely varying here.
>
> Sounds like noticing the same fact but feeling a different emotional
> reaction to it. In general I like omni, and rather admire a well-crafted
> figleaf.
I like omni, but I didn't find the figleaf well-crafted. A glitch in tone
that throws me briefly out of the story is not what I want to hit. Doesn't
seem to have taken you the same way at all.
> More to the point, Xanth sells to an audience that might be
> supposed to be most allergic to omni or any sort of pv variation -- so
> Anthony seems to be getting away with it.
>
I don't know why you think that -- omni is, as you probably know better than
I, a well-established traditional mode for fairy tales, for instance.
Could you expand on that?
>
> R.L.
--
Cheers,
Gray
Poliwog
> <playfulmi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1172341626.8...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Patricia,
>
> OK, I'm gonna rearrange this for...I was going to say clarity, but I think
> it's just basically on a whim.
>
> > Thoughts?
>
> First, stop reading how-to-write books.
>
> I know, I said previously that you should read a bunch of different ones, if
> you have to read any at all. Emphasis on "if you have to read any at all,"
> please. You've read a bunch of them, enough that if you were going to have
> gotten the basic idea -- which is that THERE IS NO ONE TRUE WAY, everybody
> does stuff differently, and you have to find the approach that works *for
> you* -- you ought to have started putting it together by now. Instead,
> you're getting tangled up in trying to reconcile all of them. So quit
> reading about writing and go *write*. Practice is the important thing,
> anyway.
> Patricia C. Wrede
> 29,111 words and counting
Now there, madam, is wisdom. Well done.
I write music criticism, or at least I did for twenty years. It got to
the point where I could no longer listen to music simply to enjoy it.
I was always analyzing, finding technical flaws or whatever. It's the
same with writing, IMO. If you read to critique, you look at things
that ordinary readers--even astute ones--do not consider. Makes it
hard to be a good beta reader.
Take a movie example. In _Silence of the Lambs_, two policemen get
into the cage with Hannibal Lecter. Terrific scene, full of suspense
and tension and beautifully shot details. It's also absurd. No way
would both cops go in there at the same time; they'd be far too
vulnerable. But it works for the duration.
I think that the worst thing about how-to-write books is that they
tend to make you a second-rate version of the guru rather than a first-
rate version of yourself. In the worst case, they make you a second-
rate version of people the guru happens to think are good. (Donald
Maas anybody?)
Les
R.L.
/snip/
> I think that the worst thing about how-to-write books is that they
> tend to make you a second-rate version of the guru rather than a first-
> rate version of yourself. In the worst case, they make you a second-
> rate version of people the guru happens to think are good.
For some people, this might be a good time to put aside the how-to's AND
the critters he's involved with, and just READ a lot of his own favorite
authors. (And perhaps lightly notice where those authors follow the various
'rules' and where they don't.)
Patricia C. Wrede
> On Feb 24, 5:56 pm, "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwrede6...@aol.com> wrote:
>> <playfulmi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> I know, I said previously that you should read a bunch of different ones,
>> if
>> you have to read any at all. Emphasis on "if you have to read any at
>> all,"
>> please. You've read a bunch of them, enough that if you were going to
>> have
>> gotten the basic idea -- which is that THERE IS NO ONE TRUE WAY,
>> everybody
>> does stuff differently, and you have to find the approach that works *for
>> you* -- you ought to have started putting it together by now. Instead,
>> you're getting tangled up in trying to reconcile all of them. So quit
>> reading about writing and go *write*. Practice is the important thing,
>> anyway.
> Now there, madam, is wisdom. Well done.
Thank you, but it's not as if it's new news. I've been saying it for years.
> I write music criticism, or at least I did for twenty years. It got to
> the point where I could no longer listen to music simply to enjoy it.
> I was always analyzing, finding technical flaws or whatever. It's the
> same with writing, IMO. If you read to critique, you look at things
> that ordinary readers--even astute ones--do not consider. Makes it
> hard to be a good beta reader.
Different problem, slightly. And also one where mileage varies. I do a
pretty mean critique, if I do say so myself, but I'm capable of turning it
off and on, and naturally when I read for pleasure (or for "reader-reaction"
rather than in-depth critique), I turn it off. Some people can't do that,
so the better they get at doing crit, the less they actually enjoy reading
most things.
> I think that the worst thing about how-to-write books is that they
> tend to make you a second-rate version of the guru rather than a first-
> rate version of yourself. In the worst case, they make you a second-
> rate version of people the guru happens to think are good. (Donald
> Maas anybody?)
It depends on what one expects to get out of them. Too many people approach
how-to-write books the way they'd approach a recipe book or a
how-to-build-a-patio book -- they think it's a set of directions which, if
followed, will result in a product (a cake, a patio, a novel) that's of an
acceptable, moderate level of quality (or better). Whereas how-to-write
books are, even at their very best, more like directions for pruning apple
trees -- you can't just go by the diagrams, because *your* apple tree may
not *have* branches in exactly those places, and the branch you want for a
leader may not be the one that fits the diagram, and you have to take sun
exposure and direction into consideration, and so on.
I have -- uh ... <checking> -- currently looks like five shelves of
how-to-write books, not counting the ones that are in the to-read pile.
They're sort of a hobby -- I love seeing all the weird ways other people
work, and occasionally I get insights into why I do something, or why
something I do works. I don't think they've done me any harm, ever. Of
course, most of what I've learned from them, though, has been about ways
*not* to explain and/or teach writing to other people, rather than about
ways to write myself. And I didn't start reading them until I was already
well-launched on a writing career.
Some people really *do* get a lot out of how-to-write books, though.
Including some of the ones I think are perfectly *dreadful* -- this is
another area where mileage most emphatically varies. So while I'm very much
inclined to be sympathetic to your viewpoint, as a general thing, I also
can't condemn out-of-hand the very idea of reading how-to-write books
(and/or taking creative writing classes...don't get me started on *that*!).
It does work ... for *some* people.
The trick, as always, is for any individual writer to figure out whether
something is working *for him/her*. And, if it isn't working, to try
something different. The trouble, as always, is that too many people seem
to assume that if something has worked for *anybody* else, ever, then it
*ought* to work for them -- so if it doesn't, they keep trying, instead of
moving on.
Tina Hall
As always, there's also other opinions...
> I write music criticism, or at least I did for twenty years. It got to
> the point where I could no longer listen to music simply to enjoy it.
> I was always analyzing, finding technical flaws or whatever. It's the
> same with writing, IMO. If you read to critique, you look at things
> that ordinary readers--even astute ones--do not consider. Makes it
> hard to be a good beta reader.
Don't know. When I first read Magician, some things I hadn't even
known I still knew from what I learned in school stood out as being
awkward, but it didn't prevent me from enjoying the book.[*]
But I work differently than you. Not by dissecting the text, but by
feeling. Some stuff I just assimilate, so then I notice something
being off while writing. For _reading_ (like the things offered for
crit here), I have to switch off my prejudices about characters and
content anyway, and just look at the text, how it is presented. But
I still go by feeling.
After having read something short by someone else, I found I would
like to try myself at proper beta-reading at something longer. Not
in some anonymous online thing, but stuff from people I at least
know in newsgroups. Anyone got a proper fantasy novel lying around?
:) (Not earth, magic, big scale bad guys against good guys... I
would comment only in the form required - whatever attribute of the
story the author would want my opinion on.)
> Take a movie example. In _Silence of the Lambs_, two policemen get
> into the cage with Hannibal Lecter. Terrific scene, full of suspense
> and tension and beautifully shot details. It's also absurd. No way
> would both cops go in there at the same time; they'd be far too
> vulnerable. But it works for the duration.
I can vaguely remember the scene in the book, from the movie not at
all. But what you describe here is what I'd call characters being
stupid to move the plot along. A bad thing in my opinion. If you
haven't got a story without the supposed good guys acting stupid,
then I don't think you've got a good story. (Bad guys can get away
with it; if both sides are smart, you get a draw and then the bad
guy wins by default because he isn't beaten.)
[*] (To anyone taking this as a hint to suggest other published
stories: That was years ago! I've gotten pickier. But it's a good
enough example of what kind of story I'd drop being picky for to
beta-read.)
--
Tina
WIP: Some Fantasy thing, untitled so far. 18543 words
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Posted to Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition.
Brian M. Scott
<playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:1172348128....@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> Brian,
> Thanks so much for the reply.
>> I don't understand: there's nothing like 'he thought'
>> present in either version.
> Here is the whole thing scenerio.
> Light:
> Pete waited fifteen minutes before Nora showed up wearing a vivid blue
> dress that Pete had never seen before.
> "Do you like it?" asked Nora.
> It looks outrageous, thought Pete, like neon woven into cloth.
> "Terrific," he said, smiling.
> Nora studied Pete's face for a moment, then glared. "You always want
> me to be frowsy and boring," she said.
> ###
> Deep:
> Pete wasn't surprised that Nora was fifteen minutes late, and of
> course she showed up wearing a new dress. A blue dress. No, not just
> a blue. Vivid blue like neon woven into cloth.
> "Do you like it?" asked Nora.
> Pete forced himself to smile. "Terrific."
> As usual, she could read his mind despite his best efforts to be a
> cheerful, easy-to-get-along-with hypocrite. She glared at him. "You
> always want me to be frowsy and boring."
> ---------------------------
Having the whole thing changes matters considerably. I was
misled by Card's terminology. I'd not describe the
difference in terms of penetration at all: both versions
tell us what's going on inside Pete's head. The difference
has more to do with emotional distance from the action, it
seems to me; this is much more a matter of tone than of PoV.
[...]
Brian
Tim S
>
> When the first paragraph is clearly in omni, the reader registers that
> fact, and tends to accept psychologically that there is an omniscient
> narrator for the rest of the story. Even if certain passages read as
> though they were close 3rd, it's still in the reader's head that that
> intimate psychological perspective is temporary.
>
> When the story starts out in a specific character's POV, and then
> later on makes omniscient statements, it tends to be jarring.
But you do get a bit more leeway than just the first paragraph. And
people are less surprised if you change pov -- even from tight third to
omni narrator -- at some natural point in the story, like a scene break
or a chapter break.
Tim
Poliwog
> Poliwog <woge...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> After having read something short by someone else, I found I would
> like to try myself at proper beta-reading at something longer. Not
> in some anonymous online thing, but stuff from people I at least
> know in newsgroups. Anyone got a proper fantasy novel lying around?
> :) (Not earth, magic, big scale bad guys against good guys... I
> would comment only in the form required - whatever attribute of the
> story the author would want my opinion on.)
>
> Tina
> WIP: Some Fantasy thing, untitled so far. 18543 words
You'll get yourself in trouble! I've got about 160KW of my first draft
done. Four more chapters should do it. Epic fantasy of a sort with
LOTS of humor, and lots of Deep Stuff. If your serious, I need some
seriously knowledgeable fantasy reader(s) to have a look when it's
done. If you have any interest at all (don't say I didn't warn you)
please email me. Don't use the hotmail address; use wogears (at) yahoo-
dot-com.
TIA,
Les
Patricia C. Wrede
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:1x8rnxzitgek9$.1b3237z267cto.dlg@40tude.net...
> On 24 Feb 2007 12:15:28 -0800, "playfu...@gmail.com"
> <playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in
> <news:1172348128....@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
Mostly what you said. The effect each version has is slightly different, but
the POV, in both cases, is filtered-tight-third with Pete as the POV. The
difference in tone could be a difference in emotional distance, or it could
be a difference in Pete's character -- the first Pete being somewhat less
noticing, possible a tiny bit better at acting, and a whole lot less likely
to jump to conclusions about what his companion is thinking.
The only way I can interpret this as a difference in "penetration" is by
assuming that Pete is supposed to have exactly the same characterization in
both segments -- that the "light-penetration" version of Pete is secretly
*supposed* to be thinking and feeling all those things that the
"deep-penetration" version is doing on-stage. And if that's the case, then
I'd say the author has *characterization* problems, not *viewpoint*
problems, because they don't come across as quite the same person, even in
this short excerpt.
Patricia C. Wrede
29,084 words and counting (Yes, it went backwards last night)
playfu...@gmail.com
(and anyone else I might have missed).
This is one of the best conversations I've had on a newsgroup. I
really appreciate you helping me struggle through third person and
voice my confusions.
I've decided to approach third person for the story I'm working on
from the eyes of the teller. I just have to pretend that I'm the POV
character when I'm writing and filter the descriptions as he would.
It is strange at first as usually I would use first person for that.
I'm sure after a couple of stories it will get easier.
Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
3rd person as well as omniscient.) Obviously, this trend is not that
common any more. And not liked too much in crit groups unless it is
true omniscient.
I did a poor job of filtering the descriptions from the POV character
and didn't think about this when I wrote the story. This discussion
taught me something very interesting about the degree of emotional
distance for third person as a reflection of the character. Another
tool has been added to my bag. The filter helps define character in
third person.
In other words a person who is standoffish and secretive might be
narrate as:
He thought she was cruel but did not let his face show any emotion.
A person who wears his heart on his sleeve is going to be something
along the lines of:
What a bitch! But he tried hard to not show his disgust.
Or even more distant and compartmentalized still:
He thought, "How typical that she is not being nice." He turned his
head toward the clock on the wall to see if it was time to leave yet.
It seems so simple once it makes sense. Go figure. My apologies for
naiveté about this. It was really in December of last year I started
admitting that I had a ton of stuff to learn about writing. My
journey continues and time to rewrite with a new filter.
Thanks again.
Darrin
Jonathan L Cunningham
> I've done omni a couple of times, and I think I'm starting to get the
> hang of it, but it still seems much more difficult to me. Often there
> are logical reasons to choose a certain POV, and if no choice is
> imposed on you, I don't see any reason to deviate from close third.
To me, that seems a strange way to word it. "Close third" is a long way
away, and somewhere I'd have to struggle to get to. So it doesn't feel
like deviating from it if I write omni.
Similarly, I live in the UK. It doesn't feel like I'm making a special
effort to avoid living in New York, even if it would be an interesting
place to visit! :-)
> of death. If a lot of the story revolves around misunderstandings
> between people, or lots of people saying one thing but thinking another,
> then omni may be more natural. I recently read a really nice story
That's exactly the situation in my WIP-1: some characters know, and
think about, things that other characters don't know. And I lose a lot
of the fun if I can't show two different characters' thoughts at the
same time.
I've attempted something similar in my WIP-2 (I tend to shift between
different projects instead of sticking with just one). But this time I
am doing it in tight 3rd (with thoughts), but writing the same scene
twice, from two different POVs.
The advantage of this is that I can describe *different* things
happening, which I can't do in omni.
Here is an example from WIP-2, the same scene from two different POVs.
I've got some additional comments to make, after them.
Talum and Katya have smuggled aboard a ship, and both have just (a) been
sea-sick, and (b) been discovered (throwing up over the side of a ship
is not a good way to remain hidden, but better than throwing up on
valuable cargo in the hold and getting discovered after you've ruined
it). The captain has threatened to throw them overboard. Katya realises
he is only joking, but Talum didn't realise it.
Here is the scene from Talum's POV.
Talum was at first still feeling too queasy to talk, but after a short
while he saw colour returning to Katya's cheeks, though she was
shivering in the cool breeze. He was also feeling a bit better, almost
hungry, when she said, "Do you think he'll throw us overboard?"
"No. He could already have done it, if that's what he wanted to do. He
was just trying to scare us."
She shook her head. "What's the hurry? He might want to question us
first. He can throw us overboard after that."
Talum couldn't argue with that. "Who knows what they'll do?"
"Maybe we can bribe him."
"What with? What have we got that's of value to an elf?" And then
Talum thought of the rings.
And the same scene from Katya's POV.
For something to say, and to find out if he was worried, she asked
Talum if he thought that they would be thrown overboard.
Talum obviously hadn't realised the captain was only joking. "I think
he was just trying to scare us," he suggested. "Or he would already
have done it."
Katya decided to play devil's advocate. "Maybe he wants to question us
first?"
"What about?" Talum shrugged. "They could do anything."
Talum was obviously feeling very down and pessimistic, although Katya
herself was feeling almost cheerful. She was sure that things would
turn out alright, but saying so would almost certainly make Talum act
more stubborn. Better to change the subject.
"Maybe we should bribe him," she suggested. It was a silly suggestion,
since the captain could easily have them searched, and take any
valuables they possessed, but Talum seemed to take the idea seriously.
"That would be a good idea if we could," he said. "But what with?"
This made Katya take the idea seriously, too. Assuming the elves were
not going to dispose of them, would they steal, because that's what it
would amount to, from their stowaways? Katya would be sorry to lose
the broach her mother had given her, or to have anyone pawing through
her other possessions, even if they had only sentimental value.
"Logas said to get rid of the wooden rings," she said slowly.
These are both first draft, so I'm not looking for a crit, although
pointing out tight 3rd POV errors is relevant to the thread.
The point I'm making is that they both see/remember the conversation
differently, misinterpret each other's reactions, and at the end they
both think it was their own idea to use the wooden (but magical) rings.
Another interesting question, for me, is how to merge both sets of
scenes: all Talum-without-Katya, and Katya-without-Talum scenes stay in,
but there are quite a lot of Talum-plus-Katya scenes. I could choose one
or the other, and sometimes it's obvious which to choose, but I'd really
like to merge some of them, like this scene, to give both POVs.
Jonathan
Patricia C. Wrede
news:1172427172.5...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com...
Patricia, RL, Ben, Brian, and Tina, Tim, Poly, Jonathon, Julie, Gray,
(and anyone else I might have missed).
>This is one of the best conversations I've had on a newsgroup. I
>really appreciate you helping me struggle through third person and
>voice my confusions.
As I think I said early on, POV is one of the areas where it's very, very
common for people to have problems early in their writing careers. My first
novel was sloppy-omniscient to the max; learning to do proper tight-third
was a struggle.
>I'm sure after a couple of stories it will get easier.
It took me most of my second novel to get to the point where I didn't have
to think too much about how to do what I was doing when trying to write
tight-third. Since then -- well, I can't honestly say that it's *totally*
automatic, as there are always new things coming up that require me to stop
and think "Ooops, never done *this* before, so how..." But it's mostly
automatic, to the point where it's been my preferred, default viewpoint for
some considerable time now.
>Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
>comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
>off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
>were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
>3rd person as well as omniscient.) Obviously, this trend is not that
>common any more. And not liked too much in crit groups unless it is
>true omniscient.
1) Omniscient *is* third-person. One variety of it. 2) Authorial
interjections *used* to be commonplace...in 19th C. literature. Which was
generally either first-person or omniscient viewpoint, both of which allow
for such interjection. Nowadays, about the only time you see
omniscient-with-authorial-comment is in books that are deliberately and
consciously imitating earlier styles, like Steven Brust's Paarfi novels
(which are pastiches/homages to Dumas, right down to the style).
And 3) the minute you start putting authorial commentary into your
third-person narrative, you're writing omniscient. It's a definitional
thing. When it comes to the story, the author is presumed to be omniscient.
If the implied narrator of the story is someone else -- a character or a
camera-point -- then the implied narrator can be non-omniscient, but the
minute the actual author sticks something in, there's an omniscient voice on
the page. Tight-third isn't tight-third unless it's *tight* -- stuff that a
single character would know/say/thing/see/etc. Camera-eye third isn't
camera-eye third if the "camera" dips into someone's thoughts.
>I did a poor job of filtering the descriptions from the POV character
>and didn't think about this when I wrote the story.
<snip>
>He thought she was cruel but did not let his face show any emotion.
>A person who wears his heart on his sleeve is going to be something
>along the lines of:
>What a bitch! But he tried hard to not show his disgust.
>Or even more distant and compartmentalized still:
>He thought, "How typical that she is not being nice." He turned his
>head toward the clock on the wall to see if it was time to leave yet.
Yes. This is a *characterization* technique, more than a *point of view*
technique. Consider: people tend to notice things they're interested in or
know about -- my artist sisters, for instance, can spot within two seconds
of entering a room which color combinations are off *and exactly why* (one
of them told me once that I couldn't have the color I wanted for my kitchen
walls, because the floor tiles had a particular green pigment in them and
the paint didn't. Me: "But the floor is *brown*. And the paint is
*green*" Her: "Yes, but the floor has X green in it and the paint doesn't,
so they won't work." End of discussion...)
When you're writing in first-person or tight-third, you apply this to
*everything.* Description is an easy example:
Basic neutral-omniscient block-of-description:
The room was large, with a high ceiling. Animal heads were mounted on the
wall: a lion, a bear, a moose, a dragon. There was very little furniture; a
single overstuffed leather chair with a footstool sat in front of the
fireplace, and a narrow table with wrought-iron legs ran along the wall
under the windows.
Description from POV of character #1:
After walking through the outer parts of the mansion, it was a relief to
find himself in such a large, uncluttered room. He crossed to the single
chair at once, and sank into the overstuffed cushions with a sigh of relief.
Swinging his feet onto the footstool, he stared at the mounted ice-dragon's
head above the fireplace. It didn't really go with the grizzly bear, cougar,
and Canadian moose heads hanging on the other walls, but realistically,
where else could George have put it?
Description from POV of character #2:
It seemed to be a sort of study, though the room was rather large for such a
purpose. His footsteps rang eerily in the almost-empty space. Why hadn't
George put in more than one chair? And all those animal heads on the
walls.... He shuddered. It was spooky, the way the glass eyes of the lion
and the bear seemed to watch him, and as for the dragon, he could understand
why George had killed the thing, but it seemed more than a little tasteless
to inflict it on his guests. The table was odd, too -- he'd always thought
things with wrought-iron legs belonged outside. The room gave him the
creeps; he turned to go.
Description from POV of character #3:
Looking at the room, the first word he thought of was "tacky." Stuffed
animal heads, for God's sake! Who put things like that on their walls any
more? This was a mansion, not a hunting lodge. But perhaps he was being
unjust -- after all, there was only one shabby chair, a footstool, and a
mismatched table with wrought-iron legs for furnishings. Perhaps this was a
storage room for things George planned to give to the Goodwill pickup. Yes,
that would be the explanation, though even the Goodwill would probably balk
at the mounted dragon's head. Really, where *had* George picked up such a
tasteless object?
Those are three completely different characters, with completely different
attitudes and backstories and relationships to George, all reacting to the
same room. The POV is filtered-tight-third in all cases, so the differences
depend on *which character* is looking at the room, not on any change in POV
or distance.
Patricia C. Wrede
29,084 words and counting (yes, it went backwards yesterday)
Patricia C. Wrede
"Jonathan L Cunningham" <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:1hu3u3m.dqgzuz15m8se8N%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid...
> Another interesting question, for me, is how to merge both sets of
> scenes: all Talum-without-Katya, and Katya-without-Talum scenes stay in,
> but there are quite a lot of Talum-plus-Katya scenes. I could choose one
> or the other, and sometimes it's obvious which to choose, but I'd really
> like to merge some of them, like this scene, to give both POVs.
Well, merge 'em, then. You're already doing a multiple-POV structure; you
can, if you like, do multiple-POV-types as well as multiple-POV-characters.
It might be a little tricky to get across that the Talum-without-Katya
scenes and the Katya-without-Talum scenes are tight-third, but the
Talum-plus-Katya scenes are omni, but it's not without precedent.
Unless, of course, sticking to tight-third throughout is part of the
challenge you've set yourself for this book; in that case, well, you have to
decide. (But you're still allowed to decide that you don't have to stick to
the challenge quite so strictly as you'd initially intended -- that's what
happened to Lois when she was in the middle of "Mirror Dance," and she
fussed about it for *days*, *weeks* even, and ended up ditching the
strict-alteration-of-viewpoints thing she'd had going, and it worked just
*fine*.)
Patricia C. Wrede
29,084 words, and counting (yes, it went backwards yesterday)
Tim S
> Ben Crowell <crow...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
>
>> I've done omni a couple of times, and I think I'm starting to get the
>> hang of it, but it still seems much more difficult to me. Often there
>> are logical reasons to choose a certain POV, and if no choice is
>> imposed on you, I don't see any reason to deviate from close third.
>
> To me, that seems a strange way to word it.
To me too.
"Close third" is a long way
> away, and somewhere I'd have to struggle to get to. So it doesn't feel
> like deviating from it if I write omni.
Yes, it's like saying that you needn't write sf, since, if no choice is
imposed on you, there's no reason to "deviate" from mystery. Or that
there's no need to write at all, since, if no choice is imposed on you,
there's no reason to "deviate" from running a bicycle shop. Or you
needn't to be a human being, since, if no choice is imposed on you,
there's no reason to "deviate" from being an octopus.
>
> Similarly, I live in the UK. It doesn't feel like I'm making a special
> effort to avoid living in New York, even if it would be an interesting
> place to visit! :-)
Or that.
Tim
Dan Goodman
> Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
If I recall correctly, that's the one in which Card points out a major
problem with Star Wars. George Lucas made the mistake of building up
the villain too much, making him too interesting. As a result, Darth
Vader became THE protagonist -- which obviously wasn't his intention.
Right.
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
future http://dangoodman.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Dan Goodman
> Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
> comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
> off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
> were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
> 3rd person as well as omniscient.) Obviously, this trend is not that
> common any more. And not liked too much in crit groups unless it is
> true omniscient.
A term I think is more useful than "narrator" here: "implied author."
In Knight's book, he talks about writing a scene as it would be done by
two authors who had different reactions to it.
The narrator outside the story is, usually, the implied author -- that
is, the writer who's implied by the story. The implied author can be
quite different from the actual writer.
Dan Goodman
> Brian M. Scott wrote:
> > On 24 Feb 2007 10:27:06 -0800, "playfu...@gmail.com"
> ><playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in
> > <news:1172341626.8...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>
> > in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > "Third person ('he') is most frequently used because it
> > > can be both intimate and detached at the same time." Ok
> > > this I don't get. I understand how it can be intimate in
> > > the sense that everything is told from the POV
> > > character's perspective but I don't understand what he
> > > means by detached. I'm not sure what he is talking
> > > about and there is not example. Is he talking about
> > > zooms or just the fact that scene breaks allow us to
> > > visit other people?
> >
> > He may simply be pointing out that third person is
> > inherently more detached than first or second person. First
> > person tells the story from the inside, and the rare second
> > person directly puts the reader inside the story; third
> > person makes the reader an observer, though it can be used
> > to make him a very close observer.
>
> I think the idea is that third can be more detached than
> first, for the obvious reasons, but it can also be more intimate,
> because you can have the illusion of interfacing directly to
> the person's thoughts. In a first-person narrative, there is
> a narrator who's coming between the reader and his own thoughts.
> If I describe my thoughts to someone else, I'm going to filter
> it heavily. I'll insert justifications and rationalizations.
> I'll fail to report thoughts that are embarrassing. I could
> even intentionally lie to you.
Also: The first person character can _get things wrong_, and tell the
reader things which aren't accurate.
A good example: Geoffrey Household's novel _Rogue Male_. At the
beginning, the narrator has just finished trying to explain to the
secret police of an unnamed country that he has nothing against their
boss. He's a hunter; he's gotten bored with the usual game, so now
he's going after world-class dictators.
(The secret police are incompetent enough that he's still alive after
they're done with him.)
Later in the story, we learn that the narrator isn't as sane as he
sounds in the beginning.
Dan Goodman
> Too many people approach how-to-write books the way they'd approach a
> recipe book or a how-to-build-a-patio book -- they think it's a set
> of directions which, if followed, will result in a product (a cake, a
> patio, a novel) that's of an acceptable, moderate level of quality
> (or better).
Which isn't the way _I_ approach recipe books.
Of the cookbooks I own, I don't think any two have quite the same
recipe for French Toast. Same goes for many other recipes.
R.L.
/snip/
> One disadvantage of first person is that it's absolutely impossible
> to move the camera in or out, or to sneak in omniscient digressions,
> whereas in third, if you're skillful, you can do those things and
> make it seem natural.
My opinion* is that in tight third you've got more wiggle room sideways, ie
mentioning current or past things that the pv character wouldn't be
thinking about. But in first person you've got more wiggle room timewise,
ie mentioning or foreshadowing things that haven't happened yet (depending
on how much hindsight you give the first person narrator [current only, or
diary fashion, or long after memoir]).
*which I may actually have mentioned once or twice in the past
Bill Swears
>
> Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
> comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
> off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
> were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
> 3rd person as well as omniscient.) Obviously, this trend is not that
> common any more. And not liked too much in crit groups unless it is
> true omniscient.
Over in the dark matter universe of the "literary" novel, they call that
a metafictional technique. It doesn't seem to fly very well here in our
ghetto. I mean that literally, the gatekeepers in the SF publishing
houses don't seem to want it either.
Bill
playfu...@gmail.com
> My opinion* is that in tight third you've got more wiggle room sideways, ie
> mentioning current or past things that the pv character wouldn't be
> thinking about. But in first person you've got more wiggle room timewise,
> ie mentioning or foreshadowing things that haven't happened yet (depending
> on how much hindsight you give the first person narrator [current only, or
> diary fashion, or long after memoir]).
RL,
This is an interesting comment. I'm not sure I follow. Do you have
examples? I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
NOT be thinking about.
It seems like it is just perhaps the type of foreshadow if even that.
I was thinking about the natural for some reason.
I heard the tree the bat was formed from was split open by a strike of
lightning.
He thought about the tree the bat was formed from and how it had been
split open by a strike of lightning.
Okay my writing is flat this morning...but I hope understandable.
Darrin
James Nicoll
POV".
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Jonathan L Cunningham
> "Jonathan L Cunningham" <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:1hu3u3m.dqgzuz15m8se8N%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid...
>
> > Another interesting question, for me, is how to merge both sets of
> > scenes: all Talum-without-Katya, and Katya-without-Talum scenes stay in,
> > but there are quite a lot of Talum-plus-Katya scenes. I could choose one
> > or the other, and sometimes it's obvious which to choose, but I'd really
> > like to merge some of them, like this scene, to give both POVs.
>
> Well, merge 'em, then.
Sounds like a challenge! :-)
> You're already doing a multiple-POV structure; you
> can, if you like, do multiple-POV-types as well as multiple-POV-characters.
Well, that's the first hurdle. I was wondering if it's possible. But you
say "do it" -- so let's assume it *is* possible :-).
> It might be a little tricky to get across that the Talum-without-Katya
> scenes and the Katya-without-Talum scenes are tight-third, but the
> Talum-plus-Katya scenes are omni, but it's not without precedent.
Hmmm. As you said elsewhere, it's omni by definition, but I think it
would feel clunky to merge the viewpoints into "true" omni (what people
normally expect omni to do). I want it to continue to feel like tight
third, but from two simultaneous viewpoints.
(Yes, I know that's sort of a self-contradiction: if it's from two
viewpoints it's not tight third. But I want the same feel, as far as
possible, as tight third. IYKWIM.)
It might not work, but it's a challenge to try.
> Unless, of course, sticking to tight-third throughout is part of the
> challenge you've set yourself for this book; in that case, well, you have to
It was originally. Now it isn't. It served its purpose as a learning
exercise. I was quite prepared to discard it, but ISTM worth revising
instead, so now the objective is to turn all that work from an exercise
into a novel, at which point arbitrary objectives go out of the window.
If it stays tight-third throughout, that will be because it turns out to
seem the best option. :-)
> decide. (But you're still allowed to decide that you don't have to stick to
> the challenge quite so strictly as you'd initially intended -- that's what
> happened to Lois when she was in the middle of "Mirror Dance," and she
> fussed about it for *days*, *weeks* even, and ended up ditching the
> strict-alteration-of-viewpoints thing she'd had going, and it worked just
> *fine*.)
I'm still thinking about how to do it. One approach might be to switch
viewpoints very fast, alternating them, cf in movies where *usually* you
hear one side of a phone conversation. Sometimes they cut between the
speakers (and not always to the person actually talking).
Sometimes they use a split-screen, so you can see both speakers at the
same time. The effect I want is something like that: a sort of
split-screen into two people's thoughts during the conversation (using
the metaphor that tight third is a single screen showing *one* person's
thoughts).
But a literal split-screen is impossible with words in sequence. I'm not
even *tempted* by weird layout like two adjacent columns - that kind of
thing seldom works, IMHO. So I'm still wondering how to do it, and
whether I can pull it off (even to my own satisfaction). And whether
every reader in the entire universe who crits it will say it's
head-hopping.
But I'm behind[*] with (non-fiction) work I'm being paid for, so I'd
better put in a couple more hours on that before I look at rasfc, or
fiction writing, again this evening.
Jonathan
[*] Too much rasfcing over the last few days, in case that wasn't
obvious from the number of my posts! :-(
Suzanne Blom
<playfu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172498371.8...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
>
>> My opinion* is that in tight third you've got more wiggle room sideways,
>> ie
>> mentioning current or past things that the pv character wouldn't be
>> thinking about. But in first person you've got more wiggle room timewise,
>> ie mentioning or foreshadowing things that haven't happened yet
>> (depending
>> on how much hindsight you give the first person narrator [current only,
>> or
>> diary fashion, or long after memoir]).
>
> examples? I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
> NOT be thinking about.
>
> It seems like it is just perhaps the type of foreshadow if even that.
> I was thinking about the natural for some reason.
>
ostensibly written after the events of the book are over so the narrator can
say things like, "Later I realized Joe Schmoe was not as harried as he was
pretending, but at the time...." In third person the narrator is pretty
nearly always narrating at the time of the action. "She brought Joe Schmoe
a drink and asked, 'How can I help?'" The second example might follow from
the first (with the pronoun changed), but the first example is less likely
in a third person narration (even with the pronouns changed).---Tho of
course nothing is impossible.
Bill Swears
> I keep reading the subject line as "Help with Middle/Class 3rd person
> POV".
characters, so you aren't entirely alone.
Bill
--
Ourdebate.com lifts free debate between writers and dilutes it with ads.
rec.arts.sf.composition is a USENET group, and can be accessed for free.
Ourdebate.com therefore sucks (the life from discourse),
and dribbles (deceit when integrity would have worked just as well).
Bill Swears
> James Nicoll wrote:
>> I keep reading the subject line as "Help with Middle/Class 3rd person
>> POV".
> I thought it was going to be something having to do with third world
> characters, so you aren't entirely alone.
>
> Bill
>
you keep...
Patricia C. Wrede
"Jonathan L Cunningham" <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>> You're already doing a multiple-POV structure; you
>> can, if you like, do multiple-POV-types as well as
>> multiple-POV-characters.
>
> Well, that's the first hurdle. I was wondering if it's possible. But you
> say "do it" -- so let's assume it *is* possible :-).
*Anything's* possible in writing...you just have to get it to work. :)
>> It might be a little tricky to get across that the Talum-without-Katya
>> scenes and the Katya-without-Talum scenes are tight-third, but the
>> Talum-plus-Katya scenes are omni, but it's not without precedent.
>
> Hmmm. As you said elsewhere, it's omni by definition, but I think it
> would feel clunky to merge the viewpoints into "true" omni (what people
> normally expect omni to do). I want it to continue to feel like tight
> third, but from two simultaneous viewpoints.
>
> (Yes, I know that's sort of a self-contradiction: if it's from two
> viewpoints it's not tight third. But I want the same feel, as far as
> possible, as tight third. IYKWIM.)
It sounds like a variety of viewpoint that's actually rather common in
Romance novels. So it's been made to work, in that venue, at least.
Whether you can make it work for SF/F...well, that's the challenge, isn't
it? :)
>> Unless, of course, sticking to tight-third throughout is part of the
>> challenge you've set yourself for this book; in that case, well, you have
>> to
>
> It was originally. Now it isn't. It served its purpose as a learning
> exercise. I was quite prepared to discard it, but ISTM worth revising
> instead, so now the objective is to turn all that work from an exercise
> into a novel, at which point arbitrary objectives go out of the window.
> If it stays tight-third throughout, that will be because it turns out to
> seem the best option. :-)
Good.
<snip>
> But a literal split-screen is impossible with words in sequence. I'm not
> even *tempted* by weird layout like two adjacent columns - that kind of
> thing seldom works, IMHO. So I'm still wondering how to do it, and
> whether I can pull it off (even to my own satisfaction). And whether
> every reader in the entire universe who crits it will say it's
> head-hopping.
You can short-circuit some of the automatic negative crit by putting a note
at the beginning (or end) saying that this is an "experimental piece" and
that you want to know whether your experiment in making
quick-viewpoint-shifts worked. That should at least derail the idiots who
are more interested in following mechanical rules than in whether or not
what you are doing works. You'd be surprised what you can get away with in
the name of "experimentation." Or say it's an "experiment in postmodern
viewpoint" -- the more buzzwords, the better.
> But I'm behind[*] with (non-fiction) work I'm being paid for, so I'd
> better put in a couple more hours on that before I look at rasfc, or
> fiction writing, again this evening.
Yes, well...
Patricia C. Wrede
29, 258 words and counting
R.L.
>> My opinion* is that in tight third you've got more wiggle room sideways, ie
>> mentioning current or past things that the pv character wouldn't be
>> thinking about. But in first person you've got more wiggle room timewise,
>> ie mentioning or foreshadowing things that haven't happened yet (depending
>> on how much hindsight you give the first person narrator [current only, or
>> diary fashion, or long after memoir]).
>
> RL,
>
> This is an interesting comment. I'm not sure I follow. Do you have
> examples?
Of course really I suppose you can do almost anything in almost any POV,
all this is just talking about really common, conventional stuff.
Which is not necessarily where every new person really starts. Imo new
people usually start by instinctively doing what they've absorbed from
their favorite authors (who are usually better than the how-to book
writers). Who are your favorite authors? :-)
There was an interesting thread a while back that began with advice from an
editor that third person was 'better' than first person because in third
person you could pull the camera out from behind the pv character's eyes to
show the pv character's appearance without her having to look in a mirror.
:-) That is, you could move the camera out to look AT the character instead
of always having to look through her eyes. (Examples at the beginning of a
lot of old Nancy Drew books. _)
Here's the thread, headed "advice from an editor I don't agree with (1st
vs. 3rd person)".
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.composition/browse_frm/thread/53e0b1c613af1646/f831937016021658?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&prev=/groups%3Fas_q%3Dfirst%2520person%2520mirror%2520tight%2520third%26safe%3Dimages%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26as_ugroup%3Drec.arts.sf.composition%26as_scoring%3Dd%26lr%3D%26hl%3Den&as_drrb=b&as_maxd=17&as_maxm=7&as_maxy=2003&as_mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1995#f831937016021658
Here's the advice they were talking about:
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/shapiro.shtml
SS: WHY NOT TO WRITE IN FIRST PERSON
SS: By Del Rey Editorial Director Shelly Shapiro
/snip re first person character looking in mirror/
SS: The author has no chance to step in. When the third person is used,
SS: however, the author can allow the reader to stick closely to a
SS: character's viewpoint, even to be inside that character's head,
SS: while still preserving a more critical awareness.
Aside from the stuff about looking in a mirror, I think Shapiro has a point
here: it would take some work to get an 'unreliable narrator' to get across
some things that can be easily done in supposedly-tight third.
But must go now, Real Life is calling...
> I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
> NOT be thinking about.
Mm. Like in an opening:
-----------
Marcy stood in the shady veranda, peering down the dusty road, tensely
wondering whose car was approaching. She was oblivious to the chickens
pecking her ragged shoelaces, the baby on the doorstep about to swallow a
stinging lizard, and the banjo music from inside the old house which hadn't
been painted since old Financier Macallister jumped out the turret window
in 1929.
The car's dust plume was mixed with black smoke, and she could tell every
bounce the car must be hitting on the potholed driveway. Like smoke
signals, she thought, if anybody cared. But of course no one did care,
about her or her family [and now we're deep in her thoughts].
=============
Here she knows the house hasn't been painted since 1929, but she's not
thinking about it at the moment, she's thinking about the car. It's easier
to do this in tight third, because in first person there would have to be
some connection in her thoughts between the car and the house paint.
And you'd have to do "Had I but known the baby was about to swallow a
stinging lizard, I wouldn't have been watching the car. But blissfully
unknowing, in fact I stared at the dust plume [blah blah]"
> It seems like it is just perhaps the type of foreshadow if even that.
> I was thinking about the natural for some reason.
Lost me, but you're probably right, as anything can be done in any POV,
probably. :-)
> I heard the tree the bat was formed from was split open by a strike of
> lightning.
>
> He thought about the tree the bat was formed from and how it had been
> split open by a strike of lightning.
Both these work IF he IS thinking about where the wood came from. But if
you want to tell the reader where the wood came from without him thinking
about it, then what?
> Okay my writing is flat this morning...but I hope understandable.
Differences are easier to see when the examples are flat, imo. (As in
Xanth. :-)
ShellyS
> I keep reading the subject line as "Help with Middle/Class 3rd person
> POV".
> defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Thanks goodness. I was afraid I was the only one. ;)
-- Shelly
Tina Hall
> There was an interesting thread a while back that began with advice
> from an editor that third person was 'better' than first person because
> in third person you could pull the camera out from behind the pv
> character's eyes to show the pv character's appearance without her
> having to look in a mirror. :-) That is, you could move the camera out
> to look AT the character instead of always having to look through her
> eyes. (Examples at the beginning of a lot of old Nancy Drew books. _)
That would be omni, somewhere in the backround.
With _tight_ third, I don't think I can mention anything from
outside the character's head. No need for a mirror, though, the
character likely knows what he looks like, after all.
> Here's the advice they were talking about:
> http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/shapiro.shtml
> SS: WHY NOT TO WRITE IN FIRST PERSON
> SS: By Del Rey Editorial Director Shelly Shapiro
> /snip re first person character looking in mirror/
> SS: The author has no chance to step in. When the third person is used,
> SS: however, the author can allow the reader to stick closely to a
> SS: character's viewpoint, even to be inside that character's head,
> SS: while still preserving a more critical awareness.
Third person; talking about he/she and observing their thoughts as
well as surroundings, isn't the same as tight third; showing the
world only from their perspective as if sitting in their head.
With third person, you've got a narrator. With tight third, I feel
there isn't a narrator. There certainly isn't in my stories, no one
is "telling" it. You're just sort of there.
> Aside from the stuff about looking in a mirror, I think Shapiro has a
> point here: it would take some work to get an 'unreliable narrator' to
> get across some things that can be easily done in supposedly-tight
> third.
Hm?
>> I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
>> NOT be thinking about.
> Mm. Like in an opening:
> -----------
> Marcy stood in the shady veranda, peering down the dusty road, tensely
> wondering whose car was approaching. She was oblivious to the chickens
> pecking her ragged shoelaces, the baby on the doorstep about to swallow
> a stinging lizard, and the banjo music from inside the old house which
> hadn't been painted since old Financier Macallister jumped out the
> turret window in 1929.
That's ok in tight third if she knows that she's ignoring all that.
But 'oblivious' sort of prevents that option, so while third person,
it's not tight third.
[...]
> Here she knows the house hasn't been painted since 1929, but she's not
> thinking about it at the moment, she's thinking about the car. It's
> easier to do this in tight third, because in first person there would
> have to be some connection in her thoughts between the car and the
> house paint.
Third person (as told from omni), not _tight_ third.
--
Tina
WIP: Some Fantasy thing, untitled so far. 18543 words
Mary K. Kuhner
playfu...@gmail.com <playfu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>This is an interesting comment. I'm not sure I follow. Do you have
>examples? I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
>NOT be thinking about.
>It seems like it is just perhaps the type of foreshadow if even that.
>I was thinking about the natural for some reason.
>I heard the tree the bat was formed from was split open by a strike of
>lightning.
>He thought about the tree the bat was formed from and how it had been
>split open by a strike of lightning.
I think it's often possible, in a not-too-tight tight third, to
put in things that the POV character knows but is not thinking
about right at this moment. You don't want to do it at crisis
moments when he couldn't *possibly* be thinking about that--it
messes up the pacing, to start with--but it can work in quieter
moments.
"He shouldered his favorite bat, carved from a lightning-struck
tree and lovingly hand-polished, and set out for the cricket
field."
I don't think the character has to be thinking about the
lightning-struck tree at this exact moment, as long as it's something
he does know and would think about in the context of his bat. (It's
no good if he doesn't know at all.)
You can do a more extreme form of tight-third, almost first
person with pronouns changed, that can't digress this much; but
it's not required.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
David Friedman
"ShellyS" <shel...@gmail.com> wrote:
You were not.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
Elyse
<crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
> When the story starts out in a specific character's POV, and then
> later on makes omniscient statements, it tends to be jarring. Often,
> it reads as though the writer either (a) was careless about POV, or
> (b) couldn't think of any other way to introduce a piece of information.
> You've built up a sense of identification with the POV character, and
> then broken it.
I found myself with the opposite problem in my current WIP. I
originally considered a strict cinematic viewpoint, with no direct
internal information about the characters, partly as an exercise in
showing-not-telling.
I found that at my current skill level having a few editorial
attitudes available from one focal character makes the narrative flow
smoother.
I might be able to pull the rest of the way out to cinematic viewpoint
in the second draft, but I have the feeling that the alternative to
the mild editorial emotions would be some lumpy exposition.
I think the viewpoint flow is all right so far,though I seem to be in
a slight rut of starting a scene or chapter with a wide angle shot,
then zooming in toward the characters and very occasionally dipping
into the one character's thoughts. Something else to be adjusted in
the next draft.
--
Elyse Grasso
http://www.data-raptors.com Computers and Technology
http://www.astraltrading.com Divination and Science Fiction
http://www.data-raptors.com/global-cgi-bin/cgiwrap/emgrasso/blosxom.cgi
WebLog
R.L.
On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:31:00 GMT+1, Tina Hall wrote:
> R.l. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>
>> There was an interesting thread a while back that began with advice
>> from an editor that third person was 'better' than first person because
>> in third person you could pull the camera out from behind the pv
>> character's eyes to show the pv character's appearance without her
>> having to look in a mirror. :-) That is, you could move the camera out
>> to look AT the character instead of always having to look through her
>> eyes. (Examples at the beginning of a lot of old Nancy Drew books. _)
>
> That would be omni, somewhere in the backround.
It could be described that way, which perhaps would be more accurate.
>
> With _tight_ third, I don't think I can mention anything from
> outside the character's head. No need for a mirror, though, the
> character likely knows what he looks like, after all.
Yes. That's also easier in third; in first person the character would need
some reason for telling those details just then. Shapiro iirc said that in
first person the character would need a mirror.:-)
I see a lot of (imo clunky) mirrors in third person also, because some
authors like to make their third so tight that the character has to
actually be thinking about her appearance at the moment it's described; and
if she's thinking about her Permanent Identifying Characteristics when
she's not even looking in a mirror, that makes her seem overly vain (or
insecure or something).
>> Here's the advice they were talking about:
>> http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/shapiro.shtml
>> SS: WHY NOT TO WRITE IN FIRST PERSON
>> SS: By Del Rey Editorial Director Shelly Shapiro
>> /snip re first person character looking in mirror/
>> SS: The author has no chance to step in. When the third person is used,
>> SS: however, the author can allow the reader to stick closely to a
>> SS: character's viewpoint, even to be inside that character's head,
>> SS: while still preserving a more critical awareness.
>
> Third person; talking about he/she and observing their thoughts as
> well as surroundings, isn't the same as tight third; showing the
> world only from their perspective as if sitting in their head.
There's a continuum, from 'third with omni narrator' down to 'third tightly
locked into one character's immediate sensations and thoughts etc.'
> With third person, you've got a narrator. With tight third, I feel
> there isn't a narrator. There certainly isn't in my stories, no one
> is "telling" it. You're just sort of there.
That may be what a lot of people mean by 'tight third', in theory. However,
aiui, Shapiro's point is that in what's called 'tight third' a little
outside perspective can be given without it seeming like an 'author
stepping in.'
/snip/
>>> I was thrown off by past things that the pv character would
>>> NOT be thinking about.
>
>> Mm. Like in an opening:
>
>> -----------
>> Marcy stood in the shady veranda, peering down the dusty road, tensely
>> wondering whose car was approaching. She was oblivious to the chickens
>> pecking her ragged shoelaces, the baby on the doorstep about to swallow
>> a stinging lizard, and the banjo music from inside the old house which
>> hadn't been painted since old Financier Macallister jumped out the
>> turret window in 1929.
>
> That's ok in tight third if she knows that she's ignoring all that.
> But 'oblivious' sort of prevents that option, so while third person,
> it's not tight third.
Perhaps not strictly, but it does get done in the sort of thing that's
often called 'tight third.' Or you might say, this story begins with a
paragraph with some omni in it, then settles into tight third for the rest
of the story (if it does).
R.L.
R.L.
> playfu...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
>> comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
>> off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
>> were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
>> 3rd person as well as omniscient.)
Yes.
>> Obviously, this trend is not that
>> common any more.
I'm not so sure of that, and I wouldn't be quick to throw it out with the
bathwater if it's what comes natural to you.
>> And not liked too much in crit groups unless it is
>> true omniscient.
Pfui on crit groups, unless they're actually selling the sort of stuff you
WANT to write, to the markets you want to sell to.
> Over in the dark matter universe of the "literary" novel, they call that
> a metafictional technique. It doesn't seem to fly very well here in our
> ghetto. I mean that literally, the gatekeepers in the SF publishing
> houses don't seem to want it either.
Mm. An omni narrator's voice with its own personality may be one thing, and
stuff from outside the pv character may be another. There's a lot of color
in the narration of Discworld, but I don't exactly see a Narrator standing
in front of the action. Certainly not in HIS DARK MATERIALS which is
certainly omni. Nor -- a nextdoor ghetto -- Emma Lathan's Thatcher
whodunnits. Nor some Niven, much.
R.L.
R.L.
/snip/
> How are things changed if these are declared without "Jon thought?
See example below.
> The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
>/snip/
> "Third person ('he') is most frequently used because it can be both
> intimate and detached at the same time." Ok this I don't get. I
> understand how it can be intimate in the sense that everything is told
> from the POV character's perspective but I don't understand what he
> means by detached.
In my example below, I think the last sentence about Petunia would be
called 'detached'. It's describing something she isn't even conscious of.
/snip/
> Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
>
> Card wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Ender's Game. His
> book on writing drives me a little batty. He talks about distance in
> much the way Renni Browne and Dave King do, calling it light-
> penetration versus deep penetration. Basically, it comes down to the
> difference between using things like "What a terrible dress, he
> thought" instead of "What a terrible dress!" This is more than a
> little confusing to me.
>
> Card says that the can describe the action like that of a smile from
> the outside rather from inside when he uses distancing items like "he
> thought" or "he knew."
I'm surprised Nicky/Nicola hasn't posted about this; she must be offline.
She talks a lot about 'distancing' (tho I don't recall her using the term
'penetration'). There have been some good threads about things like 'he
thought' and 'he knew' creating more distance than just giving the result
of the thought (as in, {He tried not to stare at her terrible dress.} )
'He thought' and 'he knew' etc are useful for showing the reader whose pv
we're coming into. But once in, to go deeper, one usually leaves out the
'he thought' and just sort of takes that character's view as truth, without
question or disclaimer.
The following is probably too condensed for the Headhopper Police, but it
shows a progression of 'penetration' in and out again.
-----------------
But not everyone at Petunia's party was having such a good time. Paul, the
dress designer, who had driven to the country to get away from London
fashions, was beginning to think he hadn't driven far enough. Even here
were wannabee models throwing themselves at him, wearing things that looked
like his rivals' worst samples. And here came his old girlfriend Sally in
another terrible dress, the worst of all. Neon threads among the nylon! The
hell with this party! Time to go home. Pushing himself through the crowd,
Paul made for the exit. He'd send regrets tomorrow, he decided.
Petunia, watching from the balcony, wondered what was the matter with Paul.
A nice party, girls dressed fashionably -- what more could the fellow want?
He must have had too much to drink, or something. She hurried downstairs
after him, with a cup of hot coffee. He'd better not drive in that
condition! Outside she looked round for Paul but was only in time to hear
his /car/ engine roaring away. Too late! Well, there were more fish in the
sea, she thought as she went back in, sipping the coffee herself and
looking round for new prey, and in a few minutes had forgotten the whole
incident.
----------------
/snip/
> We then stay close in for the remaining scenes as well until we see
> the dragon doing something Halder can't see. It completely works.
> Dunno I guess the caldera second paragraph could be stronger from the
> mage's perspective but basically we have a transition from very broad
> to he thoughts to very close. Then at the end we pull back to see
> the dragon doing something. I wondering if the key here is that
> limited omniscient can move from out to in and out again but only at
> the beginnings and ends of stories.
Omni, limited or not, can do a lot more than that. There are a lot of good
pov shifts of all kinds in the early MOSSFLOWER series books.
R.L.
>>Having read and studied many classics where the narrator puts his
>>comments in here and there or has his own voice, I guess that threw me
>>off a bit. I thought it was common to interject your color as if you
>>were telling a story to a friend. (I'm pretty sure this was done in
>>3rd person as well as omniscient.)
Darrin (?), if you've got a copy of your story that does put in the color
as if you were telling it to a friend, I'd be very interested in seeing it;
my email below works.
R.L.
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:21:55 -0800, "R.L."
> <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
> <news:1sqliitdu134w.6k6kz47bbqx5$.d...@40tude.net> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> [...]
>
>> But some good books begin in a tight third to get the
>> reader's interest, then zoom out a bit. The opening of
>> THE GOLDEN COMPASS is very skillful, it begins with an
>> exciting event that can be read as tight third, but there
>> are hints of a wider view.
>
> It can be read as a rather distant third or as omni.
Since the terms are not standardized (and it's all a continuum anyway), the
passage could be described in several ways. And read in several ways; you
pays your money and you takes your choice.
Jonathan L Cunningham
> Yes, 'tight third' gets honoured in the breeches. :-)
Interesting image ...
I'm not sure *exactly* what it means, but it's probably erotica of some
description.
And what happens if there is a breach in the breeches?
Jonathan
Paul Clarke
wrote:
> "He shouldered his favorite bat, carved from a lightning-struck
> tree and lovingly hand-polished, and set out for the cricket
> field."
>
> I don't think the character has to be thinking about the
> lightning-struck tree at this exact moment, as long as it's something
> he does know and would think about in the context of his bat. (It's
> no good if he doesn't know at all.)
>
> You can do a more extreme form of tight-third, almost first
> person with pronouns changed, that can't digress this much; but
> it's not required.
It's interesting that you describe the more extreme form as "first
person with pronouns changed", because I think you're example sounds
fine in first person:
"I shouldered my favourite bat, carved from a lightning-struck tree
and lovingly hand-polished, and set out for the cricket field."
It does feel more of a retrospective than a stream of consciousness
though - maybe that's harder to do in a really tight third because
there's no obvious candidate for the person doing the retrospecting
(OK, that probably isn't a word).
Jonathan L Cunningham
(snip)
> The following is probably too condensed for the Headhopper Police, but it
> shows a progression of 'penetration' in and out again.
>
> -----------------
> But not everyone at Petunia's party was having such a good time. Paul, the
> dress designer, who had driven to the country to get away from London
> fashions, was beginning to think he hadn't driven far enough. Even here
> were wannabee models throwing themselves at him, wearing things that looked
> like his rivals' worst samples. And here came his old girlfriend Sally in
> another terrible dress, the worst of all. Neon threads among the nylon! The
> hell with this party! Time to go home. Pushing himself through the crowd,
> Paul made for the exit. He'd send regrets tomorrow, he decided.
>
> Petunia, watching from the balcony, wondered what was the matter with Paul.
> A nice party, girls dressed fashionably -- what more could the fellow want?
> He must have had too much to drink, or something. She hurried downstairs
> after him, with a cup of hot coffee. He'd better not drive in that
> condition! Outside she looked round for Paul but was only in time to hear
> his /car/ engine roaring away. Too late! Well, there were more fish in the
> sea, she thought as she went back in, sipping the coffee herself and
> looking round for new prey, and in a few minutes had forgotten the whole
> incident.
> ----------------
I wouldn't say it was a progression of in and out again.
ISTM that both paragraphs have the same structure. The first has a sort
of omni narrator comment, or maybe a distant camera-eye shot of the
whole party (if it's obvious to an observer that not everyone is having
a good time - otherwise we need the omni narrator viewpoint). Then we
zoom in to Paul: "Time to go home" is inside his head.
Then we cut back to the "whole party" viewpoint, but this time we zoom
in to Petunia immediately. It's the "watching from the balcony" that
makes me feel we are back where we started. Without it, we have cut
straight to Petunia's thoughts. Yes, it *could* be Petunia being
conscious of watching from the balcony, so the whole paragraph could be
Petunia's POV, but taken with the first paragraph, I think it's a jump
back out, and it's the omni narrator telling us that she's wondering,
which is the cue for the instantaneous zoom into her thoughts in the
next sentence. They are definitely Petunia's thoughts, since the omni
narrator knows what Paul wants.
I'm puzzled why "car" was emphasised in the second paragraph. What other
sorts of engine did Paul have that might have been roaring away?
Jonathan
Can't read about a character called Petunia without thinking of the
anagram: "Come on Petunia" = "Once upon a time".
Brian M. Scott
<see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
<news:12bnq0vnvo04s.139gnxffc1fio$.d...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:37:31 -0500, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:21:55 -0800, "R.L."
>> <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
>> <news:1sqliitdu134w.6k6kz47bbqx5$.d...@40tude.net> in
>> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>> [...]
>>> But some good books begin in a tight third to get the
>>> reader's interest, then zoom out a bit. The opening of
>>> THE GOLDEN COMPASS is very skillful, it begins with an
>>> exciting event that can be read as tight third, but there
>>> are hints of a wider view.
>> It can be read as a rather distant third or as omni.
> Since the terms are not standardized (and it's all a
> continuum anyway), the passage could be described in
> several ways.
Which does not change the fact that it is not at all at the
tight end of the third person continuum even if read as
belonging to that continuum.
[...]
Brian
R.L.
Yes. Each paragraph starts with out/omni, goes in with think/wondered, to
some unattributed thoughts, then comes back out.
> The first has a sort
> of omni narrator comment, or maybe a distant camera-eye shot of the
> whole party (if it's obvious to an observer that not everyone is having
> a good time - otherwise we need the omni narrator viewpoint). Then we
> zoom in to Paul: "Time to go home" is inside his head.
>
> Then we cut back to the "whole party" viewpoint, but this time we zoom
> in to Petunia immediately. It's the "watching from the balcony" that
> makes me feel we are back where we started.
Yes. We've gone back out to a view of the whole party. The structure
repeats.
> Without it, we have cut
> straight to Petunia's thoughts. Yes, it *could* be Petunia being
> conscious of watching from the balcony, so the whole paragraph could be
> Petunia's POV, but taken with the first paragraph, I think it's a jump
> back out, and it's the omni narrator telling us that she's wondering,
> which is the cue for the instantaneous zoom into her thoughts in the
> next sentence. They are definitely Petunia's thoughts, since the omni
> narrator knows what Paul wants.
>
> I'm puzzled why "car" was emphasised in the second paragraph.
Sorry, that's my flag for /tweak this later/. I thought it should really
have the make of the car but was too lazy to guess at one. Something hard
to spell, with some double consonants, at least.
Tina Hall
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:31:00 GMT+1, Tina Hall wrote:
>> R.l. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> Yes, 'tight third' gets honoured in the breeches. :-)
?
>> With _tight_ third, I don't think I can mention anything from
>> outside the character's head. No need for a mirror, though, the
>> character likely knows what he looks like, after all.
> Yes. That's also easier in third; in first person the character would
> need some reason for telling those details just then.
In tight third, the character needs that, too. It's only as things
are from his perspective, after all. It's like first person except
it describes to you what's in them, rather than someone talking
about themselves.
Personally, I don't much like first person, as it's more distant,
someone telling me what they did rather than me seeing it through
their eyes. Tight third also offers multiple tight third; more than
one viewpoint character.
> Shapiro iirc said that in first person the character would need a
> mirror.:-)
I don't think that's true. They likely know what they look like,
after all. All they need is a reason to think about their
appearance. They could know whether they stand out, blend in, can
mention whether they're comfortable, compare to something,... I
think something could be found to match the character's character if
you really want to give a description.
(I would object to much more than height, colouring, and state of
clothing if it matters, anyway. Screw 'straight nose, wide mouth,
large eyes,... <complete design of dress>'. :) )
> I see a lot of (imo clunky) mirrors in third person also, because some
> authors like to make their third so tight that the character has to
> actually be thinking about her appearance at the moment it's described;
Yep.
> and if she's thinking about her Permanent Identifying Characteristics
> when she's not even looking in a mirror, that makes her seem overly
> vain (or insecure or something).
If they've got a reason for that, it's ok. Not if it's artificial
and out of character.
>>> Here's the advice they were talking about:
>>> http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/shapiro.shtml
>>> SS: WHY NOT TO WRITE IN FIRST PERSON
>>> SS: By Del Rey Editorial Director Shelly Shapiro
>>> /snip re first person character looking in mirror/
>>> SS: The author has no chance to step in. When the third person is
>>> used, SS: however, the author can allow the reader to stick closely
>>> to a SS: character's viewpoint, even to be inside that character's
>>> head, SS: while still preserving a more critical awareness.
>>
>> Third person; talking about he/she and observing their thoughts as
>> well as surroundings, isn't the same as tight third; showing the
>> world only from their perspective as if sitting in their head.
> There's a continuum, from 'third with omni narrator' down to 'third
> tightly locked into one character's immediate sensations and thoughts
> etc.'
Yes, I just object to talking as if 'third person' meant 'tight
third' The quoted person up there clearly talks about third person.
>> With third person, you've got a narrator. With tight third, I feel
>> there isn't a narrator. There certainly isn't in my stories, no one
>> is "telling" it. You're just sort of there.
> That may be what a lot of people mean by 'tight third', in theory.
> However, aiui, Shapiro's point is that in what's called 'tight third' a
> little outside perspective can be given without it seeming like an
> 'author stepping in.'
He isn't talking about tight third in the quote, he's talking about
third person.
>>> Marcy stood in the shady veranda, peering down the dusty road,
>>> tensely wondering whose car was approaching. She was oblivious to the
>>> chickens pecking her ragged shoelaces, the baby on the doorstep about
>>> to swallow a stinging lizard, and the banjo music from inside the old
>>> house which hadn't been painted since old Financier Macallister
>>> jumped out the turret window in 1929.
>>
>> That's ok in tight third if she knows that she's ignoring all that.
>> But 'oblivious' sort of prevents that option, so while third person,
>> it's not tight third.
> Perhaps not strictly, but it does get done in the sort of thing that's
> often called 'tight third.'
That people label it wrongly isn't my problem. I only object to
spreading it. To communicate, talking about it, it's better when
people use the same terms for the same things. Otherwise there's
only confusion for those who wish the terms defined or want
clarification on something. (I am talking about labelling writing
styles, not regulating them.)
_Tight_ third is a very apt name for something very close to the
character. You could call it Inside Third, if you like, and you
think that's a clearer description of it, but I am doubtful whether
we really need another term. (The advantage of inside third would be
that you can then have outside third as well. Inside and outside
refering to whether you're in the character's head or just
describing him from outside|omni.)
Third person is straigth third person, not saying anything about
distance itself, as it only literally says talking in the form of
'he/she/it'.
(Random side-comment: Doing tight third for a person who is an 'it'
is interesting. <g>)
Zeborah
Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
successful a dress designer Paul is.
Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Jo Walton
>
> It's interesting that you describe the more extreme form as "first
> person with pronouns changed", because I think you're example sounds
> fine in first person:
>
> "I shouldered my favourite bat, carved from a lightning-struck tree
> and lovingly hand-polished, and set out for the cricket field."
>
> It does feel more of a retrospective than a stream of consciousness
> though - maybe that's harder to do in a really tight third because
> there's no obvious candidate for the person doing the retrospecting
> (OK, that probably isn't a word).
In first, if the important thing to convey to the reader is "the bat was
made out of a lightning-struck tree" you can just tell them "I shouldered
my favourite bat. What I especially loved about it was that it was made
out of a lightning-struck tree. Some cricketers say this is lucky, but
I've never been superstitious, what I liked was the way..."
That's why first is easy, and omni is easy, because you can just out and
out tell things, as long as the POV character knows them. Of course, if
they don't know them you can't get them in to save your life -- that's why
first is hard.
I'm writing another thing that alternates first and third at the moment,
which naturally measns I get all the disadvantages of both. Advantages, I
mean! Problems, opportunities, whatever.
--
Jo
I kissed a kif at Kefk
Brian M. Scott
wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:14:54 +0000, Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
>>> I'm puzzled why "car" was emphasised in the second paragraph.
>> Sorry, that's my flag for /tweak this later/. I thought it should really
>> have the make of the car but was too lazy to guess at one. Something hard
>> to spell, with some double consonants, at least.
> Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
> criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
> vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
> expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
> successful a dress designer Paul is.
> Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
> double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
The name is about all that's still Italian: it's a French company
in Molsheim, Alsace, that's owned by Volkswagen AG. But its
Veyron is apparently the fastest, most powerful, and most
expensive street-legal production car in the world.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron_16.4>
Brian
R.L.
> R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:14:54 +0000, Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
>>
>>> I'm puzzled why "car" was emphasised in the second paragraph.
>>
>> Sorry, that's my flag for /tweak this later/. I thought it should really
>> have the make of the car but was too lazy to guess at one. Something hard
>> to spell, with some double consonants, at least.
>
> Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
> criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
> vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
> expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
> successful a dress designer Paul is.
>
> Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
> double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
Mozzarelli would be nice.
Zeborah
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:47:35 +1300, Zeborah wrote:
>
> > R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> >
> >> I thought it should really have the make of the car but was too lazy to
> >> guess at one. Something hard to spell, with some double consonants, at
> >> least.
> >
> > Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
> > criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
> > vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
> > expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
> > successful a dress designer Paul is.
> >
> > Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
> > double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
>
> Mozzarelli would be nice.
Ah, a stretch car!
nyra
Zastava?
<giggle>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zastava_Skala
Or Goggomobil:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goggomobil
(the english wikipedia site is misleading)
For a nice long list of names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers
I suggest taking a closer look at a promising name, to make sure you
get the general style of car you're thinking of. For a flashy car used
in Britain, you won't do much wrong with an Aston Martin, Lotus or
Alfa Romeo.
--
's morgens: zorgen, 's avonds: min,
brengt het kruipen van de spin
nyra
>
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:47:35 +1300, Zeborah wrote:
>
> > R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:14:54 +0000, Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
> >>
> >>> I'm puzzled why "car" was emphasised in the second paragraph.
> >>
> >> Sorry, that's my flag for /tweak this later/. I thought it should really
> >> have the make of the car but was too lazy to guess at one. Something hard
> >> to spell, with some double consonants, at least.
> >
> > Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
> > criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
> > vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
> > expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
> > successful a dress designer Paul is.
> >
> > Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
> > double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
>
> Mozzarelli would be nice.
That's nicely italian. If you pester your local italian-food market,
you might even get the folks there to order and stock them.
Mozzarelli are (among others) fried mozzarella balls, produced by
Buitoni.
Julian Flood
> For a flashy car used
> in Britain, you won't do much wrong with an Aston Martin, Lotus or
> Alfa Romeo.
Flashy? Those three? I think not.
JF
ShellyS
> R.l. <see-...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> > On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:31:00 GMT+1, Tina Hall wrote:
> >> R.l. <see-...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
> > Yes, 'tight third' gets honoured in the breeches. :-)
>
> ?
>
> >> With _tight_ third, I don't think I can mention anything from
> >> outside the character's head. No need for a mirror, though, the
> >> character likely knows what he looks like, after all.
> > Yes. That's also easier in third; in first person the character would
> > need some reason for telling those details just then.
>
> In tight third, the character needs that, too. It's only as things
> are from his perspective, after all. It's like first person except
> it describes to you what's in them, rather than someone talking
> about themselves.
>
> Personally, I don't much like first person, as it's more distant,
> someone telling me what they did rather than me seeing it through
> their eyes. Tight third also offers multiple tight third; more than
> one viewpoint character.
>
But you can still mix it up, alternate first person with tight third.
John Steakley's Armor, as I recall, had a first person and third
person pov. Many non-science fiction books do that. I just finished
one (Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks) that alternated
multiple first person povs.
(snip)
-- Shelly
nyra
Not?
Blast. Well, i guess it's my attitude towards cars speaking. Those
three are the most expensive/fast looking i'd dare get close to[1].
You'd have to anasthesise me to have a chance of getting me into a
Ferrari or Bugatti.
[1] although a Lotus would already be pushing it.
Julian Flood
>>> For a flashy car used
>>> in Britain, you won't do much wrong with an Aston Martin, Lotus or
>>> Alfa Romeo.
>> Flashy? Those three? I think not.
>
> Not?
> Blast. Well, i guess it's my attitude towards cars speaking. Those
> three are the most expensive/fast looking i'd dare get close to[1].
> You'd have to anasthesise me to have a chance of getting me into a
> Ferrari or Bugatti.
You know my theory of global warming? I have the occasional daydream
where grateful car companies, relieved at being let off the hook, take
me on tours round their factories and let me take my pick. I think
_that_ Lotus, in yellow of course, a red Jaguar and a silver Aston. A
small 4 by 4, nothing too big, and a nice saloon, say a big BMW.
Then I go and drive the Transit....
JF
Tina Hall
> Tina_H...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote:
>> Personally, I don't much like first person, as it's more distant,
>> someone telling me what they did rather than me seeing it through
>> their eyes. Tight third also offers multiple tight third; more than
>> one viewpoint character.
> But you can still mix it up, alternate first person with tight third.
> John Steakley's Armor, as I recall, had a first person and third
> person pov. Many non-science fiction books do that. I just finished
> one (Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks) that alternated
> multiple first person povs.
:)
For some it might be interesting that that style is possible (and
sellable). For me, it's not multiple tight third, and I don't like
first person; someone distant telling the events rather than me
being there, watching closely. More of them would be even worse. :)
Though with at least one story my memory converted the first person
PoV to tight third. I had to look into the book to check. (Where you
could consider the effort of writing first person as wasted in my
case.) But at present, just looking at a piece of text in first
person, it jarrs, and I'd rather not read it.
Tina Hall
> Paul Clarke <paul....@eu.citrix.com> wrote:
>> It's interesting that you describe the more extreme form as "first
>> person with pronouns changed", because I think you're example sounds
>> fine in first person:
>>
>> "I shouldered my favourite bat, carved from a lightning-struck tree
>> and lovingly hand-polished, and set out for the cricket field."
>>
>> It does feel more of a retrospective than a stream of consciousness
>> though - maybe that's harder to do in a really tight third because
>> there's no obvious candidate for the person doing the retrospecting
>> (OK, that probably isn't a word).
> In first, if the important thing to convey to the reader is "the bat
> was made out of a lightning-struck tree" you can just tell them "I
> shouldered my favourite bat. What I especially loved about it was that
> it was made out of a lightning-struck tree. Some cricketers say this is
> lucky, but I've never been superstitious, what I liked was the way..."
The same can be done in tight third. Just replace the 'I's with
'he's, and 'my' with 'his'. And as added benefit you get it told as
their feelings rather than just being told.
> That's why first is easy, and omni is easy, because you can just out
> and out tell things, as long as the POV character knows them. Of
> course, if they don't know them you can't get them in to save your life
> -- that's why first is hard.
The same would count for tight third, but I wouldn't call it hard,
only not always presenting an easy solution.
But finding reasons to think about something isn't that difficult
for me, merely making it _interesting_ and good to read is in
places. (I've got some bad cases of rambling on with backround
information.)
Tim S
> R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:47:35 +1300, Zeborah wrote:
>>
>>> R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I thought it should really have the make of the car but was too lazy to
>>>> guess at one. Something hard to spell, with some double consonants, at
>>>> least.
>>> Bugatti. No idea if that's how it's spelt so it fits your first
>>> criterion, though it may not in the event fit the second. Judging from
>>> vague recollections of Top Gear, it's on the upper end of fast and
>>> expensive, with umptish brake horsepower. Probably depends how
>>> successful a dress designer Paul is.
>>>
>>> Nissan has a double consonant, but I don't think that's the kind of
>>> double-consonant you mean. You want something Italian, I should think.
>> Mozzarelli would be nice.
>
> Ah, a stretch car!
I'll drink a glass of limonade to that!
Tim
R.L.
> Jo Walton <j...@localhost.localdomain> wrote:
/snip/
>> That's why first is easy, and omni is easy, because you can just out
>> and out tell things, as long as the POV character knows them. Of
>> course, if they don't know them you can't get them in to save your life
>> -- that's why first is hard.
Unless you give the first person narrator full hindsight ... like an old
woman writing her memoirs....
> The same would count for tight third, but I wouldn't call it hard,
> only not always presenting an easy solution.
>
> But finding reasons to think about something isn't that difficult
> for me, merely making it _interesting_ and good to read is in
> places. (I've got some bad cases of rambling on with backround
> information.)
Er, yes. :-) Obviously tight third is right for your story, but this
rambling on would be easier to make interesting in first person, where the
narrator could be putting it in a clever or opinionated or colorful way.
(So it wouldn't have to be moved somewhere else etc.)
Tina Hall
[telling not immediate things in first person or tight third]
>> But finding reasons to think about something isn't that difficult
>> for me, merely making it _interesting_ and good to read is in
>> places. (I've got some bad cases of rambling on with backround
>> information.)
> Er, yes. :-) Obviously tight third is right for your story, but this
> rambling on would be easier to make interesting in first person,
Not for me. Reading, it would distance me from the story. Writing, I
show what I see, it's not me telling it to a reader, nor is a
character telling it to a reader.
> where the narrator could be putting it in a clever or opinionated
> or colorful way. (So it wouldn't have to be moved somewhere else
> etc.)
The only one I can think of who does that is Terry Pratchett,
Discworld. But that does feel different, not drawing one in as much.
It's not a way I want to write, wanting characters (and to some
extend an interesting world) with the rest (like plot) just
decoration (in the backround).
Irina Rempt
> I'm writing another thing that alternates first and third at the moment,
> which naturally measns I get all the disadvantages of both. Advantages,
> I mean! Problems, opportunities, whatever.
Oh yes, me too. It doesn't help that the first-person person and one of
the third-person people are mother and daughter, and very alike, and
their voices come out eerily similar (unless I take active steps to
disambiguate them, and then either or both come[s] out stilted).
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 23-Feb-2007
Bill Swears
great car name, complex and multisyllabic, and carry with it hints of
what is to come.
Bill
--
Ourdebate.com lifts free debate between writers and dilutes it with ads.
rec.arts.sf.composition is a USENET group, and can be accessed for free.
Ourdebate.com therefore sucks (the life from discourse),
and dribbles (deceit when integrity would have worked just as well).
Daniel R. Reitman
>If I recall correctly, that's the one in which Card points out a major
>problem with Star Wars. George Lucas made the mistake of building up
>the villain too much, making him too interesting. As a result, Darth
>Vader became THE protagonist -- which obviously wasn't his intention.
>. . . .
It did help that James Earl Jones is a much better actor than Mark
Hamill.
Dan, ad nauseam
Bill Swears
>
> It did help that James Earl Jones is a much better actor than Mark
> Hamill.
I think I've heard that Hamill learned to act somewhat later. He was
pretty young when he started the Star Wars trilogy. I'm still willing
to accept that James Earl Jones is the better actor, but if you had
compared Jones to Ian McKellen, I'd take you seriously. I really like
James Earl Jones.
b_cro...@hotmail.com
> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 02:40:34 -0800, "R.L."
> <news:12bnq0vnvo04s.139gnxffc1fio$.d...@40tude.net> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> > On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:37:31 -0500, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> >> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:21:55 -0800, "R.L."
> >> <news:1sqliitdu134w.6k6kz47bbqx5$.d...@40tude.net> in
> >> rec.arts.sf.composition:
> >> [...]
> >>> But some good books begin in a tight third to get the
> >>> reader's interest, then zoom out a bit. The opening of
> >>> exciting event that can be read as tight third, but there
> >>> are hints of a wider view.
> >> It can be read as a rather distant third or as omni.
> > Since the terms are not standardized (and it's all a
> > continuum anyway), the passage could be described in
> > several ways.
>
> Which does not change the fact that it is not at all at the
> tight end of the third person continuum even if read as
> belonging to that continuum.
>
> [...]
>
> Brian
It is kind of an odd, interesting example. You get to the end
of the second chapter before there's any hint at all that it's
not straight third person, with a POV limited to Lyra.
Now I could be wrong, because it was
years ago when I read it, and I've only reread the first couple
of chapters now, but it doesn't seem to me like omni at all.
One way to tell something is omni is that it tells you things
that no person could possibly have observed. That doesn't seem
to happen here, although it may happen later in the book in
parts I don't remember. It always seems very tightly connected
to *some* person's POV, but it just happens to have a quick shift
in POV in one place, marked by ***. Do we ever get the thoughts of
the daemon's revealed to us directly, or does their POV never occur?
Brian M. Scott
wrote in
<news:1172959817....@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Feb 27, 8:27 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
[...]
[_The Golden Compass_]
>> Which does not change the fact that it is not at all at the
>> tight end of the third person continuum even if read as
>> belonging to that continuum.
> It is kind of an odd, interesting example. You get to the end
> of the second chapter before there's any hint at all that it's
> not straight third person, with a POV limited to Lyra.
I don't agree. Up to that point one can't tell whether it's
a very loose 3rd person PoV based on Lyra or whether it's
omni that just happens up to that point to be following
Lyra. How one reads it is, I think, largely a function of
one's expectations and internal defaults. I default to
omni.
[...]
Brian
R.L.
> On 3 Mar 2007 14:10:20 -0800, <b_cro...@hotmail.com>
> wrote in
> <news:1172959817....@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
>> On Feb 27, 8:27 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> [_The Golden Compass_]
>
>>> Which does not change the fact that it is not at all at the
>>> tight end of the third person continuum even if read as
>>> belonging to that continuum.
I wish the term 'tight third' were more often used to mean only a segment
of the continuun near the tight end. Unfortunately many people put that
label somewhere near the omni end; anything less than full old-fashioned
lecturing narrator is 'tight third' to them, and that's become a common
usage.
>> It is kind of an odd, interesting example. You get to the end
>> of the second chapter before there's any hint at all that it's
>> not straight third person, with a POV limited to Lyra.
>
> I don't agree. Up to that point one can't tell whether it's
> a very loose 3rd person PoV based on Lyra or whether it's
> omni that just happens up to that point to be following
> Lyra.
Yes -- very skillful. There's a difference in the voice, in what's
mentioned.... Hm, tho it might be taken as the 'camera moving out a little'
per Shapiro.
> How one reads it is, I think, largely a function of
> one's expectations and internal defaults. I default to
> omni.
Me too. You pays your money and you takes your choice (in that opening
scene, anyway).