Third Person Tight
Jim Cannon
The current WIP is written in fairly tight third person. I switch
around among important viewpoint characters so that I can relate
different aspects of the story as it progresses, but one thing I have
not done yet is climbed inside one of the antagonist's heads.
My initial instinct is to shy away from doing that; it leaves the
villains and their motives slightly more inscrutable, and since I'm
going for a fantasy/horror vibe, I do want to keep the bad guys a bit
obtuse. That means, of course, that the protaganists sort of bumble
around trying to figure out what the bad guys are up to, as they have
no more of an idea of what's really going on than the reader does.
And that's the problem. Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
Jim Cannon
Elizabeth Shack
>The current WIP is written in fairly tight third person. I switch
>around among important viewpoint characters so that I can relate
>different aspects of the story as it progresses, but one thing I have
>not done yet is climbed inside one of the antagonist's heads.
>
>[snip]
>And that's the problem. Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
>them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
>the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
>chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
Which reader? This reader prefers not to know any more about the bad
guys than the characters do. It depends on what's right for your
story.
--
Elizabeth Shack
eas...@earthlink.net
Patricia C. Wrede
can...@my-deja.com (Jim Cannon) writes:
>And that's the problem. Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
>them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
>the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
>chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
Trust your instincts. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. You probably
don't *need* the reader to know any more than the protagonist(s) do. (And
actually, the reader *is* going to know more than any one individual main
character already, because you've got several viewpoints.) OTOH, if you're
starting to think maybe you *do* want to do this, but you can't figure out
how...
What you're currently doing sounds like one of two things: a standard
multiple-viewpoint book (i.e., each individual scene is from the viewpoint of
one character, usually in tight-third, but who the viewpoint character is
varies from scene to scene), or an omniscient viewpoint that frequently zooms
in to focus on one particular character's thoughts and actions.
If you are doing a multiple-viewpoint book, then one of your possible choices
(besides picking one or more viewpoint characters who're on the villain's side
and just using them) is to provide occasional "villain scenes" using a
*camera-eye* third-person -- you show the villain sitting at his desk,
shuffling papers and chuckling nastily and making cryptic phone calls, but
since the camera isn't telepathic, the viewpoint never dips into his thoughts
and the reader doesn't find out *too* much about what is going on. You can
also pick a character such as one of the Evil Overlord's guards to use as a
normal tight-third alternate viewpoint for the villain scenes -- somebody who
doesn't know the whole plan and isn't likely to be told, but who is still going
to be present to see cryptic plans being laid and orders given and so on.
If it's actually an omniscient viewpoint, not multiple tight-third or multiple
first person, then all you have to do is not zoom in so far when your
omniscient narrator starts talking about the villain and what he's doing. Like
omniscient, this tends to be a bit trickier than it sounds, but a large part of
handling omniscient well seems to be getting in control of your narrative
distance and focus, so you're probably going to have to learn how to do it
sooner or later anyway.
If you just want very occasional "teasers," not enough to justify adding
another viewpoint (if you're doing multiple), then you could also go with brief
"interludes" every couple of chapters, or between sections (if you have that
kind of structure). This tends to work best if the book has an episodic
structure that you want to emphasize, since throwing in a short bit labeled
"interlude" will break the narrative flow from one chapter to the next and
separate the book into parts, even if you don't label the parts as separate
sections.
Patricia C. Wrede
Miche Doherty
> The current WIP is written in fairly tight third person. I switch
> around among important viewpoint characters so that I can relate
> different aspects of the story as it progresses, but one thing I have
> not done yet is climbed inside one of the antagonist's heads.
>
> My initial instinct is to shy away from doing that; it leaves the
> villains and their motives slightly more inscrutable, and since I'm
> going for a fantasy/horror vibe, I do want to keep the bad guys a bit
> obtuse. That means, of course, that the protaganists sort of bumble
> around trying to figure out what the bad guys are up to, as they have
> no more of an idea of what's really going on than the reader does.
> And that's the problem.
Well, it means the reader has no more of an idea of what's really going
on than the protags do. Not necessarily a problem.
(Do you really mean obtuse?)
> Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
> them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
> the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
> chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
Considering the number of successful stories (including those in first
throughout) where the reader only knows what the protag(s) know(s), and
the number that let the reader in on the antagonists' plans, I don't
think either is "better".
I might feel shortchanged if I *never* found out what the villains had
been up to, but not if I only found out when the other characters did.
Why not go with your instinct, unless and until you feel you want the
reader to watch in horror as the protagonists do something Gentle Reader
knows is doomed to fail.
Miche.
--
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had
a very low standard of it in his mind.
- Hazlitt.
Geoff Wedig
This is what I'm doing in the WIP. Or rather, there are four viewpoints (at
present): Two protags, two antags. For the antags, one is third, one is
camera. This is because the latter is really not a single antagonist, but
an organization (in fact, the other antagonist is also controlled by an
organization, but the book happens where this antagonist is cut off from the
organization through most of it, so he's the only one we ever see)
So far, it works, but it's a bit tricky. I'm ok with the third person (the
antagonist is really easy to write, too easy, in some ways), but I'm not
certain the camera works, yet. It's not something I like doing, feels like
watching a movie (thus the moniker, of course). Using good,
non-visual/auditory details helps a lot, I've found (thus divorcing things
from the movie motif somewhat), but it still feels a little distant, more
distant than I'm yet comfortable with.
You can
> also pick a character such as one of the Evil Overlord's guards to use as a
> normal tight-third alternate viewpoint for the villain scenes -- somebody who
> doesn't know the whole plan and isn't likely to be told, but who is still going
> to be present to see cryptic plans being laid and orders given and so on.
This works extremely well for hypercompetent protags too. Watson comes to
ming....
Geoff
Sylvia Li
>
> This works extremely well for hypercompetent protags too. Watson comes to
> ming....
... and says, "Tell you what, O Merciless One, I'll fucking *help* you
defeat Holmes and attain world domination, if only you will smash that
goddamn violin!"
--
Sylvia Li
Geoff Wedig
Wonderful little performance I saw at a SF-con, back in the 80's, in which
Watson, aided by several acomplices, manages to make Holmes go totally
bonkers by copious use of phrases like "Holmes, that's amazing, how did you
know that?" to comments like "Good morning," from Holmes. Of course, any
time Holmes came up with anything truely 'amazing' it was "Oh, of course,
why are you bothering us with obvious stuff like that?"
I used to have an audio tape of the thing, but I lent it to someone way
back, and never got it back. *sigh*
Geoff
Jim Cannon
> In article <8ed52049.02041...@posting.google.com>,
> can...@my-deja.com (Jim Cannon) writes:
>
> >And that's the problem. Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
> >them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
> >the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
> >chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
>
> Trust your instincts. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. You probably
> don't *need* the reader to know any more than the protagonist(s) do. (And
> actually, the reader *is* going to know more than any one individual main
> character already, because you've got several viewpoints.) OTOH, if you're
> starting to think maybe you *do* want to do this, but you can't figure out
> how...
It's actually something I normally do, and the lack of it in the
current work is like an itch at the back of my head.
I think I will ignore it, though. I think you're right; the reader
doesn't need to see what the villains are up to, and so long as it
isn't necessary, it will feel like padding if I add it in just to make
myself feel better.
Thanks.
Jim Cannon
Jim Cannon
> Jim Cannon <can...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > The current WIP is written in fairly tight third person. I switch
> > around among important viewpoint characters so that I can relate
> > different aspects of the story as it progresses, but one thing I have
> > not done yet is climbed inside one of the antagonist's heads.
> >
> > My initial instinct is to shy away from doing that; it leaves the
> > villains and their motives slightly more inscrutable, and since I'm
> > going for a fantasy/horror vibe, I do want to keep the bad guys a bit
> > obtuse. That means, of course, that the protaganists sort of bumble
> > around trying to figure out what the bad guys are up to, as they have
> > no more of an idea of what's really going on than the reader does.
> > And that's the problem.
>
> Well, it means the reader has no more of an idea of what's really going
> on than the protags do. Not necessarily a problem.
>
> (Do you really mean obtuse?)
I think I do. "Obscure" might have been a better word choice.
> > Am I shortchanging the reader by only letting
> > them see what the characters see? Should I pull back a bit and widen
> > the scope slightly? Or can I reasonably assume that surprises and
> > chills are just as rewarding as full disclosure?
>
> Considering the number of successful stories (including those in first
> throughout) where the reader only knows what the protag(s) know(s), and
> the number that let the reader in on the antagonists' plans, I don't
> think either is "better".
I don't know from "better," myself. The style I'm using now is
basically first person with the serial numbers filed off, with "he" or
"she" substituted for "I" so that I can pull off the multiple
viewpoints without feeling like a cheat (or confusing anyone). I guess
I'm just more used to using omniscient, and being able to peek in on
the "other team" from time to time.
At this stage, though, if I added the villain POV, it would feel like
padding.
> I might feel shortchanged if I *never* found out what the villains had
> been up to, but not if I only found out when the other characters did.
>
> Why not go with your instinct, unless and until you feel you want the
> reader to watch in horror as the protagonists do something Gentle Reader
> knows is doomed to fail.
I believe I *will* keep going as I have been. I think I just needed
some reassurance that I was on the right path. Thanks.
Jim Cannon
Jim Cannon
masses...
Good point. I guess I'm so used to doing things the one way (bouncing
back and forth between protaganists and antagonists) that I started to
doubt my current way of doing things. I feel better about sticking
with the current style, now.
Thanks.
Jim Cannon
Patricia C. Wrede
>pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) didst say unto the masses...
>> Trust your instincts. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. You probably
>> don't *need* the reader to know any more than the protagonist(s) do. (And
>> actually, the reader *is* going to know more than any one individual main
>> character already, because you've got several viewpoints.) OTOH, if you're
>> starting to think maybe you *do* want to do this, but you can't figure out
>> how...
>
>It's actually something I normally do, and the lack of it in the
>current work is like an itch at the back of my head.
Why did you decide to write the current work this way, without that usual
jump-to-what-the-villain-is-doing?
>I think I will ignore it, though.
This is probably your best bet. If showing the villain is something you
normally do, then the "itch" may very well be coming more from the fact that
you're working outside your comfort zone than from any actual problem with the
story. And you are probably going to have a hard time distinguishing the one
from the other until after it's finished. You can always go back and put in
some scenes, if they seem needed once you have the whole thing there, but
you'll have a lot harder time learning how to write without needing those
scenes if you always give in and put 'em in.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jim Cannon
> In article <8ed52049.02041...@posting.google.com>,
> can...@my-deja.com (Jim Cannon) writes:
>
> >pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) didst say unto the masses...
>
> >> Trust your instincts. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. You probably
> >> don't *need* the reader to know any more than the protagonist(s) do. (And
> >> actually, the reader *is* going to know more than any one individual main
> >> character already, because you've got several viewpoints.) OTOH, if you're
> >> starting to think maybe you *do* want to do this, but you can't figure out
> >> how...
> >
> >It's actually something I normally do, and the lack of it in the
> >current work is like an itch at the back of my head.
>
> Why did you decide to write the current work this way, without that usual
> jump-to-what-the-villain-is-doing?
Many reasons. From a pure design standpoint, this one is long-form,
and the previous work has been short-form (serialized, true, but with
very short chapters). In the short stories, plot is paramount, so the
need to keep the story going at all costs had me bouncing back and
forth. Here, the aim is more for characterization and a slow build up
to several revelations.
"Third person tight" has other problems for me, but it has worked out
very well so far. Having passed the halfway point, however, the plot
is kicking into high gear, and I've been tempted to use short-form
habits.
Jim Cannon
Patricia C. Wrede
I hate to tell you this, but you aren't running into a long-form-vs.-short-form
problem. You're running into a writer's-personal-habits problem.
The different types of viewpoint -- first, second, third (tight, camera, omni)
-- are none of them inherently better suited to one length or another. You,
personally, may find it easier to work with one or more of them at a particular
length, but that's a personal idiosyncracy, not anything that has to do with
the viewpoint itself. Even the most plot-heavy short story need not *require*
omniscient or multiple viewpoint to get through it.
I suspect that the real problem is one that many-many beginning writers face:
decent tight-third looked a lot harder to do than omniscient. And it's a bit
easier to do a mostly-decent, readable job of omniscient in a short story; at
novel length, all the fudges and sloppiness become more and more obvious as
things go on. So you used omni for your short stuff, but you can see that it
won't work satisfactorily for a novel, so now it's time to stretch. (You may
also be one of those rare folk for whom omniscient is their natural voice, who
do it just fine straight out of the box, but the general tone of your post and
your reluctance to commit to omni for a whole novel make me suspect not.)
What you are doing actually sounds to me like tight-third viewpoint in a
multiple-viewpoint structure (i.e., several specific viewpoint characters, each
of whom takes a turn as the tight-third viewpoint for a scene or a chapter
[turns not necessarily being in any strict order of rotation]). It's a
reasonable way to ease into doing tight-third if you're accustomed to
omniscient. I tend to prefer the total-immersion method (one viewpoint
character, period, in tight-third, for the whole book), but not everybody can
psych up for that right away, and it may also be entirely unsuitable to the
sort of story you're telling. If you're doing the sort of thing where part of
the point is for the reader to know more than any individual viewpoint
character -- for the reader to be able to see the Big Picture long before any
of the POVs can -- then your choices are basically multiple viewpoint,
omniscient viewpoint, or a really, really clueless POV character (which is
generally not terribly satisfying).
I remember teaching myself to do tight-third, and it was a bear. But if it's
any comfort, it was well worth the effort; there are a lot of characterization
techniques that are just a whole lot clearer and easier to learn (for me,
anyway) in tight-third or first-person viewpoint than they were in omni. And
structural stuff, but I'm not sure that a multiple-POV lends itself to that
sort of thing -- multiple-POV is a sufficiently complex structure all by itself
that it is plenty enough to worry about mastering without adding on other stuff
along with it.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jim Cannon
> can...@my-deja.com (Jim Cannon) writes:
>
> >Many reasons. From a pure design standpoint, this one is long-form,
> >and the previous work has been short-form (serialized, true, but with
> >very short chapters). In the short stories, plot is paramount, so the
> >need to keep the story going at all costs had me bouncing back and
> >forth. Here, the aim is more for characterization and a slow build up
> >to several revelations.
>
> >"Third person tight" has other problems for me, but it has worked out
> >very well so far. Having passed the halfway point, however, the plot
> >is kicking into high gear, and I've been tempted to use short-form
> >habits.
>
> I hate to tell you this, but you aren't running into a long-form-vs.-short-form
> problem. You're running into a writer's-personal-habits problem.
Fair enough. One of the reasons why I don't post to this forum near as
much as I'd like to is that, honestly, I don't know what I'm doing
half the time. :)
> I suspect that the real problem is one that many-many beginning writers face:
> decent tight-third looked a lot harder to do than omniscient. And it's a bit
> easier to do a mostly-decent, readable job of omniscient in a short story; at
> novel length, all the fudges and sloppiness become more and more obvious as
> things go on. So you used omni for your short stuff, but you can see that it
> won't work satisfactorily for a novel, so now it's time to stretch. (You may
> also be one of those rare folk for whom omniscient is their natural voice, who
> do it just fine straight out of the box, but the general tone of your post and
> your reluctance to commit to omni for a whole novel make me suspect not.)
I didn't decide to do it because I thought it would be harder; I don't
mind stretching my muscles, but I never set out to do things the
difficult way either. It's much more a case of, "this is how the story
talks to me" kind of thing.
> What you are doing actually sounds to me like tight-third viewpoint in a
> multiple-viewpoint structure (i.e., several specific viewpoint characters, each
> of whom takes a turn as the tight-third viewpoint for a scene or a chapter
> [turns not necessarily being in any strict order of rotation]). It's a
> reasonable way to ease into doing tight-third if you're accustomed to
> omniscient. I tend to prefer the total-immersion method (one viewpoint
> character, period, in tight-third, for the whole book), but not everybody can
> psych up for that right away, and it may also be entirely unsuitable to the
> sort of story you're telling. If you're doing the sort of thing where part of
> the point is for the reader to know more than any individual viewpoint
> character -- for the reader to be able to see the Big Picture long before any
> of the POVs can -- then your choices are basically multiple viewpoint,
> omniscient viewpoint, or a really, really clueless POV character (which is
> generally not terribly satisfying).
Actually, the point right now is that the reader *doesn't* know more
than any of the viewpoint characters. In fact, the reader discovers
how this world works along with the first viewpoint character; starts
to see a little bit more complexity as the second viewpoint character
appears; then when the third one shows up, the plot kicks into high
gear. (So far, none of them have met one another, but I am building to
that. That will be tricky too; whose viewpoint do I when it comes to
those scenes? I haven't decided yet.)
I had to do the multiple viewpoints not to keep some characters in the
dark and let the reader know all, but because the story is about these
three people -- and I want to get into their heads. Doing multiple
first person would be far too sloppy, so tight third it is.
You're right, though; the more I analyze it, the choice has nothing to
do with the story's length, and everything to do with what story is
being told.
> I remember teaching myself to do tight-third, and it was a bear. But if it's
> any comfort, it was well worth the effort; there are a lot of characterization
> techniques that are just a whole lot clearer and easier to learn (for me,
> anyway) in tight-third or first-person viewpoint than they were in omni. And
> structural stuff, but I'm not sure that a multiple-POV lends itself to that
> sort of thing -- multiple-POV is a sufficiently complex structure all by itself
> that it is plenty enough to worry about mastering without adding on other stuff
> along with it.
It is phenomenally easy to crawl inside a character's head in
tight-third. It's also easy to place those necessary (and hopefully
not clumsy) infodumps where they're needed, as the character will ask
for clarification of concepts when the reader needs it most. It feels
more natural to do it that way than to have an omniscient narrator
step back and start explaining things. Unfortunetly, if the character
doesn't think to ask a particular question, the reader is left in the
dark.
I think that's a tiny tradeoff, though. At least for now.
Jim Cannon
Nicola Browne
news:20020419132705...@mb-mo.aol.com...
>
> snip>
> What you are doing actually sounds to me like tight-third viewpoint in a
> multiple-viewpoint structure (i.e., several specific viewpoint characters, each
> of whom takes a turn as the tight-third viewpoint for a scene or a chapter
> [turns not necessarily being in any strict order of rotation]).
If I can butt in a minute here and canvass opinion on a related issue-
I'm doing alternating tight third at the moment which I have used before
but this time I'm being quite rigid and my first question is- do people
find
regular viewpoint shifts irritating ?
I write in v short chapters - often under 2000 words and am inclined to
end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
it- the pay
off of each particular crisis is delayed.
The answer I want to hear is -thats fine Nicky-because I'm more than
half way through- but it does feel strained in places.
The POV split is necessary at the beginning- the alternative being omni
which I don't watn to do- and may be necessary for the bit I'm about to
write.Second question: Is it better to break a pattern and maybe
confuse the reader or conform to a pattern throughout which is not 100%
successful?
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
[...]
>If I can butt in a minute here and canvass opinion on a related issue-
>I'm doing alternating tight third at the moment which I have used before
>but this time I'm being quite rigid and my first question is- do people
>find
>regular viewpoint shifts irritating ?
>I write in v short chapters - often under 2000 words and am inclined to
>end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
>viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
>it- the pay
>off of each particular crisis is delayed.
It's fine if you don't mind the fact that some readers will skip-read
to follow one protagonist to some sort of partial resolution before
coming back to follow the other. I don't mind regular viewpoint
shifts, but I really don't like to be left hanging. Or rather, on the
occasions that I don't really mind being left hanging, the author
probably hasn't really grabbed me anyway.
[...]
>Second question: Is it better to break a pattern and maybe
>confuse the reader or conform to a pattern throughout which is not 100%
> successful?
The former, I think, unless the potential for confusion is
considerable.
Brian
Patricia C. Wrede
Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes:
>If I can butt in a minute here and canvass opinion on a related issue-
>I'm doing alternating tight third at the moment which I have used before
>but this time I'm being quite rigid and my first question is- do people
>find regular viewpoint shifts irritating ?
Some people do, some don't. People who do find it irritating have a bit of an
easier time unwinding the different viewpoints if they appear in some sort of
strict alternation or rotation.
>I write in v short chapters - often under 2000 words and am inclined to
>end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
>viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
>it- the pay off of each particular crisis is delayed.
That sort of thing is *particularly* annoying to some readers and
*particularly* appealing to others. You aren't going to be able to please
everybody. Pick which set you want, and please them.
>The answer I want to hear is -thats fine Nicky-because I'm more than
> half way through- but it does feel strained in places.
Strained is not good.
Is it the alternation that feels strained, or is it the cliffhangers? Because
you really, really don't need to end *every* scene with a cliffhanger.
>The POV split is necessary at the beginning- the alternative being omni
>which I don't watn to do- and may be necessary for the bit I'm about to
>write.Second question: Is it better to break a pattern and maybe
>confuse the reader or conform to a pattern throughout which is not 100%
> successful?
The pattern is not important. The story is important.
You basically have two choices, if you want the book to work: you can work on
the less-successful bits until you get them to be successful, or you can break
the pattern. Sticking to the pattern for the sake of the pattern isn't in it.
As an example of the first sort of thing (I hope), I offer my own THE SEVEN
TOWERS, which alternates rigidly between two viewpoints throughout the book (I
can't show you all the work that went on in order to get the less-successful
bits to work, but I assure you it was there). As an example of the second, I
offer Lois Bujold's MIRROR DANCE, which was intended to alternate rigidly
between the two main viewpoints, except that, well...a rigid alternation became
impossible at a certain point in the story.
THE SEVEN TOWERS works, I think, partly because I spent a considerable amount
of time and effort on keeping the viewpoints balanced -- neither one is "the
Hero" of the book as a whole, though in their own sections, they naturally each
look as if they are. Since neither is "the Hero," it makes sense that neither
has the preponderance of pages. MIRROR DANCE works because the two viewpoints
*aren't* balanced -- the events of the book are significantly more important to
the life and identity and mental health of one character than they are to the
other, and so it makes sense (and even becomes a near necessity) that the
viewpoints end up out of balance. There's more time given to one because
really, it's *his story*, even though parts of it happen elsewhere and to
someone else.
So the question becomes: whose story is it that you are telling? Why does it
need to be told this way? When you know that, *then* you can decide which sort
of structure will be most effective for what you're trying to do.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
>pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) didst say unto the masses...
>> I hate to tell you this, but you aren't running into a
>long-form-vs.-short-form
>> problem. You're running into a writer's-personal-habits problem.
>
>Fair enough. One of the reasons why I don't post to this forum near as
>much as I'd like to is that, honestly, I don't know what I'm doing
>half the time. :)
Well, you know, you could just *ask*... :)
>I didn't decide to do it because I thought it would be harder; I don't
>mind stretching my muscles, but I never set out to do things the
>difficult way either. It's much more a case of, "this is how the story
>talks to me" kind of thing.
That's a good and sufficient reason, too.
If you're doing the sort of thing where part
>of
>> the point is for the reader to know more than any individual viewpoint
>> character -- for the reader to be able to see the Big Picture long before
>any
>> of the POVs can -- then your choices are basically multiple viewpoint,
>> omniscient viewpoint, or a really, really clueless POV character (which is
>> generally not terribly satisfying).
>
>Actually, the point right now is that the reader *doesn't* know more
>than any of the viewpoint characters.
Uh--come again? If you have viewpoint characters A, B, and C, and each of them
knows different stuff about what is going on, and the reader gets to watch all
of them, then the reader *has* to know more than any one, individual viewpoint
character. The reader knows as much as all the POVs put together, but no more
than that -- is that what you were trying to say?
>I had to do the multiple viewpoints not to keep some characters in the
>dark and let the reader know all, but because the story is about these
>three people -- and I want to get into their heads. Doing multiple
>first person would be far too sloppy, so tight third it is.
Multiple first *needn't* be sloppy, but it's a little unusual as a choice of
viewpoint/structure. It makes sense to stick to something like tight-third,
where there are lots of examples to look at if you need to.
>You're right, though; the more I analyze it, the choice has nothing to
>do with the story's length, and everything to do with what story is
>being told.
Which is as it should be. But better you should realize that now, and not end
up with some screwy idea about connections between length and viewpoint getting
in your way later. :)
>It is phenomenally easy to crawl inside a character's head in
>tight-third. It's also easy to place those necessary (and hopefully
>not clumsy) infodumps where they're needed, as the character will ask
>for clarification of concepts when the reader needs it most. It feels
>more natural to do it that way than to have an omniscient narrator
>step back and start explaining things. Unfortunetly, if the character
>doesn't think to ask a particular question, the reader is left in the
>dark.
Part of your job as the author is to maneuver the character into thinking about
the right stuff at the best times, all, of course, in a plausible fashion. If
you have exactly the right character, it can also work to have the character
miss something that is blatantly obvious to the reader, simply because that
particular character *would* miss it (and has been established so well and
clearly as being the sort who would miss it that the reader will just roll her
eyes because it's *so typical*). This can be tough to pull off, but it's fun
when it works.
Patricia C. Wrede
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>In article <c26198c304b2e5811b...@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Nicola
>Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes:
[...]
>>I write in v short chapters - often under 2000 words and am inclined to
>>end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
>>viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
>>it- the pay off of each particular crisis is delayed.
>That sort of thing is *particularly* annoying to some readers and
>*particularly* appealing to others. You aren't going to be able to please
>everybody. Pick which set you want, and please them.
While I hate to admit it, being one of the first sort, it actually
makes some sense to cater for the second sort: the rest of us can jump
around in the book if we get sufficiently frustrated.
[...]
Brian
Nicola Browne
news:3cc1bb32....@enews.newsguy.com...
> Thanks to you both.
My husband has just read my most recent chapters for the first time and
the bits which I felt were strained also seem to be the least
interesting bits so its probably not exclusively a POV prob but a bad
patch that needs more work problem.(It also correlates with my settling
back
to work after the Easter holidays so I'm hoping its fixable in edit.)
In posing the question and thinking about the answers I've realised that
it is a two protag.story- I was originally thinking of writing it as two
first person narratives so I think the two viewpoints are integral to
the story.
While it is true that I don't have to have cliffhangers I quite like
them( as a reader)and consequently tend to throw them in to keep me
interested as a writer.( particularly when in doing so I abandon my plan
and don't know how to resolve the crisis myself!)Maybe I should write
for
readers like me.
I am less comfortable with information imparting conversational scenes
than with the other stuff.In these there is no intrinsic reason for
them to be written from either of the protags viewpoint.
I think I need to create a reason, if only to stop the scenes becoming
dull.
I need the equivalent of the film scene where vital plot info
is imparted while something more interesting is going on -cue
Elizabethan music, a gavotte and some Shakespearian actress dancing
while murmuring 'And so my Lord Walsingham..'
on second thoughts perhaps not :)
In short I'm probably doing it right but parts of it have gone badly
if that makes sense and I'll plough on with my alternate POvs.
Thanks again,
Helen
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>>
>> >>end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
>> >>viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
>> >>it- the pay off of each particular crisis is delayed.
>>
interesting hook to make the reader quickly forget the trouble the first
protag was in. You also need equally interesting/likeable protags. I
once critiqued a novel with this structure and really really loved one
plot strand and very little interest in the other. Just thought I'd
worry you with that one. :-)
>I am less comfortable with information imparting conversational scenes
>than with the other stuff.In these there is no intrinsic reason for
>them to be written from either of the protags viewpoint.
>I think I need to create a reason, if only to stop the scenes becoming
>dull.
>I need the equivalent of the film scene where vital plot info
>is imparted while something more interesting is going on -cue
>Elizabethan music, a gavotte and some Shakespearian actress dancing
>while murmuring 'And so my Lord Walsingham..'
>on second thoughts perhaps not :)
What would be the problem with this approach? It sounds good to me and
far better than two talking heads. It gives you a chance to deepen
background of the setting and characters as well as giving necessary
background information for the plot.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Elizabeth Shack
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
>news:3cc1bb32....@enews.newsguy.com...
>
>> >In article <c26198c304b2e5811b...@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Nicola
>> >Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> >>I write in v short chapters - often under 2000 words and am inclined to
>> >>end each chapter at a dramatic moment/ cliffhanger so that when the two
>> >>viewpointcharacters are apart- which they are for the greater part of
>> >>it- the pay off of each particular crisis is delayed.
>>
>> While I hate to admit it, being one of the first sort, it actually
>> makes some sense to cater for the second sort: the rest of us can jump
>> around in the book if we get sufficiently frustrated.
I find multiple-viewpoint books irritating in general, and worse if
each viewpoint is left at a cliffhanger. So I tend to skip around. Or
skip entirely. But I agree with Brian's paragraph.
> While it is true that I don't have to have cliffhangers I quite like
>them( as a reader)and consequently tend to throw them in to keep me
>interested as a writer.( particularly when in doing so I abandon my plan
>and don't know how to resolve the crisis myself!)Maybe I should write
>for
>readers like me.
General question: Is is possible not to? I mean, I don't think I
could write (fiction) with a style/structure/subject that I didn't
like as a reader.
>I am less comfortable with information imparting conversational scenes
>than with the other stuff.In these there is no intrinsic reason for
>them to be written from either of the protags viewpoint.
>I think I need to create a reason, if only to stop the scenes becoming
>dull.
>I need the equivalent of the film scene where vital plot info
>is imparted while something more interesting is going on -cue
>Elizabethan music, a gavotte and some Shakespearian actress dancing
>while murmuring 'And so my Lord Walsingham..'
>on second thoughts perhaps not :)
Sounds good to me! Certainly better than sitting around drinking tea,
which is what I did.
[Sudden revelation: I can change some of the tea scenes to mahjong
scenes. Duh.]
--
Elizabeth Shack
eas...@earthlink.net
Short on sleep. Apologies if post is incromprenshibl.
Irina Rempt
Mine usually impart information while walking from one place to
another. There's a lot of walking around in towns in pairs in my WIP.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org www.valdyas.org/irina
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Put no trust in cryptic comments. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Catja Pafort
> The different types of viewpoint -- first, second, third (tight, camera,
> omni) -- are none of them inherently better suited to one length or
> another.
Would anyone care to stick out their neck and say what those viewpoints
*are* suited for? (Is that the swish of an axe I'm hearing?)
I think a book with a single strong protagonist would be suited to
first/third, whereas something that's less character focussed, has a
large group of worthwhile protagonists and might span epic amounts of
space and/or time might be better suited for multiple thirds or omni.
Of course, that's all nonsense, since I tend to just write what the
story and the characters demand, I don't sit down and plan. The
Advancing Novel (it's not attacking like the first part was, but still
moving forward) is tight third; and everything that's of interest either
happens to my protagonist or involves him closely. The One I Can't Write
Yet [1] has two third person parts, and I've got an inkling that the
third, synergetic part might be omni. I've got other fragments in third
or first.
> I suspect that the real problem is one that many-many beginning writers
> face: decent tight-third looked a lot harder to do than omniscient.
This beginner writer didn't even know there was a difference! Well, I
did intellectually, but it made no difference to my *writing* - so I
happily hopped from head to head depending on who had something
interesting to think or observe. The result was kind of ugly.
Then I started to rewrite The Book from the beginning, and the first few
chapters were so bad it wasn't difficult - cut all scenes where the
protagonists weren't present; and if they were, focus on them instead of
everybody and their grandfather. So far, so good. Got stuck revising for
several reasons; and concentrated on Conflicting Loyalties instead. At
one point, I read a random chapter. (All these paper copies lieing
about. Tempting for a readaholic.) And abandoned all hope, because I
sudenly realised that it WORKED. The scenes were effortlessly flowing
into each other, and I ended up doing all of the main and minor
protagonists justice. Only this isn't the *current* version of that
file, it's one I can't date, but definitely older. Yes, I *can*
disengage this into multiple thirds, but should I?
My main problem is that I am not certain how tight or fluent omniscient
can/should be. A Song for Arbonne, for instance, works exceedingly well
for me, and Kay does flow between several characters in a fashion that's
wonderful to read, and he shows the thigns that are important to the
story without giving *everybody* a mental voice or introducing a
narrative voice. (I don't like those, as a rule, unless it's Pratchett.)
<snip>
> If you're doing the sort of thing where part of the point is for the
> reader to know more than any individual viewpoint character -- for the
> reader to be able to see the Big Picture long before any of the POVs can
> -- then your choices are basically multiple viewpoint, omniscient
> viewpoint, or a really, really clueless POV character (which is generally
> not terribly satisfying).
I find the sort of detective novel where we see the villain and then
watch the detective chase the wrong guy and blunder about and only save
the world at the last minute *very* dissatisfying. I'd rather have the
main character know something feels wrong and have things go KERBOOM
than sit there and think 'yes, I know, the villain is on the other side
of the door just waiting to blow you up.' and watch the character *not*
take the right action. That's a technique more suited to slapstick
comedy than books, I feel. If you make it a race between two characters
both must have a chance. (That can work very well if you don't have 'a
villain' and 'a good guy' but two sympathetic, but flawed
people/groups/parts of society. You're sort of rooting for both at the
time of the conflict and it drives home that life isn't black and white.
> I remember teaching myself to do tight-third, and it was a bear. But if
> it's any comfort, it was well worth the effort; there are a lot of
> characterization techniques that are just a whole lot clearer and easier
> to learn (for me, anyway) in tight-third or first-person viewpoint than
> they were in omni. And structural stuff, but I'm not sure that a
> multiple-POV lends itself to that sort of thing -- multiple-POV is a
> sufficiently complex structure all by itself that it is plenty enough to
> worry about mastering without adding on other stuff along with it.
I've been thinking about this paragraph, and came to the conclusion I
need a few examples.because I can't work out 100% what you refer to. One
thing that hasn't been mentioned so far (just to confuse everybody) is
that narrator and protagonist don't *have* to be the same person.I would
venture to guess that in tight third, they probably are, because why
follow *that* person if someone else gets to do interesting things, and
goes interesting places, but that's just another layer of complication.
No idea where or why one would use that.
Catja
[1] Look out for The Tapestry of War. In about ten to fifteen years'
time.
ObCatVaccuum: In Germany, I aquired a 'new and revised' ultimate manual
for writers. (Judgeing by the language and reviewer it must have
originated in the 1950s). If I can stop laughing, I'll write a post
about how 'literary' books come into existence. It was most interesting,
but left me with the realisation that if that was the only type of
'encouragement' I'd get I wouldn't have started to write at all.
Patricia C. Wrede
(Catja Pafort) writes:
>Would anyone care to stick out their neck and say what those viewpoints
>*are* suited for? (Is that the swish of an axe I'm hearing?)
Getting the particular effect you want, especially if it involves setting the
reader at a specific distance from the main character.
>I think a book with a single strong protagonist would be suited to
>first/third, whereas something that's less character focussed, has a
>large group of worthwhile protagonists and might span epic amounts of
>space and/or time might be better suited for multiple thirds or omni.
I don't think so. I don't think viewpoints line up this neatly. Especially
when you consider that the viewpoint character does not have to be the
protagonist -- Watson is the classic example. And I have a vague recollection
of the Hornblower books (which I'd say certainly have a single strong
protagonist) being omniscient, and I *know* Patrick O'Brian's books are
omniscient. So are a fair number of very character-centered classics (_Madame
Bovary_, for instance).
In other words, you can do any of the above things -- character-centered,
plot-focussed, ensemble cast, epic -- in whichever viewpoint you want. I think
some viewpoints currently tend to be used more often for specific sorts of
fiction, but I think that's more a matter of current literary fashion than
anything else.
>This beginner writer didn't even know there was a difference! Well, I
>did intellectually, but it made no difference to my *writing* - so I
>happily hopped from head to head depending on who had something
>interesting to think or observe. The result was kind of ugly.
That does tend to be the effect, yes, indeedy.
>about. Tempting for a readaholic.) And abandoned all hope, because I
>sudenly realised that it WORKED. The scenes were effortlessly flowing
>into each other, and I ended up doing all of the main and minor
>protagonists justice. Only this isn't the *current* version of that
>file, it's one I can't date, but definitely older. Yes, I *can*
>disengage this into multiple thirds, but should I?
The potential problem I see is that you've been disengaging the earlier parts
of the book. You may be able to tell the story in multiple tight-thirds, and
you may be able to tell it in omniscient, but I think you're likely to have a
difficult time making a mix of both of them work for the book as a whole, even
if they do work on a scene-to-scene basis. So you'll probably have to decide
on one thing or the other. Although it might work if you set up "omniscient
viewpoint" as if it were another one of your multiple-viewpoints, and rotated
it in the same way you do for each of the viewpoint characters.
>My main problem is that I am not certain how tight or fluent omniscient
>can/should be.
Part of the difficulty with omniscient is that it is *exceedingly* open-ended.
There is no "should be." My personal observation is that it seems to work best
if the author is internally consistent in the way he/she floats from character
to character or scene to scene. Patrick O'Brian and Larry McMurty use
*completely* different techniques, but they're both doing omniscient (at least,
McMurty is in LONESOME DOVE), and they both work.
>I find the sort of detective novel where we see the villain and then
>watch the detective chase the wrong guy and blunder about and only save
>the world at the last minute *very* dissatisfying. I'd rather have the
>main character know something feels wrong and have things go KERBOOM
>than sit there and think 'yes, I know, the villain is on the other side
>of the door just waiting to blow you up.' and watch the character *not*
>take the right action.
Have you read any Barbara Paul? There's one of her books in which the ending
depends on the reader having seen the villain do something, so that the reader
knows what the consequences of the heroes' next actions are going to be, even
though they're never shown. It's a brilliant, chilling job of projecting stuff
out past the end of the book.
>> I remember teaching myself to do tight-third, and it was a bear. But if
>> it's any comfort, it was well worth the effort; there are a lot of
>> characterization techniques that are just a whole lot clearer and easier
>> to learn (for me, anyway) in tight-third or first-person viewpoint than
>> they were in omni. And structural stuff, but I'm not sure that a
>> multiple-POV lends itself to that sort of thing -- multiple-POV is a
>> sufficiently complex structure all by itself that it is plenty enough to
>> worry about mastering without adding on other stuff along with it.
>
>I've been thinking about this paragraph, and came to the conclusion I
>need a few examples.because I can't work out 100% what you refer to.
The main characterization problem for me was that in sloppy-omniscient, it was
much too easy to jump to somebody's head when I wanted the reader to know what
they were thinking. Consequently, I didn't have to work at making them
individuals on the *outside* -- they all got seen from the inside sooner or
later. The effect is, to my current view, a little flat and oddly one-sided.
You get what A thinks and feels, and what B thinks and feels, but you don't
find out what B assumes A is thinking, or how B reacts to what A says or to
what he assumes A thinks/feels. And those thoughts and reactions are at least
as important as what A is *really* thinking, if you want the reader to get a
feel for the characters of *both* A and B.
Structurally -- with a sloppy-omniscient, jump-around-whenever-it-suits-me
viewpoint, I didn't have to think about how and when it would be most effective
to have my POV find out about stuff that happened off-stage. Everything got
shown in chronological order as it happened, because since I *could* jump
around, I more-or-less *had* to jump, or else be holding out on the reader.
With a single-viewpoint tight-third, I had to think about what the impact of
finding out stuff would be -- will the tea-party be more tense if the hero
hears about the murder before he goes in, or will the news be a bigger and more
effective shock if he gets it right afterward, when he's relaxed and happy?
> One
>thing that hasn't been mentioned so far (just to confuse everybody) is
>that narrator and protagonist don't *have* to be the same person.I would
>venture to guess that in tight third, they probably are, because why
>follow *that* person if someone else gets to do interesting things, and
>goes interesting places, but that's just another layer of complication.
>No idea where or why one would use that.
I already mentioned Watson -- Holmes is clearly the protagonist, but he'd make
a *horrible* viewpoint character, egotistical and unsympathetic, plus that
would give away the whole solution well in advance. A lot of classic mysteries
follow the same pattern -- the viewpoint character is the sidekick, allowing
the detective to be brilliant without spoiling everything for the reader. ISTR
reading a few mainstream novels that follow a similar pattern -- the
outsider/observer watching and recording the doings of the protagonist(s).
It's a way of getting a bit of distance from a protagonist who might be
irritating or unsympathetic up close, but who isn't nearly so bad when seen
through the eyes of someone else (who can make explicit allowances, and whose
usually-obvious-liking for the irritating protagonist [like Watson's for
Holmes] makes us think there must be more to him than all his off-putting
characteristics).
Patricia C. Wrede
Dan Goodman
news:20020421184514...@mb-fg.aol.com:
> I already mentioned Watson -- Holmes is clearly the protagonist, but
> he'd make a *horrible* viewpoint character, egotistical and
> unsympathetic, plus that would give away the whole solution well in
> advance.
If my memory is correct, there _was_ a story narrated by Holmes. It didn't
work very well.
A lot of classic mysteries follow the same pattern -- the
> viewpoint character is the sidekick, allowing the detective to be
> brilliant without spoiling everything for the reader.
Agatha Christie used it sometimes, and I think shouldn't have. Rex Stout
used it, and it worked a whole lot better than any other viewpoint (for
him).
> ISTR reading a
> few mainstream novels that follow a similar pattern -- the
> outsider/observer watching and recording the doings of the
> protagonist(s). It's a way of getting a bit of distance from a
> protagonist who might be irritating or unsympathetic up close, but who
> isn't nearly so bad when seen through the eyes of someone else (who
> can make explicit allowances, and whose usually-obvious-liking for the
> irritating protagonist [like Watson's for Holmes] makes us think there
> must be more to him than all his off-putting characteristics).
In George Turner's _Brain Child_, things get complicated. There are two
first-person narrators. The one who tells most of the story is the
protagonist -- but he's not the main character. The villains have been
dead for some time, but are still causing trouble
In some places, it's like Archie Goodwin listening to Sherlock Holmes
talking about Odd John.
Julian Flood
"Patricia C. Wrede" < wrote
> it might work if you set up "omniscient
> viewpoint" as if it were another one of your multiple-viewpoints, and
rotated
> it in the same way you do for each of the viewpoint characters.
There was a TV adaption of some classic novel, the name of which I
forget. The author has a strong voice which comments throughout, and the
solution was to dress a character in18th century garb, letting him wander
on and talk to the camera direct while the plot went on around him.
Fielding?
At the end of the production they added a bit where the affection of
everyone -- writers, actors, production -- for the author was plain: not
only had he been a character in his own book, he had trancended time and
emerged as a good, clever and loveable man centuries later. Multiple pov
with me as well, here we come.
I normally avoid pov threads, but I'm in trouble and I _really_ needed
this one. Thank you, everyone.
JF
Who, after more counselling, will be able to say 'well done' to people
who have got somewhere with their writing: when St Augustus and Jeremy
Pickersgill bounce across the graveyard and splash into the Sanner I will
rejoin the human race, or at least that eccentric subset which wants to
write.
Zeborah
> Elizabeth Shack wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 21:45:03 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
> > <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> >>I need the equivalent of the film scene where vital plot info
> >>is imparted while something more interesting is going on -cue
> >>Elizabethan music, a gavotte and some Shakespearian actress dancing
> >>while murmuring 'And so my Lord Walsingham..'
> >>on second thoughts perhaps not :)
> >
> > Sounds good to me! Certainly better than sitting around drinking tea,
> > which is what I did.
>
> Mine usually impart information while walking from one place to
> another. There's a lot of walking around in towns in pairs in my WIP.
Mine, alas, tend to impart information in little offices. No props, no
scenery. It's exceedingly annoying. The latest round of it I've
managed to spice up with the protag musing on random quotes from an
invented folktale which I don't know the end of. Ought to work on that
before my protag gets tempted to muse on the end of it...
Zeborah
--
Semper ad eventum festinet. -- Horace
"Always party hard at social events." <eg>
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz2000
Patricia C. Wrede
<j...@floodsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> I normally avoid pov threads, but I'm in trouble and I _really_ needed
>this one. Thank you, everyone.
All better now, I hope?
Patricia C. Wrede
Dan Goodman
news:1fb1hgn.10djt9vocz0qsN%zebo...@mac.com:
> Mine, alas, tend to impart information in little offices. No props, no
> scenery. It's exceedingly annoying.
Suggestion: Have their offices be in the process of remodeling. With the
assigned temporary space being too small for more than one emaciated
person, and otherwise unsuitable for conversations.
Irina Rempt
Or have the offices full of papers and books and writing materials and
*cats* that have to be moved off chairs and searched under.
Julian Flood
Of course not!
JF
Patricia C. Wrede
<j...@floodsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>news:20020422092535...@mb-mg.aol.com...
>> In article <aa07j4$nv8$2...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>, "Julian Flood"
>> <j...@floodsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>>
>> > I normally avoid pov threads, but I'm in trouble and I _really_ needed
>> >this one. Thank you, everyone.
>>
>> All better now, I hope?
>
>Of course not!
Well, then, stop being difficult and tell us if there's anything else helpful
we can do.
Patricia C. Wrede
Julian Flood
"Patricia C. Wrede" > wrote
> >> > I normally avoid pov threads, but I'm in trouble and I _really_
needed
> >> >this one. Thank you, everyone.
> >>
> >> All better now, I hope?
> >
> >Of course not!
>
> Well, then, stop being difficult and tell us if there's anything else
helpful
> we can do.
You could nip round and rewrite all the bits where I have strayed from
the
One True POV. Apart from that it's, I think, a solved problem. I've been POV
skipping but without enough discipline, certain povs taking over when they
should be silent: I've even got a note to myself where it says 'C's pov but
Tobe seems to be taking over'. Discipline, more discipline... In defence of
my people, they're all well oiled by this stage, between six and nine pints.
Where the povs are firm, the thing reads better than expected as a
first
draft, but I've not had a major incident for nearly one and a half chapters,
and things are flagging since the thirty chinese students lined up to be
sick
into a drain.
When in trouble, bring on the stuffed philosopher!
JF
Zeborah
> Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> > zebo...@mac.com (Zeborah) wrote in
> > news:1fb1hgn.10djt9vocz0qsN%zebo...@mac.com:
> >
> >> Mine, alas, tend to impart information in little offices. No props,
> >> no scenery. It's exceedingly annoying.
> >
> > Suggestion: Have their offices be in the process of remodeling. With
> > the assigned temporary space being too small for more than one
> > emaciated person, and otherwise unsuitable for conversations.
Alas, this is a military ship. There's not a whole lot of room or
reason to remodel, and should the captain's office ever be in need of
it, it'd likely be completed rather more quickly than I'd suspect is
typical for most businesses.
I have made use of the fact that the office is a little small and only
has a total of two chairs, so if the captain's talking to more than one
person at once then they can't both sit.
> Or have the offices full of papers and books and writing materials and
> *cats* that have to be moved off chairs and searched under.
Ditto. A desk might occasionally get cluttered with piles of pads (hmm,
that's probably Radhika's style; a shame she gets rather left out of the
story; she'd probably have an scattering of broken tools to boot) but
pads get boring after a while....
I'm trying to figure out whether they're allowed personal items at all
(I think I read/saw something about how this was handled in some current
military, but can't remember if it was in the handbook for new Pentagon
staff members or on some obscure AFN commercial. It wasn't in the RCMP
Act, anyway. For all I know it's a product of my fevered
imagination...) but I rather think they'd be kept to a minimum, and I
know for a fact that there are no cats aboard.
Dan Goodman
news:1fb39tz.18dii4m5yb534N%zebo...@mac.com:
Caution -- there's almost always a difference between the formal rules and
the way things are actually done. This applies to the military, with the
hypothetical exception of military forces in which everyone is given divine
revelations at every moment.
Patricia C. Wrede
<j...@floodsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> Where the povs are firm, the thing reads better than expected as a
>first
>draft, but I've not had a major incident for nearly one and a half chapters,
>and things are flagging since the thirty chinese students lined up to be
>sick
>into a drain.
> When in trouble, bring on the stuffed philosopher!
Or nip a blaster-toting thug in through a convenient window.
If you're having particular trouble spotting wandering viewpoint thingies, you
could try creating a duplicate file and then using search-and-replace to
convert third-person to first-person. (For obvious reasons, you *don't* want
to do this in your actual main document...) Wandering viewpoint tends to
really stick out in first person, and once you can see it clearly, it's often
easier to decide what to do about it.
Patricia C. Wrede
Mary K. Kuhner
>I am less comfortable with information imparting conversational scenes
>than with the other stuff.In these there is no intrinsic reason for
>them to be written from either of the protags viewpoint.
>I think I need to create a reason, if only to stop the scenes becoming
>dull.
Is one of the two POV characters risking something in the conversation?
If so, that's the one to pick. For example, they might have a secret
they want to keep, or information they desperately need but can't ask
for directly, or they may want to persuade the other participant of
something.
Conversations will be a lot more lively if something is at stake.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Scott Straley
I'm glad I stumbled into this thread. My current WIP starts out with
a single character's (the protag) POV and some occasional bits of
history about this character or the ship he's on or the equipment he
sees that aren't specifically from his POV, but he could reasonably
know by the stories end. (The protag is alleged to be the "author" of
the story; or at least responsible for it in some fashion in the
prologue.) Then I got to the 4th chapter and I had a problem. Our
hero was temporarily incapacitated with a concussion. He was on a
team of five characters and I tried desperately to write this "action"
chapter from his POV. It ended up being about him listening to a
radio and bits of conversation in the hallway and how much his ribs
hurt, while other characters were exploring and getting into trouble.
I hated it. So, I decided to rotate the POV in this chapter. (The
team had been introduced in the previous chapter, and will exist for
much of the story -- except, that is, the ones that stop breathing.)
So, I have this shift that looks like this:
Prologue: 150+ years after the story... main character's daughter
"introduces" him and the story... So she could also be considered the
"narrators" voice.
Chaps 1-2 : One strong protag - Mostly protag POV and occassional
narrative glue.
Chap 3 : Introduce "team", now one strong protag, and four other main
characters - Mostly protag POV and occassional narrative glue.
Chap 4 : Strong protag is injured, POV shifts between team members and
strong protag as they're all seperated doing different things.
After my hero recovers in Chap 5 -- at least enough to start
participating in the chaos that unfolded in Chap 4, do I regravitate
to his POV, or do I keep the multiple POV thing going. Although he's
the hero -- the other team members are much more knowledgable than he
is. But, by the end of Chap 5 only 2 of them will be left alive.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks,
Scott Matthew Straley
Patricia C. Wrede
(Scott Straley) writes:
>Thoughts? Suggestions?
Without seeing the actual book, it's impossible to say for sure. However, I
faced a somewhat similar situation the first time I tried to write
single-viewpoint tight-third person. Except that it was Chapter 7, not Chapter
4, and the viewpoint character was drugged out of her mind, not concussed.
After much, much agonizing, I stuck with the tight-third viewpoint. I did the
chapter from the POV of the drugged-out heroine, leaving out all the
interesting action stuff that I knew the other characters were doing. She --
and the reader -- found out about it later, second-hand. And no, being told
about how everybody else escaped wasn't as exciting as actually seeing it all
happen through their eyes would have been...but I have never been sorry I did
it that way. In fact, in retrospect, I have frequently been *glad* that I did
it that way.
Because sticking to the tight-third viewpoint taught me *how* to do second-hand
narrative and information transfer. And breaking the viewpoint (especially if
I'd only done it for the one chapter) would have made the book's focus go all
fuzzy -- instead of staying tightly focused on the heroine, I'd have suddenly
had all these other characters who seemed just as important. The book would
have come out completely differently, and that wasn't the story I wanted to
tell. Sticking to tight-third was difficult...but having done it there, I
didn't have *nearly* so much trouble anywhere else in the book, and by the time
I finished that novel, I pretty much knew the basics of handling tight-third.
And it was the story I wanted.
You're a little earlier in your ms. than I was, and your situation is a little
different; you may possibly still be feeling your way into what's right for
your story. From where I sit, you are looking at two possible structures for
the book, each of which will be radically different. You have to decide *now*
which story you're telling, or else you'll face massive readjustments when you
get to the second draft.
Your first possibility is the one you abandoned: stick to the tight-third,
single viewpoint throughout. Have your concussed character sit frustrated and
fuming in the medical wing or sick bay or wherever he is (possibly not for a
whole chapter -- there's no real reason to stretch time out if nothing much
interesting is happening *to him*, no matter how much cool stuff is going on
just outside his closed door) until he recovers, and then have the rest of the
team brief him, and continue on. This would be consistent with your
presentation -- if the protagonist is writing this up himself, days or years
later, then he is most likely to tell the story in the order that *he* found it
out, not in the order in which events actually happened.
Your second possibility is the one you don't seem to want to commit to: make
it a multiple-viewpoint book, abandoning the notion that your protagonist is
writing this up later. Chapter 4 is still early enough to make this switch,
especially if you go back and introduce one or two of the alternate viewpoints
in the previous chapter, when the team is being introduced. You would actually
have a nice, logical progression -- from just the initial protagonist, to the
initial protagonist plus a couple of team members (as he is introduced to the
team), to mostly the team members (while the initial protagonist is concussed).
That would cement, for the reader, the idea that this is an ensemble-cast,
multiple-viewpoint book, and from then on you could rotate among the team
members without having awkward balance problems resulting from the initial
heavy emphasis on the one character. But it *does* change the book from one
that has a single, strong protagonist to one that has an ensemble cast.
Switching to multiple viewpoint for a single chapter, early in a book, with the
rest of the book intended as single tight-third, is not something that I would
be at all sanguine about pulling off. It sounds like a have-cake-and-eat-it
sort of solution -- an unhappy hybrid with all the disadvantages of both
original possibilities and the advantages of neither. It's possible -- barely
-- that this is what's right for this particular book, but my inclination would
be to put it last on the list of things to try. Because it *looks* as if it's
the easiest solution -- and if the only problem is to provide the reader with
specific plot-related information about what is happening while the hero is
concussed, then it *is* the easiest solution. But in solving the
information-handling problem easily, it creates a whole hydra's worth of
exceedingly tricky structural and balance problems that are likely to be far
harder to fix than what you started off with. If it turns out that you have to
deal with that, well, then you do...but I'd leave it for last. Try the other
two possibilities first. One of them is *much* more likely to end up being the
story you want. Really.
Patricia C. Wrede
Julian Flood
"Patricia C. Wrede" < wrote
> Or nip a blaster-toting thug in through a convenient window.
>
Wandering viewpoint tends to
> really stick out in first person, and once you can see it clearly, it's
often
> easier to decide what to do about it.
I like the substitute idea, but I don't think spotting the wandering
pov is a problem -- the story feels like an eel, difficult to stuff in the
basket and the povs jump as I try to pin down the head, the tail, the head,
the middle. This whole process is writing by revelation and it's no fun. The
text is losing, but slowly -- I'm hung up at the moment but it's because I'm
internally motivating characters to do some difficult things, in character
thirty years ago but not now they're middle-aged and respectable. They're
drunk enough, but are they desperate enough? One of them is, and his example
may well trigger the rest... maunder, whitter, ramble... <sounds of dustfree
cat protest>
JF
Bring on the stuffed philosopher.*
*Hang on... she likes academic men and the Professor of Comparative
Meaning is getting well oiled... he could be the <walks off thinking into an
England where the warm air from Africa has arrived and all the wide green
land is full of singing birds>
Nicola Browne
message news:aa4cic$1da2$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu...
You're right. I think I have to go back over the two or three mid
chapters where which are problematic and spend some time reworking them
later. the problem comes round about chapters 17-20 around the mid point
-
and the time for revelation/info dump which explains the previous half
of the novel and sets the scene for the end so it is both pivotal and
( currently) dull.
Part of the trouble is that as a YA writer I am v worried about losing
the reader in these necessary scenes and I don't like writing sustained
conversation. I always have something happen to break up dialogue after
a few exchanges.
This may in fact be a dialogue/characterisation issue rather than a pov
prob. At the moment I'm changing my mind about the exact nature of the
info they need anyway so its pointless to deal with this section until
I've got to the end.
Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have a bigger editorial job
than I'm used to. This is partly because I have strayed further from my
chapter summary /plot guidelines more
radically than usual so there are more loose ends and direction changes
than I would want in a finished novel. This is novel 4 and I suppose
its inevitable that my way of working will have to evolve to meet the
challenges of a
different story. (thats what I'm telling myself anyway.)
It is irritating but I'm going to have to live with a flawed middle
section for now.
Zeborah
> zebo...@mac.com (Zeborah) wrote in
> news:1fb39tz.18dii4m5yb534N%zebo...@mac.com:
>
> > I'm trying to figure out whether they're allowed personal items at all
<snip>
> Caution -- there's almost always a difference between the formal rules and
> the way things are actually done. This applies to the military, with the
> hypothetical exception of military forces in which everyone is given divine
> revelations at every moment.
Oh, yes, I know. It helps to know the rules that they're starting from,
though. Especially because my protag is the sort who'd notice
discrepancies like that; she doesn't get fussed about them, she's not a
stickler for the rule book, but she'd know that it's a discrepancy and
she'd comment on it.
Zeborah
> I'm glad I stumbled into this thread. My current WIP starts out with
> a single character's (the protag) POV and some occasional bits of
> history about this character or the ship he's on or the equipment he
> sees that aren't specifically from his POV, but he could reasonably
> know by the stories end. (The protag is alleged to be the "author" of
> the story; or at least responsible for it in some fashion in the
> prologue.) Then I got to the 4th chapter and I had a problem. Our
> hero was temporarily incapacitated with a concussion. He was on a
> team of five characters and I tried desperately to write this "action"
> chapter from his POV. It ended up being about him listening to a
> radio and bits of conversation in the hallway and how much his ribs
> hurt, while other characters were exploring and getting into trouble.
> I hated it.
That's a shame, it sounds like it could be fun. But if it really
doesn't work then it doesn't work.
>So, I decided to rotate the POV in this chapter. (The
> team had been introduced in the previous chapter, and will exist for
> much of the story -- except, that is, the ones that stop breathing.)
If you want to stick to single-POV -- and if he is the one strong protag
then I'd be awfully tempted to do so -- then another thing you can do is
have him lie alone in pain without a clue what's going on, until finally
the team comes back and tells him the story. You can have much fun with
them interrupting and contradicting each other:
"No, I went left and you went right!"
"That was back at the Red Crossroads, moron!"
"No, at the Red Crossroads I went straight ahead because the left
was blocked by that landslide you caused that nearly killed me!"
(Though you can make them be more orderly if you do want to present the
story in a more straightforward way.)
Alternatively, since you're alleging that he's the 'author' of the
story:
Of course at the time I didn't have a clue what was going on, but
over the years I've finally managed to piece it together, and this
seems to be what happened. Jamie and Gill went left down the
corridor, while Melanie went right with Regie. Melanie was pretty
nervous, because that's where they thought the Galumphs were camped
out, so [...]
[...] and the room was filled with weapons.
Meanwhile Jamie and Gill had run into the Galumphs. [...]
And you can use this technique throughout the story, judiciously, to
fill in information at other places where the protag didn't know at the
time what was happening but has learned of it since. Without overdoing
it, of course, which might destroy suspense or suspension of disbelief.
> So, I have this shift that looks like this:
>
> Prologue: 150+ years after the story... main character's daughter
> "introduces" him and the story... So she could also be considered the
> "narrators" voice.
Wait, is she the narrator or is he? This is important because...
> Chaps 1-2 : One strong protag - Mostly protag POV and occassional
> narrative glue.
Who's providing the narrative glue?
The thing about POV is that it's irrelevant who the protag is; the thing
that defines whose POV it is is "Who provides the narrative glue?"
Whose eyes is the action seen from? Whose ears is it heard from? Whose
mind provides the sarcastic comments about various characters'
competence or lack thereof? Who is it who says, "Of course it turned
out to be all a waste of time, from one way of looking at things, but
they didn't know it at the time."
If these things are described as the protag would describe it (more or
less) then it's his pov; if they are described as the daughter would
describe it (more or less) then it's hers; if they are described as
no-one but you would describe it then maybe it's an omniscient pov.
(The latter particularly so if you dip into one mind and into another
and insert pieces of information that none of them either knew then or
later. Note that for many writers this is a difficult pov to do well.)
> Chap 3 : Introduce "team", now one strong protag, and four other main
> characters - Mostly protag POV and occassional narrative glue.
> Chap 4 : Strong protag is injured, POV shifts between team members and
> strong protag as they're all seperated doing different things.
>
> After my hero recovers in Chap 5 -- at least enough to start
> participating in the chaos that unfolded in Chap 4, do I regravitate
> to his POV, or do I keep the multiple POV thing going. Although he's
> the hero -- the other team members are much more knowledgable than he
> is. But, by the end of Chap 5 only 2 of them will be left alive.
If you *have* to have the multiple POV thing in chapter four, I think
it'd be best to have it elsewhere in the story; otherwise it seems like
you're cheating because this chapter wouldn't work any other way.
Which, hey, is in fact what you're doing, but that doesn't mean it
should appear that way. :-) But still, I think there are a couple of
other options that could work just as well or better while still
sticking to a single pov.
Bob Throllop
> In article <d7c6ce63.02042...@posting.google.com>, str...@yahoo.com
> > (Scott Straley) writes:
"introduces" him and the story... So she could also be considered the
> >Thoughts? Suggestions?
>
> Your first possibility is the one you abandoned: stick to the tight-third,
> single viewpoint throughout. [...]
>
> Your second possibility is the one you don't seem to want to commit to: make
> it a multiple-viewpoint book, abandoning the notion that your protagonist is
> writing this up later.
It seems to me that the much-later narrator gives you a convenient out
when you want to drop the single viewpoint for an aside but keep to it
otherwise.
i.e.
"_My father never found out exactly what happened while he was unconscious,
but somehow the team fought off the Aldebarian pirates for twelve harrowing hours.
When he woke up, Marta and Palenkov were gone. Their remains were
eventually found by a surveying party fifty years later._
"Jorge stood up. His head still hurt, but..."
Tim S
> Switching to multiple viewpoint for a single chapter, early in a book, with
> the
> rest of the book intended as single tight-third, is not something that I would
> be at all sanguine about pulling off. It sounds like a have-cake-and-eat-it
> sort of solution -- an unhappy hybrid with all the disadvantages of both
> original possibilities and the advantages of neither. It's possible -- barely
> -- that this is what's right for this particular book, but my inclination
> would
> be to put it last on the list of things to try. Because it *looks* as if it's
> the easiest solution -- and if the only problem is to provide the reader with
> specific plot-related information about what is happening while the hero is
> concussed, then it *is* the easiest solution. But in solving the
> information-handling problem easily, it creates a whole hydra's worth of
> exceedingly tricky structural and balance problems that are likely to be far
> harder to fix than what you started off with. If it turns out that you have
> to
> deal with that, well, then you do...but I'd leave it for last. Try the other
> two possibilities first. One of them is *much* more likely to end up being
> the
> story you want. Really.
What she said.
If the _only_ reason to switch pov is to convey some information to the
reader, there is a serious danger that this will stick out like a sore
thumb. It would be a kind of infodump, with all the dubiosity that that
entails. There really needs to be a more structural reason for a pov switch,
something more plot-related or story related. Be very cautious about doing
it just to get out of trouble. You might be able to make it work, but it is
tricky to pull off.
Tim
Scott Straley
Thanks for the great feedback.
Patricia C. Wrede (pwred...@aol.com) writes:
> Your second possibility is the one you don't seem to want to commit to: make
> it a multiple-viewpoint book, abandoning the notion that your protagonist is
> writing this up later.
I think you're right. The story needs to be told as
multiple-viewpoints.
Zeborah (zebo...@mac.com) writes:
> ... another thing you can do is
> have him lie alone in pain without a clue what's going on, until finally
> the team comes back and tells him the story. You can have much fun with
> them interrupting and contradicting each other...
Hmmm... unless I bring ghosts into the whole thing then that might be
a problem. I have a fieldday in chapter 4 and kill about half of the
characters, and although I don't show them die (the survivors find
them later), what they experienced prior to their deaths significantly
builds the sense of drama and doom for the rest of the characters
(hopefully). And, I'm realizing, the 4th chapter isn't the first time
that I've introduced another POV. In the prologue (all 2 pages of
it), we see a glipse of the POV from two characters... the protags
great-grandson and granddaughter. Although they are not involved in
the story directly, their introduction allows me to indirectly relate
the history leading up to the story to the readers without giving them
a history lesson.
Bob Throllop (bobth...@brandx.net) writes:
> It seems to me that the much-later narrator gives you a convenient out
> when you want to drop the single viewpoint for an aside but keep to it
> otherwise.
Hmmm... maybe I stated that wrong. The narration is third person
omniscient. I just was trying to rationalize "who" this narrator
might be -- what context they're coming from. I never introduce them
as such, and the prologue leads into the story like this:
| Tonight's story was one of Spence's favorites. And one
| of Elise's favorites, as well. She would often read it when
| Spence was not around. She would hear her father's excitement
| in the words he wrote. She missed him.
The "She missed him" part is about as close as I get to the prologue's
characters and feelings. But the reader may assume that since this is
story night and the rest of the book is a story about her father's
adventures, that somehow either she is relating the story or her
father had related the story to her. But I leave that entirely up to
the reader. Is that asking too much of the reader? Will I piss them
off as they try and figure out who's POV the narration is from?
The first chapter begins, clearly with the protag's POV, but is
narrated at a little bit of a distance from the character:
| It's said that dreams in zero-gravity are often
| incredibly lucid. For Hayden Foster, this was no exception.
| Especially for his first voyage into space.
| Hayden opened his eyes.
| The darkness failed to yield any clue as to where he was.
| Bits of his dream were lodged painfully in his mind...
The narrator keeps this distance with the characters, and characters'
thoughts are, for the most part italicized. Only at a few points does
the intensity of a character's perception or emotions spill over into
the narration:
| Kevin knew he had a few rough edges. They were there on
| purpose. He had been told many times before that he needed
| to work better with people. The reason he went into
| rovertech was to /get away/ from people. Then the damn
| bureaucrats go and dangle the most sophisticated rover in
| front of him and say that the job is his but he has to work
| with an untrained crew – an untrained crew /and/ a Terran.
Now, the narrator has borrowed Kevin's voice. This scene is about
Kevin and his thoughts while he's repairing the rover. I didn't want
to interupt the flow with a whole lot of "he thought"'s or have huge
sections in italics. Do you think this would confuse the reader?
The problem with the rest of the characters presented up until chapter
4, is that they're (for the most part) flavor characters that I use to
help relate the other bits of history that fills out the universe for
the reader. By chapter four, all of them have gone their seperate
ways, and will not reappear, except for one who acts as sort of a
"patron" for the main character. I don't want the readers to get
"close" to too many of these characters because I'm afraid that in
doing so, they may become frustrated as to why they aren't significant
to the rest of the story. The ones that survive in chapter 4 will be
significant, so getting to know them is helpful -- especially because
they all have different motives and don't alway like each other.
I suppose I could allow some of the "patron" character's POV in
chapters 1 or 2... or begin with one of the other POV characters
earlier in chap 3 before they've met the main character. This would
gradually ease the reader into who's thoughts we hear (the team) and
who's we don't (accessory characters).
I've rambled on for way too long now and forced my prose upon you.
Shame on me. =)
- Scott
Marilee J. Layman
I'm reading Julie Czerneda's third book (I bought the second and third
before I read the first -- they're not really bad, I'm reading them,
but they won't stay on my shelves -- one of the problems of being a
few years behind in my to-read pile) and when she wants to change POV,
she puts in an Interlude. So there's Chapter 1, Interlude, Chapter 2,
Interlude, etc. and the Interludes are all from other characters'
POVs. It's kind of annoying. On the one hand, I know the Interludes
aren't going to be Sira's POV, but I would have been happy with a
double line-spacing and not calling them out as separate bits of the
book.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Catja Pafort
> >Would anyone care to stick out their neck and say what those viewpoints
> >*are* suited for? (Is that the swish of an axe I'm hearing?)
>
> Getting the particular effect you want, especially if it involves setting
> the reader at a specific distance from the main character.
Why is it always easy when you write things like that?
But what about penetration? How do the two work together? And now that I
think about it, my mind comes up with a myriad of scenelets and
situations where you could get similar effects with completely different
viewpoints. I think I need to ponder that a bit more.
> >I think a book with a single strong protagonist would be suited to
> >first/third, whereas something that's less character focussed, has a
> >large group of worthwhile protagonists and might span epic amounts of
> >space and/or time might be better suited for multiple thirds or omni.
>
> I don't think so. I don't think viewpoints line up this neatly.
Well, nothing *ever* lines up other than in nine-and-sixty ways, and you
couldn't possibly call the result *neat* - but I think I've got a corner
of something here. I don't have an appropriate fragment at hand
(Yeeehaw! I've got way too many fragments as it is), nor can I think of
an example; but if you begin your epic novel in first or tight third;
and the character(s) I rooted for and fevered with die halfway through
the book, and the focus shifts to someone else, I feel cheated, and I
don't invest as much in a character halfway through a book if the one I
was following has just died a horrible death. I just remember an
example: Mists of Avalon, which, IIRC, is multiple firsts. When the
third person came along who wrote and thought exactly like the first, I
put it aside. One of less than twenty books I never finished, and
entirely a viewpoint problem.
> In other words, you can do any of the above things -- character-centered,
> plot-focussed, ensemble cast, epic -- in whichever viewpoint you want. I
> think some viewpoints currently tend to be used more often for specific
> sorts of fiction, but I think that's more a matter of current literary
> fashion than anything else.
I'm too busy trying to write well to follow 'fashions.' Being the
unfashionable person I am, (err make that 'not interested in fashions')
I only catch fashions when they're going out of- so I don't bother. But
maybe this is what you describe above as 'distance from the main
character' or at least ties into it.
> The potential problem I see is that you've been disengaging the earlier
> parts of the book. You may be able to tell the story in multiple
> tight-thirds, and you may be able to tell it in omniscient, but I think
> you're likely to have a difficult time making a mix of both of them work
> for the book as a whole, even if they do work on a scene-to-scene basis.
> So you'll probably have to decide on one thing or the other. Although it
> might work if you set up "omniscient viewpoint" as if it were another one
> of your multiple-viewpoints, and rotated it in the same way you do for
> each of the viewpoint characters.
I wasn't planning to mix them. Due to the extremely ugly nature of the
early bits I had joyfully thrown each and every omniscient part out -
and only now do I realise that it wasn't the fault of omni per se, and
that I *can* write decent omni. There's several years between the first
and last chapters, after all.
It might be easier if I wrote the whole book anew. Which I know I won't
do, because there's a myriad of characters and scenes and dialogues that
work, that I like, and that I want to keep. But if I have little
knowledge of finishing books, I have even less of editing them - and
that's what this book needs, a complete going over, salvaging the
salvagable bits, pointing out the structural weaknesses (one of which I
found a while ago - the beginning points towards a completely different
story than the other three quarters really *are* about) etc etc. The
more I learn, the less I am willing to submit it 'as is' - but I *like*
the story, and the characters.
> The main characterization problem for me was that in sloppy-omniscient, it
> was much too easy to jump to somebody's head when I wanted the reader to
> know what they were thinking. Consequently, I didn't have to work at
> making them individuals on the *outside* -- they all got seen from the
> inside sooner or later.
Ah. Something I can happily say was not my problem. My problem was that
I jumped aroud to the person who I thought was best qualified, or could
most easily, describe something. The effect was that I failed to
characterise them by the way they interact with their environments,
there was so much focus on the outside that the characters took second
place. A related problem, methinks.
> Structurally -- with a sloppy-omniscient, jump-around-whenever-it-suits-me
> viewpoint, I didn't have to think about how and when it would be most
> effective to have my POV find out about stuff that happened off-stage.
Nothing ever *is* off-stage in that type of viewpoint, though, is it?
Even something that happened a long time ago to one of your characters
can easily be presented in his memories *as it happened then* and
because everybody's opinion is equally valid for story purposes, there
is no pacing involved at all?
One of the things I found very difficult to learn was that things happen
offstage, and it's ok. Neither the protagonist _nor the reader_ need to
know every single bit of action that happens at any point during the
time and in the space the story covers, even if it touches the story
somewhere. I wanted to tell *everything*. Part of that may be because of
the way the story was created - I did a lot more planning, so I *knew*
what was happening, and knew who the bad guys were (my characters
didn't, though). In the current attack novel (first draft finished) and
its sequel, cautiously dubbed 'the advance novel' because it moves
forward, only not very boldly right now) are tight third; and because I
was writing them alongside the story as it unfolds from the beginning, I
have *no* idea what the antagonists are up to, and can only see it (and
write it down) as if happens to my main characters. They speculate from
time to time, and so do I - but I don't know. In many ways, that's very
good fr me.
> I already mentioned Watson -- Holmes is clearly the protagonist, but he'd
> make a *horrible* viewpoint character, egotistical and unsympathetic, plus
> that would give away the whole solution well in advance.
Giving away the solution is an explanation I can live with. But would
he really have made such a bad viewpoint character? Difficult to write,
certainly, for he is forever examining *everything*; has little patience
with the rest of humanity, and is feverishly driven by the search for
*something*. I think, in the hands of a skillful writer, the tragic
nature of Sherlock Holmes as a person might come out much better than it
does when viewed through the eyes of Watson. Maybe - no, almost
certainly, not suited to the type of mystery storythey are now - but
*bad*? Holmes, like most people, I am sure, would be a hero in his own
head. I can think of many characters I like but still wouldn't want to
invite into my life - and Holmes would probably be one of them.
>A lot of classic
> mysteries follow the same pattern -- the viewpoint character is the
> sidekick, allowing the detective to be brilliant without spoiling
> everything for the reader. ISTR reading a few mainstream novels that
> follow a similar pattern -- the outsider/observer watching and recording
> the doings of the protagonist(s). It's a way of getting a bit of distance
> from a protagonist who might be irritating or unsympathetic up close, but
> who isn't nearly so bad when seen through the eyes of someone else (who
> can make explicit allowances, and whose usually-obvious-liking for the
> irritating protagonist [like Watson's for Holmes] makes us think there
> must be more to him than all his off-putting characteristics).
Thge opposite also applies, of course. Why does a nice, helpful person
hang around a total bastard? Relationships such as that are almost
always two-sided; and it could be that the sidekick paints a much darker
picture in order that *he* can shine all the better. Seeing the other
side might paint a different, but not necessarily less interesting
picture.
<Sigh>
I know why my backbrain insisted on thinking about viewpoint issues and
how to deal with a character who's been out of action for several
centuries and what you need to do when several of your viewpoint
charcters end up dead, or only important for a little while.
I've been attacked in the nastiest possible manner by 'Immortality's
Deep Road' with a protagonist who isn't a very nice person at all. Think
Nazgul. As he's immortal, he was banished into a sleep that was supposed
to last until eternity, but the guy casting it got two details slightly
wrong; so the parameters of the spell remain fulfilled when he is woken
up by an archaeological team. Already (which is one of the reasons I'd
love to squash this attack) I realise that it needs a lot more planning,
because I *can't* just write this one sequantially, I've got the scene
of the banishment, where everybody ends up dead (or sleeping). I need
something to go before that to show that the drastic actions of
banishment were *justified* because the immortals in question did very
nasty things indeed. I then need some of the thoughts of my main
character while he's asleep - he dreams, and in his dreams, something
changes - was willing to write up the archeological team, but quickly
realised that they're only a window dressing - while I need to show the
scene because it's important to the story, and it needs *somebody's
viewpoint* all of those neat and interesting characters seem to file out
of the story without leaving much trace, and am left with my main
character who cannot - and does not want to - relate with those people.
So enter characters, scene, exeunt - and I get the feeling that omni
(which is consistent) is a MUCH better choice for this than multiples
would be. If you give a character a viewpoint in multiple third, I would
expect to see him again; or otherwise disappointed (and asking myself
'what is this guy doing here')
Bleh. Not what I need. Now excuse me, I must go and find a man to see
about some anti-histamines.
Catja
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I already mentioned Watson -- Holmes is clearly the protagonist, but he'd
> make a *horrible* viewpoint character, egotistical and unsympathetic, plus
> that would give away the whole solution well in advance. A lot of classic
> mysteries follow the same pattern -- the viewpoint character is the
> sidekick, allowing the detective to be brilliant without spoiling
> everything for the reader. ISTR reading a few mainstream novels that
> follow a similar pattern -- the outsider/observer watching and recording
> the doings of the protagonist(s). It's a way of getting a bit of distance
> from a protagonist who might be irritating or unsympathetic up close, but
> who isn't nearly so bad when seen through the eyes of someone else (who
> can make explicit allowances, and whose usually-obvious-liking for the
> irritating protagonist [like Watson's for Holmes] makes us think there
> must be more to him than all his off-putting characteristics).
I just went back to reading Le Carre' and his latest book just blew me
away, on several counts but most relevantly in the use of POV. The main
character doesn't get his own POV until a good third of the novel (which
is largish) has gone, and the viewpoint characters are two - as it turns
out - not very important characters. They both have radically wrong
ideas on the main character and other important things; both think
rather indulgently of themselves, they line up their failings but deep
down forgive themselves. The reader, however, is slowly, softly, subtly
brought to the realization that they are really very despicable people,
and that most of what they have been telling must be distrusted.
The effect is stunning. It is somehow much more poignant to come slowly
to the realization of who are the real heroes.
He's also _great_ at description and manages to convey a whole moral
universe and a great deal of supressed outrage with just one adjective.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Mary K. Kuhner
>but if you begin your epic novel in first or tight third;
>and the character(s) I rooted for and fevered with die halfway through
>the book, and the focus shifts to someone else, I feel cheated, and I
>don't invest as much in a character halfway through a book if the one I
>was following has just died a horrible death.
The usual trick for cueing this is to kill the POV character off
*right away*, within a chapter or two; often at the end of the
prologue. Then at least you know what you're in for.
It's not a device I personally like. I put down Lindholm and
Brust's _The Gypsy_ and never picked it up again when they did that
to me. But clearly it's not impossible to make it work. Stephen
King pulls it off sometimes, I think best in _'Salem's Lot_.
It probably is easier to do cast-of-thousands either in omni or
in first or tight third from a survivor's POV.
>example: Mists of Avalon, which, IIRC, is multiple firsts. When the
>third person came along who wrote and thought exactly like the first, I
>put it aside. One of less than twenty books I never finished, and
>entirely a viewpoint problem.
Yikes, that would drive me crazy. But it's not just that first-person
was the wrong POV for you here, but that you didn't believe in the
narrative voices--this wouldn't have worked whether they died off
or not, and in the long run probably wouldn't have worked even with
a single first-person POV.
First person really points up any weaknesses in one's ability to do
a good narrative voice, and multiple-first points them up with
glaring neon signs....
>It might be easier if I wrote the whole book anew. Which I know I won't
>do, because there's a myriad of characters and scenes and dialogues that
>work, that I like, and that I want to keep. But if I have little
>knowledge of finishing books, I have even less of editing them - and
>that's what this book needs, a complete going over, salvaging the
>salvagable bits, pointing out the structural weaknesses (one of which I
>found a while ago - the beginning points towards a completely different
>story than the other three quarters really *are* about) etc etc. The
>more I learn, the less I am willing to submit it 'as is' - but I *like*
>the story, and the characters.
One practical thing that helps me greatly is to split the story into
many, many files (or loose pieces of paper, if you work that way). It
is daunting to try to find and revise parts of a huge file. I always
feel as though there's this mass of text hanging off my cursor,
dragging me down. Maybe this is just me, I don't know, but I think
there are practical benefits as well--it is much easier to reorder
scenes if they are in separate files.
Having someone read the thing, even in its ugly form, also helps me,
but some people find this pure poison, so be careful. What I
want from rough-draft readers is generalities: this part was
exciting, this was boring, I felt lost here. Ask them gently not
to cross t's or dot i's, since the specific fixes probably won't
survive into the next draft anyway.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Patricia C. Wrede
green...@cix.co.uk (Catja Pafort) writes:
>But what about penetration? How do the two work together? And now that I
>think about it, my mind comes up with a myriad of scenelets and
>situations where you could get similar effects with completely different
>viewpoints. I think I need to ponder that a bit more.
"Similar effects" is not the *same* effects. It's like Twain's comment about
the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.
Pentration isn't the same as emotional distance. In tight-third person, you
have high penetration of one character's thoughts and emotions, and you are
placing your reader up-close-and-personal with that character. In omniscient,
you can have high penetration *without* that closeness -- you can give the
reader the character's thoughts and emotions, but still keep him at a certain
distance, because the omniscient narrator can simply describe/explain/tell the
reader what the character is thinking/feeling, without the reader having to
actually watch or experience what the character is going through. (One doesn't
*need* to do it this way, of course; omniscient can pretty much make up its own
rules. But it seems to be a common omniscient technique.)
>example: Mists of Avalon, which, IIRC, is multiple firsts. When the
>third person came along who wrote and thought exactly like the first, I
>put it aside. One of less than twenty books I never finished, and
>entirely a viewpoint problem.
Viewpoint, or characterization? Unless you're doing a series of telpathic
clones as first-person POVs, having three in a row who write and think exactly
like each other seems to me to be as much a failure of characterization as of
viewpoint -- probably *more* a failure of characterization.
>It might be easier if I wrote the whole book anew. Which I know I won't
>do, because there's a myriad of characters and scenes and dialogues that
>work, that I like, and that I want to keep. But if I have little
>knowledge of finishing books, I have even less of editing them - and
>that's what this book needs, a complete going over, salvaging the
>salvagable bits, pointing out the structural weaknesses (one of which I
>found a while ago - the beginning points towards a completely different
>story than the other three quarters really *are* about) etc etc. The
>more I learn, the less I am willing to submit it 'as is' - but I *like*
>the story, and the characters.
Is the book finished? If not, first do that. Finish it.
*Then*...well, it sounds as if you need to rework the whole thing. There tend
to be two basic approaches to this, depending on the writer, the story, and how
much work it needs.
First, there's the throw-it-out-and-start-over approach. This is not actually
quite as drastic as it sounds, because what you actually do is to open a new
file, start writing, and copy-and-paste the good bits from the original work as
appropriate. Since "the good bits" can quite easily be whole scenes or even
chapters, progress can be much more rapid than you might think, and you aren't
as likely to lose the stuff you're fondest of as you would be if you really
*did* start over from scratch.
Second, there's the piecemeal-fix-up approach. This is the one where you take
the existing ms. and go through it looking for weak spots and fixing them as
you catch them. You don't have to work in any particular order or direction;
some folks find it most useful to start at the end of the book and work
backward, in order to make themselves look at it more objectively.
Either of these can be done with the cold-storage approach, where you dump the
ms. in a drawer for one to six months, until you don't remember it clearly any
more and can come to it with a completely fresh eye (or at least, a
mostly-fresher eye). If you already know you have consistency and continuity
problems, I tend to recommend fixing those before putting the ms. in cold
storage, while you still remember which thing you want to be the right choice
and where they all are.
>> Structurally -- with a sloppy-omniscient, jump-around-whenever-it-suits-me
>> viewpoint, I didn't have to think about how and when it would be most
>> effective to have my POV find out about stuff that happened off-stage.
>
>Nothing ever *is* off-stage in that type of viewpoint, though, is it?
Exactly. Which is why I never had to worry about how to handle off-stage stuff
-- there *wasn't* any. So I never had to think about it, and I didn't learn
how to use it.
>Even something that happened a long time ago to one of your characters
>can easily be presented in his memories *as it happened then* and
>because everybody's opinion is equally valid for story purposes, there
>is no pacing involved at all?
Oh, there's pacing, but it's of a different sort. In tight-third, you have one
central character moving through the story; you adjust pacing by controlling
how fast or slowly he moves (more or less). In omniscient or multiple POV, you
have a whole bunch of characters moving around at different speeds and levels
of activity; you adjust pacing by choosing where to put your focus -- who the
viewpoint is, or who the narrator looks at.
>One of the things I found very difficult to learn was that things happen
>offstage, and it's ok.
Sometimes, it's better than OK -- a little ambiguity can add a lot to a story,
depending on where and what it is.
>> I already mentioned Watson -- Holmes is clearly the protagonist, but he'd
>> make a *horrible* viewpoint character, egotistical and unsympathetic, plus
>> that would give away the whole solution well in advance.
>
>Giving away the solution is an explanation I can live with. But would
>he really have made such a bad viewpoint character?
He certainly did when Doyle tried it. And in those particular stories, giving
away the solution in advance would wreck a lot of the tension. Part of the
*point* is that they're puzzles, and the reader is supposed to be trying to
guess why Holmes asked about the significance of the dog in the nighttime and
what all the implications are.
You could, certainly, write a police-procedural sort of story from the POV of a
Holmes-like character, but they wouldn't be the same stories, and I really
doubt they'd still be in print over a hundred years later.
>So enter characters, scene, exeunt - and I get the feeling that omni
>(which is consistent) is a MUCH better choice for this than multiples
>would be. If you give a character a viewpoint in multiple third, I would
>expect to see him again; or otherwise disappointed (and asking myself
>'what is this guy doing here')
Why can't you do the whole thing in tight-third from the POV of your
Nazgul-like anti-hero? It sounds, from your description, as if he's the main
interest and focus of the story, and he certainly has the principle stake in
everything that you've described thus far. The story you described seems to me
as if it would be much more powerful as a single tight-third than it would as
omni or multiple; I can picture several equally fascinating ways you could take
it. Plus, there's the old principle of telling the story from the POV of the
outsider, who has to figure out the cultural stuff that everybody else
knows...and you can't get much more of an outsider than somebody who's been in
some kind of stasis spell for a couple of thousand years.
Patricia C. Wrede
Dan Goodman
news:20020425172615...@mb-fg.aol.com:
> First, there's the throw-it-out-and-start-over approach. This is not
> actually quite as drastic as it sounds, because what you actually do
> is to open a new file, start writing, and copy-and-paste the good bits
> from the original work as appropriate.
More drastic variations of this include:
Print the old stuff out, and retype from copy. Don't copy-and-paste
_anything_; regard every sentence with suspicion.
Redo it from memory.
Elizabeth Shack
wrote:
>Mine usually impart information while walking from one place to
>another. There's a lot of walking around in towns in pairs in my WIP.
I'm editing chapter 5 right now, and just hit a walking scene (one of
many in the novel): "This was a wide road, but the number of people
out was quite large so it was very crowded. There was lots of
description around. Some shops, various people."
I had put in a few details but I'd forgotten to take out the
placeholder. :)
One thing I'm going to need to check sometime, is whether the time it
takes to get places is consistant. I think I have some very short
conversations and some very long ones that take the same distance.
Some of this has the POV char lost in her own thoughts, or noting that
they can't continue their conversation because people might overhear,
but most of the time I just haven't checked to see if the characters
must be plodding along or sprinting.
--
Elizabeth Shack
eas...@earthlink.net
Been out of town. Many posts to catch up on.
Elizabeth Shack
wrote:
>Have you read any Barbara Paul? There's one of her books in which the ending
>depends on the reader having seen the villain do something, so that the reader
>knows what the consequences of the heroes' next actions are going to be, even
>though they're never shown. It's a brilliant, chilling job of projecting stuff
>out past the end of the book.
Do you recall the title? I hate knowing what the villain's up to, but
maybe I just haven't read a good book that did that (or a book where
it was actually important that the reader knew).
Elizabeth Shack
>Mine, alas, tend to impart information in little offices. No props, no
>scenery. It's exceedingly annoying. The latest round of it I've
The last last time my characters had a conversation in a little
office, they were drawing a diagram on a slate. I suspect that scene
still makes no sense, but my readers seemed not to get too confused.
The current little office has some details about setting (finally!
only in chapter 5).
>managed to spice up with the protag musing on random quotes from an
>invented folktale which I don't know the end of. Ought to work on that
>before my protag gets tempted to muse on the end of it...
Maybe the end was lost somewhere in the depths of history.
Joann Zimmerman
eas...@nospam.earthlink.net says...
> On Mon, 22 Apr 2002 05:32:07 +0200, Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org>
> wrote:
>
> >Mine usually impart information while walking from one place to
> >another. There's a lot of walking around in towns in pairs in my WIP.
>
> I'm editing chapter 5 right now, and just hit a walking scene (one of
> many in the novel): "This was a wide road, but the number of people
> out was quite large so it was very crowded. There was lots of
> description around. Some shops, various people."
>
> I had put in a few details but I'd forgotten to take out the
> placeholder. :)
This suggests that placeholders should be delimited by some unique
feature.
I've always used ### . Easy to search, totally unique, and stands out
visually.
You could also do <description here> .
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <3cc9a91e...@news.earthlink.net>,
>eas...@nospam.earthlink.net says...
>> On Mon, 22 Apr 2002 05:32:07 +0200, Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Mine usually impart information while walking from one place to
>> >another. There's a lot of walking around in towns in pairs in my WIP.
>>
>> I'm editing chapter 5 right now, and just hit a walking scene (one of
>> many in the novel): "This was a wide road, but the number of people
>> out was quite large so it was very crowded. There was lots of
>> description around. Some shops, various people."
>>
>> I had put in a few details but I'd forgotten to take out the
>> placeholder. :)
>
>This suggests that placeholders should be delimited by some unique
>feature.
>
>I've always used ### . Easy to search, totally unique, and stands out
>visually.
>
>You could also do <description here> .
I just type
mrk
.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<snip>
> Multiple first *needn't* be sloppy, but it's a little
>unusual as a choice of viewpoint/structure.
So, you know how sometimes something just jumps out at
you...? :) <fx: whistles innocently>
Would you happen to have any handy hints on how to do
non-sloppy multiple first?
Mary
...oh... no reason...
Karen Leonard
I think one of Brin's Uplift ones was in that...maybe more than one,
come to think of it. Um, the one with the whales, I think, and the ones
that took place on the world that was off-limits and the people were
demonstrating that society is more than the sum of its parts (at least
sometimes) might be.
They're not next to me, and I'm disinclined to rummage the house to
check, but that's what I remember about them.
Best,
Karen
Patricia C. Wrede
writes:
>Would you happen to have any handy hints on how to do
>non-sloppy multiple first?
I haven't done it myself -- I'm still trying to get a handle on plain old
tight-third multiple -- but I know who has. Go look at George Turner's
DROWNING TOWERS. It's a tour de force -- it slides around in time, it has a
tight-third frame story, and the body of the book is in multiple firsts, and it
works *beautifully*.
I think that a large part of what makes it first is 1) having narrators who
have distinctive -- and distinctively different -- voices, and 2) paying
careful attention to the multiple structure, so that you reinforce the fact
that this is a new first-person narrator now by providing some pattern of
changes that the reader can recognize (at least subliminally). But this is
just me spouting off -- as I said, I haven't done it myself, so I may be all
wet.
Are you in process on something that's multiple-firsts, or is it just something
that attacked your backbrain out of nowhere and now has to be beaten back into
its proper place in the queue?
Patricia C. Wrede
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
kleo...@hiline.net (Karen Leonard) wrote:
Thanks, that's useful. I'm sure I've got a copy of at least
one of the Uplift books, somewhere around here, and it might
be that one. I'll have a look.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> In article <aack9r$hbj$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> writes:
>
> >Would you happen to have any handy hints on how to do
> >non-sloppy multiple first?
>
> I haven't done it myself -- I'm still trying to get a
>handle on plain old tight-third multiple
But that's a piece of cake. Easy as pie. <grins, ducks
*just* too late, and receives a smart smack upside the head>
>-- but I know who has. Go look at George Turner's
> DROWNING TOWERS. It's a tour de force -- it slides around
>in time, it has a tight-third frame story, and the body of
>the book is in multiple firsts, and it works *beautifully*.
Okay, I know I haven't got that one; I'll get it.
> I think that a large part of what makes it first is 1)
>having narrators who have distinctive -- and distinctively
>different -- voices, and 2) paying careful attention to the
>multiple structure, so that you reinforce the fact
> that this is a new first-person narrator now by providing
>some pattern of changes that the reader can recognize (at
>least subliminally). But this is just me spouting off -- as
>I said, I haven't done it myself, so I may be all wet.
I'm always impressed by the way you fillet this stuff and lay
it out for inspection. And I don't think it necessarily
matters if you haven't done it yourself - you've still
observed it being done.
> Are you in process on something that's multiple-firsts, or
>is it just something that attacked your backbrain out of
>nowhere and now has to be beaten back into its proper place
>in the queue?
Place in the queue? Oh, I wish! :)
No, it's here, it's now, it's a pain in the butt...
This is (so far) 230K of something that _refuses_ to be
written as anything except multiple first, and god knows I've
tried.
It's all first draft, so I suppose I shouldn't be worrying
too much yet, but... As you say above, this form needs to
have different and distinctive voices, and so far they're not
as distinguishable as they need to be.
Part of that is because I've been working so hard to get down
/what/ happens that I haven't always paid attention to how
it's being told.
But I do have a worrying conviction that I can't do multiple
first, it's too difficult.
It's things like your point (2), structure, and having some
kind of subliminal *cue* to put people inside the right head
every time the story switches -- that's what I need. More of
that stuff!
Again, I don't think it /ought/ to be a problem in second
draft. Theoretically. <whimper>.
For one thing, the voices are done as different documents,
and can be headed appropriately, so there's a whacking big
reader-clue that We've Changed Heads Now, People. All the
same, I'd like to add in the subliminals as well. I
think I have a little of it -- I'd noticed that 'Voice A' has
a habit of starting off with a paragraph of generalisation,
before getting down to talking about What Happened Next.
And 'Voice C' is very terse (well, when I remember, and don't
woffle on. :)
'Voice B' is slightly more problematic, since in A's and C's
texts she has one (reported) voice, but her own sections are
told long after the fact, and her voice has changed by then.
So maybe I have A, B(i) and B(ii), and C. Which ought to
work. But...
It was just the point where I glanced way back in the text at
something I wrote long enough ago to have forgotten it -- and
I couldn't tell which voice it was in. :-(
If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in second!",
what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can always
get a job at Burger King"?
Mary
twitching, slightly
Catja Pafort
> > I'm editing chapter 5 right now, and just hit a walking scene (one of
> > many in the novel): "This was a wide road, but the number of people
> > out was quite large so it was very crowded. There was lots of
> > description around. Some shops, various people."
> >
> > I had put in a few details but I'd forgotten to take out the
> > placeholder. :)
>
> This suggests that placeholders should be delimited by some unique
> feature.
>
> I've always used ### . Easy to search, totally unique, and stands out
> visually.
>
> You could also do <description here> .
I use a number of tags in my dissertation - but in fiction, I generally
restort to Word's hidden text feature (version 5 on Mac). It's right
there on the screen - in 48pt red gothic, if you have to - but it won't
print out, so embarassment can be avoided easily.
Catja
Brian M. Scott
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
[...]
>For one thing, the voices are done as different documents,
>and can be headed appropriately, so there's a whacking big
>reader-clue that We've Changed Heads Now, People. All the
>same, I'd like to add in the subliminals as well. I
>think I have a little of it -- I'd noticed that 'Voice A' has
>a habit of starting off with a paragraph of generalisation,
>before getting down to talking about What Happened Next.
>And 'Voice C' is very terse (well, when I remember, and don't
>woffle on. :)
>'Voice B' is slightly more problematic, since in A's and C's
>texts she has one (reported) voice, but her own sections are
>told long after the fact, and her voice has changed by then.
>So maybe I have A, B(i) and B(ii), and C. Which ought to
>work. But...
>It was just the point where I glanced way back in the text at
>something I wrote long enough ago to have forgotten it -- and
>I couldn't tell which voice it was in. :-(
Were you jumping into the middle of a section? From your description
that might have reduced the identifiability a bit. It also sounds to
me as if the differences between A and C can probably be sharpened up
fairly easily on a second pass. It's B(i) and B(ii) that sound a bit
trickier to manage. Beyond me, certainly; I find first person
difficult enough with *one* voice. (I almost always fall into the
same voice, rather mannered and self-indulgent.)
[...]
Brian
Geoff Wedig
The Uplift books tend to be written in a lot of everything. The latter
includes such strangeness as a first-person plural account (group being)
that becomes first person singular later (an added member of the group takes
control) Other parts are written in first person conversational, third
person, camera eye, etc. I don't think he uses omnicient much, though.
Each section tends to be focussed on a single character's thoughts, if any
thoughts are used (which seems the defining point between tight, camera eye
and omniscient third)
Geoff
Kate Schaefer
news:aack9r$hbj$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk...
Eleanor Arnason has an extremely idiosyncratic use of multiple
first-person in the May 2002 Asimov's, a story called "Knapsack Poems."
I cannot quite decide if I like the story or not, but I think she makes
multiple first-person work. The work she makes it do -- this is not a
spoiler, since it's revealed in the first sentence of the story -- is
convey something of the oddness of an eight-bodied person.
TLambs1138
> Go look at George Turner's
>DROWNING TOWERS. It's a tour de force -- it slides around in time, it has a
>tight-third frame story, and the body of the book is in multiple firsts, and
>it
>works *beautifully*.
>
Splendid book in its own right too. There's also a book (DEATH OF HONOR? Joe
Clifford Faust?) that does multiple first, though at first I missed it--then I
realized that duh, the name of the pov character is the character header. Not
one of my better Homer Simpson moments, I might add.
But the Turner book is much, much better.
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
"Fun will now commence!" - Seven of Nine
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
I was.
>From your description that might have reduced the
>identifiability a bit.
It didn't ought to - or at least, in my mind, I don't think
it should. I think I should be able to pick up the book and
know immediately who's speaking.
>It also sounds to me as if the differences between A and C
>can probably be sharpened up fairly easily on a second pass.
> It's B(i) and B(ii) that sound a bit trickier to manage.
You're right about A and C; they have very different aims and
methods, and ways they think about the world. And they're
both different from B(i) in obvious ways.
Oddly enough, it isn't B(i) and B(ii) that's the problem.
It's B(ii) and A. When she's B(i), she's younger than A, and
they differentiate nicely. When she's B(ii), she's older
than A is during the main action, and they tend to end up
sounding very similar.
That they're similar people under it all is actually a key
thing about the book, so I may have shot my own foot off
here.
>Beyond me, certainly; I find first person difficult enough
>with *one* voice. (I almost always fall into the
> same voice, rather mannered and self-indulgent.)
But that would be very good if you wanted to contrast it with
another one, because it's very distinctive.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Schaefer) wrote:
That I'd read anyway, just for the strangeness of it. This
is what SF's *about.* :)
So, I see we need two terms here; 'multiple first' just won't
hack it. We need something corresponding to 'multiple
third'; the first person story told from a number of
different viewpoints. And then something for hive-minds,
eight-bodied persons, Rat-Kings, and other entities for whom
straight-forward definitions of 'I' do not apply...
Mary
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> So, I see we need two terms here; 'multiple first' just won't
> hack it. We need something corresponding to 'multiple
> third'; the first person story told from a number of
> different viewpoints. And then something for hive-minds,
> eight-bodied persons, Rat-Kings, and other entities for whom
> straight-forward definitions of 'I' do not apply...
Heh.
Someday maybe I'll finish the first person omni which might also be
first person dominant personality of the hive. . . .
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Dreams are not lost, they merely fall beneath the ashes of what is left
To the soul from where it starts to where it catches.
- "Matter," Josh Joplin Group
Dan Goodman
news:aaeslk$jml$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk:
> So, I see we need two terms here; 'multiple first' just won't
> hack it. We need something corresponding to 'multiple
> third'; the first person story told from a number of
> different viewpoints. And then something for hive-minds,
> eight-bodied persons, Rat-Kings, and other entities for whom
> straight-forward definitions of 'I' do not apply...
It gets more complicated and complex than that. This particular eight-
bodied person has a mind in each body, and they can argue among
him/her/itsselves. (Dissociative Identity Disorder -- the new standard
name for what used to be called Multiple Personality -- might get
interesting.)
And -- there's a short story (by Robert Silverberg, I think) which is in
first person singular. Nice and straightforward, except that the "I"
doesn't remember which of several minds and associated bodies it's supposed
to wear.
Patricia C. Wrede
writes:
>But I do have a worrying conviction that I can't do multiple
>first, it's too difficult.
I don't see why it ought, inherently, to be any worse than doing multiple
thirds. Which I believe you characterized earlier as "easy as pie," if I'm not
mistaken... :)
>For one thing, the voices are done as different documents,
>and can be headed appropriately, so there's a whacking big
>reader-clue that We've Changed Heads Now, People. All the
>same, I'd like to add in the subliminals as well. I
>think I have a little of it -- I'd noticed that 'Voice A' has
>a habit of starting off with a paragraph of generalisation,
>before getting down to talking about What Happened Next.
>And 'Voice C' is very terse (well, when I remember, and don't
>woffle on. :)
That's one sort of thing -- giving each voice a pattern to its openings, like A
always starting with generalizations and B always opening with some visual
description and C always starting with a complaint about something and so on.
But you can also use patterns of repetition in the way you rotate the voices.
They can be harder to stick to, if the needs of the plot move more toward one
or two characters and away from another, and in anything long (I have *no* idea
why I am assuming this is long...:)) you probably don't want anything as
obvious as A-B-C-A-B-C anyway. But if one of the characters is primary, you
can do things like A-B-A-C-A-B...and if you establish it solidly enough, then
you can get even *more* mileage out of breaking the pattern if and when it
becomes necessary for plot reasons. (I am now, for some ungodly reason,
tempted to go look up the rhyme pattern for sonnets and use it as a scheme for
rotating the viewpoints in a multiple-POV novel. I think I had better go lie
down for a while...)
Stylistic differences, such as word choice and sentence structure and syntax, I
tend to lump under "individual voice" because they're part of how the
characters sound. But they go right up there as a way of tipping off the
reader -- you would never, ever mix up three first-person narrators if one of
them sounded like Huckleberry Finn, one of them sounded like Obi-Wan Kenobi,
and one of them sounded like Yoda.
I wouldn't depend too strongly on the headers; some of us uncooperative readers
tend to skip them, in which case they don't provide any cues at all. But
they'll work excellently well for people who *don't* skip them.
>It was just the point where I glanced way back in the text at
>something I wrote long enough ago to have forgotten it -- and
>I couldn't tell which voice it was in. :-(
Oh, dear.
Do you perhaps need to stop and get these people -- and the difference in their
voices -- clearer in your head before you go galloping onward? Or is this the
sort of thing you don't have trouble fixing later? I have a hard time
imagining how you'd fix anything as integral as voice in retrospect, unless you
just rip it all up and do it over; it doesn't seem to be the sort of thing I
can just fiddle with a little here and there.
>If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in second!",
>what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can always
>get a job at Burger King"?
Um..."It's not as hard as making it up from scratch"? Depends on how you feel
about the second draft/revisions phase, I think.
Patricia C. Wrede
WooF
character: mark the shift with extra blank lines, and make the
first word following the shift be the name of the new viewpoint
character, in a sentence in which that character sees or smells
or otherwise senses what's going on -- or thinks or remembers
something. In other words, have the viewpoint character, in the
first sentence after the break, do something that the reader
knows only if the reader is _being_ that character.
That sounds mechanical -- but the reader will find that much
_less_ distracting than reading a paragraph or two after a POV
shift without realizing that there has been a shift.
Stay (reasonably) wicked on Wotansdays,
George H Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Poso
...but what about typographical means?
I'm aware that using typographical means to distinguish
between narrators or settings, in the manner of Ende's
Neverending Story, might be seen as a failure on the part
of the writer to create distinct enough characters... But
readers who have difficulty remembering who the current
narrator is and what s/he has to do with the plot (not that
I know any such readers <whistles nonchalantly>) in a
multiple-POV story might appreciate the extra clue even if
character development succeeds.
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020427201904...@mb-fg.aol.com...
> In article <aadtfs$53m$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> writes:
>
> becomes necessary for plot reasons. (I am now, for some ungodly reason,
> tempted to go look up the rhyme pattern for sonnets and use it as a scheme
for
> rotating the viewpoints in a multiple-POV novel. I think I had better go
lie
> down for a while...)
Shakespearean sonnets use ABAB CDCD EFEF GG,
Petrarcan ones something else (it may be ABBA ABBA
CBBC EE... At least they do if John Donne wrote in the
Petrarcan form.)
And no, don't lie down but write it! I absolutely want to
read, say, a Shakespearean fantasy in sonnet form.
(Yeah, I'm weird that way.) (Or you could write it in the
spirit of the Metaphysicals, using complicated conceits;
not only in the language but base the whole plot on a
conceit... Now *I* have to go lie down.)
> I wouldn't depend too strongly on the headers; some of us uncooperative
readers
> tend to skip them, in which case they don't provide any cues at all. But
> they'll work excellently well for people who *don't* skip them.
Even readers who don't skip may forget the cue half a page
down if it's the *only* one.
> >If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in second!",
> >what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can always
> >get a job at Burger King"?
"My Alpha will catch it"?
Although this assumes you've caught an Alpha first.
.apo
Brooks Moses
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20020427201904...@mb-fg.aol.com...
> > tempted to go look up the rhyme pattern for sonnets and use it as a scheme for
> > rotating the viewpoints in a multiple-POV novel. I think I had better go lie
> > down for a while...)
>
> Shakespearean sonnets use ABAB CDCD EFEF GG,
> Petrarcan ones something else (it may be ABBA ABBA
> CBBC EE... At least they do if John Donne wrote in the
> Petrarcan form.)
And then there's the sort that Pushkin used in _Eugene Onegin_ (and
which is, I think, called an Onegin sonnet, at least by some) -- it goes
through the three possible permutations of two pairs of rhymes, and has
a couplet at the end: specifically, ABAB CCDD EFFE GG.
I wouldn't be completely surprised if Pushkin had done something along
that sort of organization in that novel, actually. I seem to recall
that there was a medium-length poem in which he used a similar sort of
rhyme scheme, and had the stanzas themselves arranged in a sequence
paralleling the scheme. Actually, I think they may have been in groups
that paralleled the scheme, and the groups themselves were in a larger
arrangement, but that may be misremembering too much.
- Brooks
Julian Flood
<mary_gentle wrote
>
> That they're similar people under it all is actually a key
> thing about the book, so I may have shot my own foot off
> here.
Wrong foot. Shoot off character's foot. Make the wound ache. Make her body
different, awkward, clumsy, painful. First words of pov switch can be about
internal landscape, sets internal scene rather than external.
JF
I can resist multiple first... I can ressiiiiisss...
MY WIP: I've just realised -- they're all drunk and it's in third so it's...
wait for it, wait for it....
Catja Pafort
Del Cotter
Poso <po...@kolumbus.thoushaltnotspam.fi> said:
>Disclaimer: This is probably a dumb and naive suggestion.
>...but what about typographical means?
If you do, make sure the publisher doesn't try to be too subtle. As
many posters here know, Dorothy did this for _The Interior Life_, but
somebody at Baen overestimated the ability of readers to distinguish two
closely-related fonts. I could do it, but it was hard.
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:lyForward:RobertRankinTheBrentfordChainstoreMassacre:TerryPratc
hettTheTruth:JeromeKJeromeThreeMenInABoat:WilliamGoldmanThePrincessBride
ToRead:AlastairReynoldsRevelationSpace:JohnCrowleyLittle,Big:RobertCharl
Karen Leonard
It's not _Sundiver_. Other than that, memory fails.
Wonder if he'll ever do more with that universe?
K.
Karen Leonard
"I can fix it in third!"
(G,D,R)
Karen
Julian Flood
"Karen Leonard" <kleo...@hiline.net> wrote in message
news:3CCC0011...@hiline.net...
Me too.
JF
Show not tell.
Nicola Browne
news:aaeslk$jmk$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk
> > >
> >snip lots
> > Oddly enough, it isn't B(i) and B(ii) that's the problem.
> It's B(ii) and A. When she's B(i), she's younger than A, and
> they differentiate nicely. When she's B(ii), she's older
> than A is during the main action, and they tend to end up
> sounding very similar.
>
> That they're similar people under it all is actually a key
> thing about the book, so I may have shot my own foot off
> here.
If their attitudes are similar can you introduce some irritating
quirk of expression that doesn't require a substantial rewrite.
I wasn't thinking of anything subtle - overuse of a few words/phrases/
favourite expletives/tendencey to tell more than the reader needs to
know/distinctively odd syntax? What if one of them was more visually
aware than the other
or if more knowledgable about certain aspects of the story/life used
more technical language or more precise descriptions of certain things?
Changing the typeface would be easier I think. I can't get my head round
the amount of work involved in editing such a big book.
I dread doing 80k
I 've also tried first person at all, and as I'm struggling at the
moment with two third person narratives I'm not actually qualified
by experience to suggest anything!
BTW is this the real, unreal or surreal Mary Gentle speaking - maybe you
could get one of the others to write the problematic sections: )
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Helen
Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> writes
>>what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can always
>>get a job at Burger King"?
>
>Um..."It's not as hard as making it up from scratch"? Depends on how you feel
>about the second draft/revisions phase, I think.
>
>Patricia C. Wrede
Mine goes something like, "Well you've done the difficult part, now
let's just tweak it a bit."[1]
Of course "tweak" might mean: rearrange the order of three or more
chapters, completely dump the scene with the dragon and the infinitely
long ball of twine, change the sex of the protag throughout and change
it from first person to third, but I manage to fool myself (most of the
time) that the worst part is over. :-)
Helen
[1] This is presumably my internal editor speaking here.
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Neil Barnes
That would be Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach, I
guess.
> Wonder if he'll ever do more with that universe?
>
I hope so. People have pointed out plot holes and other problems galore, but
I like'em. And I love his universe.
--
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
barnacle
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
Neil Barnes
<6VkyQWAN...@baradel.demon.co.uk>:
I really wish I could work this way. I can't leave a paragraph, let alone a
scene, without correcting as I go. And if there's a plot change, the out
goes everything following. This is a frustrating way to work, and I'm trying
with the WIP to at least get the plot down first in some detail. Time will
tell.
But at the moment, the thought of a first, second, third draft... shudder!
Sea Wasp
>
> In article <20020427201904...@mb-fg.aol.com>, Patricia C.
> Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> writes
> >In article <aadtfs$53m$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>, mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> >writes:
> >
> >>If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in second!",
> >>what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can always
> >>get a job at Burger King"?
> >
> >Um..."It's not as hard as making it up from scratch"? Depends on how you feel
> >about the second draft/revisions phase, I think.
> >
> >Patricia C. Wrede
>
> Mine goes something like, "Well you've done the difficult part, now
> let's just tweak it a bit."[1]
>
> Of course "tweak" might mean: rearrange the order of three or more
> chapters, completely dump the scene with the dragon and the infinitely
> long ball of twine, change the sex of the protag throughout and change
> it from first person to third, but I manage to fool myself (most of the
> time) that the worst part is over. :-)
Mine is "I hope I don't have to DO a second draft."
I hate having to re-write stuff; it's not nearly as much fun the
second time through -- I already KNOW what's going to happen.
(soon to be starting the fourth re-write of a novel, but at least
enough time's gone by that I think it will be more like a new story
with some old ideas)
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
Boudewijn Rempt
"My first reader is not always right, and I don't have to incorporate
his every suggestion."?
Or, "I should not start on the next novel before having at least re-read
the previous one."
Or, maybe, "I should not get bogged down in hacking a word generator
for the unknown language the extra woman speaks when not on scene, but
get back to revising."?
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Elizabeth Shack
<jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <3cc9a91e...@news.earthlink.net>,
>eas...@nospam.earthlink.net says...
>> I had put in a few details but I'd forgotten to take out the
>> placeholder. :)
>
>This suggests that placeholders should be delimited by some unique
>feature.
>
>I've always used ### . Easy to search, totally unique, and stands out
>visually.
>
>You could also do <description here> .
Oh, I usually use square brackets. But if I'm writing quickly I tend
to do more integrated comments that don't break the flow of the story.
I always find them again eventually.
Probably the most frequent one is something like: "I don't know," he
said. "We'll have to discuss it more when the author figures out why
the bats are purple instead of green." With that they all left for
the night.
--
Elizabeth Shack
eas...@earthlink.net
Been out of town. Many posts to catch up on.
Patricia C. Wrede
<po...@kolumbus.thoushaltnotspam.fi> writes:
>I'm aware that using typographical means to distinguish
>between narrators or settings, in the manner of Ende's
>Neverending Story, might be seen as a failure on the part
>of the writer to create distinct enough characters... But
>readers who have difficulty remembering who the current
>narrator is and what s/he has to do with the plot (not that
>I know any such readers <whistles nonchalantly>) in a
>multiple-POV story might appreciate the extra clue even if
>character development succeeds.
That's an interesting idea. You might run into publisher difficulties, but I
don't know -- I've never done anything that *I* wanted oddly typeset. So far,
it's been the publisher/production-layout folks who've suggested any things of
that nature.
The part that would make me twitchy would be that, for me, typographical
distinctions are a signal that something much more important and uncommon is
going on than just a viewpoint change. It would invest the different sections
with a lot more significance. That *might* be a useful effect, but if it
isn't...
Patricia C. Wrede
Irina Rempt
> I really wish I could work this way. I can't leave a paragraph, let
> alone a scene, without correcting as I go.
I wish I *could* correct as I went without falling into the Eternally
Recursive Revision Loop. I tried that with the previous WIP and got
bogged down in two (count them) scenes that I couldn't get right.
This time around, it has to seem almost right, and then I can leave it
until later.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. www.valdyas.org/irina
Beginnen can ick, volherden wil ick, volbringhen sal ick.
Irina Rempt
> "My first reader is not always right, and I don't have to incorporate
> his every suggestion."?
Yes, yes, oh, yes.
> Or, "I should not start on the next novel before having at least
> re-read the previous one."
I don't think I suffer from that one.
Dan Goodman
news:20020428153205...@mb-mm.aol.com:
Pat Cadogan's _Synners_ uses this. The situation is a bit different, since
technologically-induced multiple personality is an important part of the
story.
Neil Barnes
<2875391.4...@calcifer.valdyas.org>:
> On Sunday 28 April 2002 19:13 Neil Barnes wrote:
>
>> I really wish I could work this way. I can't leave a paragraph, let
>> alone a scene, without correcting as I go.
>
> I wish I *could* correct as I went without falling into the Eternally
> Recursive Revision Loop. I tried that with the previous WIP and got
> bogged down in two (count them) scenes that I couldn't get right.
>
There you have the reason I've never completed anything of anything of any
length. I didn't say I *liked* working this way :(
> This time around, it has to seem almost right, and then I can leave it
> until later.
I'm trying to work out that way - at least if I have the plot bugs out first
I can expect things to stay reasonably stable.
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
j...@floodsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk (Julian Flood) wrote:
>
> <mary_gentle wrote
>
> >
> > That they're similar people under it all is actually a
>key
> > thing about the book, so I may have shot my own foot off
> > here.
>
> Wrong foot. Shoot off character's foot. Make the wound
>ache. Make her body different, awkward, clumsy, painful.
>First words of pov switch can be about
> internal landscape, sets internal scene rather than
>external.
Thanks, that's a good one; at least for points where their
body awareness *is* significantly different.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this (Helen) wrote:
> In article <20020427201904...@mb-fg.aol.com>,
>Patricia C.
> Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> writes
> >In article <aadtfs$53m$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> >writes:
> >
> >>If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in
>second!",
> >>what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can
>always
> >>get a job at Burger King"?
> >
> >Um..."It's not as hard as making it up from scratch"?
>Depends on how
> you feel
> >about the second draft/revisions phase, I think.
> >
> >Patricia C. Wrede
>
> Mine goes something like, "Well you've done the difficult
>part, now let's just tweak it a bit."[1]
Oh, I like that. Completely mendacious but extremely
reassuring.
> Of course "tweak" might mean: rearrange the order of three
>or more chapters, completely dump the scene with the dragon
>and the infinitely long ball of twine, change the sex of the
>protag throughout and change it from first person to third,
>but I manage to fool myself (most of the time) that the
>worst part is over. :-)
Oh goody, someone else with the same definition of 'revision'
as me. :)
> Helen
>
> [1] This is presumably my internal editor speaking here.
I'm relieved someone else does this. I find myself using
"we" in marginal notes a lot, and it used to freak me out,
wondering if it was the royal plural. <g> Fortunately I
realised it wasn't delusions of grandeur, it was one bit of
my mind talking to another bit - as you say, Editor speaking
to Writer.
And sometimes the occasional whimper from the Internal
Reader, along the lines of "wtf did you mean here?!?" :)
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon) wrote:
> In <aadtfs$53m$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
><mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk>
> > onsendan:
> > This is (so far) 230K of something that _refuses_ to be
> > written as anything except multiple first, and god knows
>I've
> > tried.
>
> There are worse things than multiple first; the entire
>Blessed Novel is multiple first, including two and a half
>instances of first person omniscient,
Glurk. Is first person omniscient, a/the god?
>eight POVs in total, and it's only 67 kwords long. You seem
> to have just _gobs_ of room to do differentiation with.
Looks the other way around to me -- you've got all the stuff
short and close together, so you don't have the room to drift
off into 'neutral' Voice in the middle of long passages.
Rather like novella writing, I would have thought?
Depending, of course, on how novella-writing takes you. The
last one I did was just alternating thirds, A and B, but
having short scenes seemed to make it much easier to get in
and out of distinctive voice.
> > It's all first draft, so I suppose I shouldn't be
>worrying too much
> > yet, but... As you say above, this form needs to have
>different and
> > distinctive voices, and so far they're not as
>distinguishable as they
> > need to be.
>
> How can you tell?
By picking it up and reading a page at random.
>
> > Part of that is because I've been working so hard to get
>down
> > /what/ happens that I haven't always paid attention to
>how
> > it's being told.
> >
> > But I do have a worrying conviction that I can't do
>multiple
> > first, it's too difficult.
>
> Try 'different'; it is that, after all, and if you expect
>it to proceed with the ease of things with which you are
>long familiar, it may prove much a greater trouble to you
>than it needs must.
I think I'm *expecting* it to be hard.
> > It's things like your point (2), structure, and having
>some
> > kind of subliminal *cue* to put people inside the right
>head
> > every time the story switches -- that's what I need.
>More of
> > that stuff!
>
> DAWN, DAY BEFORE THE NIGHT OF YULE
> Munin
>
> Section headings were a big help.
Got section headings, and you're right, they are. But as
Patricia says, some people are just going to suffer momentary
eye-glaze each time they come to one. So I need immediate
text-stuff too.
> > If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in
>second!",
> > what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can
>always
> > get a job at Burger King"?
>
> If you can't tell them apart, you haven't actually
>characterized them, I'd say.
Objectively, of course, that's true. Well, I'm okay telling
everyone apart except A and B(ii), but the trouble is, those
are the ones that get the most screen-time...
>They're not information conduits; they're people.
Oh, they certainly are. I can tell that by the way they
resolutely refuse to cooperate with the synopsis. And by the
way that, if I just write, they'll tell me startling things
about how/why/where/what happens next.
If the miserable sods were only in tight third... <sigh>
>That's the way to think about it. You have to let them run,
>and I seem to recall that when there was a discussion of
>characters getting out of control you were on the 'I can
>always kill them' side of things.
Have to say, I don't remember that discussion at all (but
that'll be my memory, which is fairly fritzed these days).
Can you explicate on 'I can always kill them'? Cos I can't
remember what the terms of the debate were.
>If you want multiple first to work, you have to give them
>their head and enter into a state of trust.
Undoubtedly. But I think that's true for multiple third, and
solo third, too.
I did a whole stack of stuff in *solo* first, a while back;
don't know why the multiple feels like it will be inherently
more difficult to characterise. *Is* third automatically
easier than first?
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
kleo...@hiline.net (Karen Leonard) wrote:
[mg:]
> > If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in
>second!",
> > what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can
>always
> > get a job at Burger King"?
> >
> > Mary
> > twitching, slightly
>
> "I can fix it in third!"
> (G,D,R)
Run very, *very* fast... <g>
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<5a34d26d1f3d22ac1a...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
nicky.m...@btinternet.com (Nicola Browne) wrote:
> "mary_gentle" <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote in
>message
> news:aaeslk$jmk$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk
>
> > > >
> > >snip lots
> > > Oddly enough, it isn't B(i) and B(ii) that's the
>problem.
> > It's B(ii) and A. When she's B(i), she's younger than A,
>and
> > they differentiate nicely. When she's B(ii), she's older
> > than A is during the main action, and they tend to end up
> > sounding very similar.
> >
> > That they're similar people under it all is actually a
>key
> > thing about the book, so I may have shot my own foot off
> > here.
>
> If their attitudes are similar can you introduce some
>irritating quirk of expression that doesn't require a
>substantial rewrite.
If it's irritating, it'll irritate the reader - and me. :)
> I wasn't thinking of anything subtle - overuse of a few
>words/phrases/favourite expletives/tendencey to tell more
>than the reader needs to know/distinctively odd syntax?
I can do that a bit, and it might be an idea if I remembered
to do it in the first para after each change-over. I have
the feeling it has to be quite restrained, though, or it
becomes the equivalent of an actor with an irritating tic.
>What if one of them was more visually aware than the other
> or if more knowledgable about certain aspects of the
>story/life used more technical language or more precise
>descriptions of certain things?
They both do the same thing, and they're both damn good at
it. There are slight differences - one tends to describe
results, one the techniques - but I feel that's a bit subtle.
> Changing the typeface would be easier I think.
Arrrrrrrgh!!!
I do feel that that would be me admitting I can't do the
characterisation. Well, for *me,* it would be.
>I can't get my head round
> the amount of work involved in editing such a big book.
> I dread doing 80k
'Editing' in this case may mean going back to my old method
of 'write the first draft and then THROW IT AWAY! and begin
2nd draft from scratch'.
>
> I 've also tried first person at all, and as I'm struggling
>at the moment with two third person narratives I'm not
>actually qualified by experience to suggest anything!
I don't think experience is necessary, in that sense.
> BTW is this the real, unreal or surreal Mary Gentle
>speaking - maybe you could get one of the others to write
>the problematic sections: )
*snrch*
I may hand it over to the Surreal Mary Gentle, and see if
fishfood hat-stand Mornington Crescent...
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> In article <aadtfs$53m$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> writes:
>
> >But I do have a worrying conviction that I can't do
>multiple
> >first, it's too difficult.
>
> I don't see why it ought, inherently, to be any worse than
>doing multiple thirds. Which I believe you characterized
>earlier as "easy as pie," if I'm not mistaken... :)
Heh.
That's the difference between what one finds instinctively
easy, and things that look as if they need actual work...
Besides, I was hoping you would bite. Yes, I do trail wool
in front of cats; funny you should ask. :-)
> >For one thing, the voices are done as different documents,
> >and can be headed appropriately, so there's a whacking big
> >reader-clue that We've Changed Heads Now, People. All the
> >same, I'd like to add in the subliminals as well. I
> >think I have a little of it -- I'd noticed that 'Voice A'
>has
> >a habit of starting off with a paragraph of
>generalisation,
> >before getting down to talking about What Happened Next.
> >And 'Voice C' is very terse (well, when I remember, and
>don't
> >woffle on. :)
>
> That's one sort of thing -- giving each voice a pattern to
>its openings, like A always starting with generalizations
>and B always opening with some visual description and C
>always starting with a complaint about something and
> so on.
Thanks. I think that would be a good technique, but would it
become irritating for the reader after a point, rather than
providing a cue?
> But you can also use patterns of repetition in the way you
>rotate the voices.
Urgh. My 'rotation' is completely unbalanced... and I
*think* it has to be.
>They can be harder to stick to, if the needs of the plot
>move more toward one or two characters and away from
>another, and in anything long (I have *no* idea
> why I am assuming this is long...:))
Couldn't begin to think why you might... <g>
Contract requires around 170K. I reassure myself with the
fact that the first draft as it stands, so far, contains a
lot of dead-end sub-plots, which can be quietly forgotten on
second draft.
Still isn't going to come in under 200K, though. Miserable
rat-bastard characters insist on it...
>you probably don't want anything as obvious as A-B-C-A-B-C
>anyway. But if one of the characters is primary, you
> can do things like A-B-A-C-A-B...and if you establish it
>solidly enough, then you can get even *more* mileage out of
>breaking the pattern if and when it becomes necessary for
>plot reasons.
One of them *is* primary, very much so. There's lots of A,
with some B(ii) - more of her towards the end of the book,
for some reason - and scatterings of C. (And I realise I
forgot D, but there's as much D as there is C; i.e. not too
much of either.)
In what way would I get something out of breaking a pattern,
though?
>(I am now, for some ungodly reason,
> tempted to go look up the rhyme pattern for sonnets and use
>it as a scheme for rotating the viewpoints in a multiple-POV
>novel. I think I had better go lie down for a while...)
Oh dear. *...must resist...* You are a bad person. :)
> Stylistic differences, such as word choice and sentence
>structure and syntax, I tend to lump under "individual
>voice" because they're part of how the characters sound.
Yup.
>But they go right up there as a way of tipping off
> the reader -- you would never, ever mix up three
>first-person narrators if one of them sounded like
>Huckleberry Finn, one of them sounded like Obi-Wan
> Kenobi, and one of them sounded like Yoda.
<snerk> How true...
Trouble is, people who aren't that different -- who come from
the same levels of the same society -- don't lend themselves
to that violent form of distinction.
I'm not sure why I don't think of this as a problem when I'm
doing dialogue, or even solo first-person, but when it comes
to multiple-first, I'm immediately having kittens.
> I wouldn't depend too strongly on the headers; some of us
>uncooperative readers tend to skip them, in which case they
>don't provide any cues at all. But they'll work excellently
>well for people who *don't* skip them.
Yes... that's one reason why I want some in-text clues right
up there are the start of sections. The trouble is,
ironically, that *I'm* one of the people who skips headers,
as a reader.
> >It was just the point where I glanced way back in the text
>at
> >something I wrote long enough ago to have forgotten it --
>and
> >I couldn't tell which voice it was in. :-(
>
> Oh, dear.
Exactly.
> Do you perhaps need to stop and get these people -- and the
>difference in their voices -- clearer in your head before
>you go galloping onward?
That would be exactly the right suggestion normally, I think.
Trouble is, in this case, I think the people are *too* clear
in my head -- I've had them around for rather longer than I
normally do, and I know way too much about them.
So part of the problem is me putting things in in a kind of
shorthand, because *I* know what they should be sounding
like, so I don't take them time to make it clear to someone
reading the text who *doesn't* know them. And then when I
read back, it isn't there for me either.
The gallop has hit Beecher's Brook this morning, anyway, but
that's because I have a plot-point to untangle. Rat-bastard
plot...
>Or is this the sort of thing you don't have trouble fixing
>later? I have a hard time imagining how you'd fix anything
>as integral as voice in retrospect, unless you
> just rip it all up and do it over; it doesn't seem to be
>the sort of thing I can just fiddle with a little here and
>there.
I probably can't fix it by fiddling, either...
I've been lucky with the last two or three books, in managing
a first draft that was pretty solidly *there.* And then
there was a lot to be done in second draft, but much of it
were nips and tucks, rather than violent excisions and
rewrites.
When I've tried doing this book that way, it hasn't worked.
Boy, it hasn't worked... So I've reverted to the model of
what I did for the first three books I got published -- slap
down a first draft and then throw the damn thing *away.*
This has at least managed to get nine-tenths of a first draft
on paper, so far, which is good, because no other effort has
got me past the 10K mark! I suspect it means the second
draft is going to require a solid third pass over it, drat
it.
> >If the mantra for first draft is "I can fix it in
>second!",
> >what's the mantra for second draft? "Oh well, I can
>always
> >get a job at Burger King"?
>
> Um..."It's not as hard as making it up from scratch"?
:-) Yeah, that'll do.
The second-draft mantra for ASH was, "It's not a bug, it's a
feature!"
>Depends on how you feel about the second draft/revisions
>phase, I think.
Always, so far, been essential to me. I've been used to
automatically assuming that second-draft will be where the
thing itself emerges, to then be polished.
I'm boggled and impressed by the people here who write in
100-word increments, but when they've done it, it's *done.*
I'm going to have a crack at doing it that way some time; see
how it takes me.
Some of it is to do with technology, in my case. I started
getting the very solid first drafts as soon as I went over to
a word processor. That's because it allowed me to revise as
I went along. The first three books I ever did were done on
manual and electric typewriters, with a first draft produced
by that amazing hi-tech device, the fountain pen. Under
those circumstances, 'editing' is confined to the scribble.
And retyping. When you have retyped 210K words twice...
I do notice that a lot of stuff I used to work out in my head
before committing to typewriter, I now work out on-screen.
Probably I should have kept the ability to do it the other
way... :-( You never know when you're going to need those
old tools right at the bottom of the toolbox.
Mary