posted
Read the "narrative voice" topic before you read and comment on this. It's an offshoot of that discussion.
This is the fragment that initially got the narrative voice discussion going. Don't worry if you don't understand everything--it's an excerpt from right in the middle of a story. # Fatty waited outside the infirmary. His twitch was going crazy like it always did when he was pissed. He couldn't stop his face and shoulders from ticking and twitching like mad. He seen a cat once what had the rabies, and the way it twitched and carried on, Fatty thought that was probably about what he looked like when his twitch got going good like this.
That lazy half-pecker Papa Daddy should be showing up soon to get his wounds tooken care of, and Fatty had to do some business with him.
Fatty laughed. Papa Daddy sure would get tooken care of, that was right enough. He'd get tooken care of good. # Okay. This is the beginning of a section. The story is told in 3PL, mostly from another character's POV. The parts from the other character's POV are written with correct grammar and a higher level of diction. Only Fatty's few little sections are written with his horrible grammar.
So now the question from Christine's post remains, but applied to a specific example.
Note: I don't need the specifics of this fragment critiqued. This is posted solely for the purpose of the "narrative voice" question.
[This message has been edited by wetwilly (edited June 24, 2004).]
posted
don't see the original anywhere, but I've read a story reacently in Fantasy and Sci-Fi that was told in much the same way as that except, the ENTIRE story though. It was fun. I love that kind of stuff, enjoy playing around with it also....
posted
I think what you're doing here is fine. I have two comments. The first is very small: "tooken" just looks so much like a typo that it pulls me out of the story. "Took" is just as ungrammatical and doesn't bother me a bit.
Now for the second point. It seems to me that the phrase
quote:He seen a cat once what had the rabies
is not a part of Fatty's thinking at all. Rather, it is an explanation to the reader of a fact in Fatty's past which is necessary to understand what he is thinking. That is, he remembers how this cat looked, but he does not in any way think something along the lines of: "I saw a cat once...." Therefore, this phrase should not be in his voice. You can say, "He'd seen a cat once that had the rabies, and the way it twitched and carried on . . . " and it works fine. Better, in my opinion.
Oh, and drop "Fatty thought that". He didn't think it, and we already know it.
Sorry I'm starting to critique. I can't help myself. Bottom line is, I have no objection at all to this type of language being used in the narrative as long as you're actually representing the POV character's thoughts.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited June 24, 2004).]
posted
I have to agree with rickfisher. As long as your in his head it's good. But that "He seen a cat once what had the rabies" is gold. I might find a way to keep it--somehow. I think this sounds like excerpt from the Alvin Maker series (only the voice, not the content so much). And I don't have an issue with "tooken" if that's what it sounds like in your head, it has to be right. I likes the Fatty, an his twitch.
I'd be willing to bet that in the Alvin series, Card has a sentance similar to the one inquestion. just a thought...
posted
Yeah, took is fine. I didn't like the cat thing either, I just thought the whole thing was looking-in-the-mirror-that-isn't-a-mirror foolishness. "Oh, a cat that acts just like me and can show me, the POV character, what I look like to everyone else!"
Kinda creative to use a non-reflective object as your mirror, but it's still a mirror if it only serves to reflect the appearance of the POV.
There is a bit of a concern here. The clear purpose of this passage is to mock this character, not secure reader identification with him. In that goal, it succeeds fairly well. But this is contradictory to the usual purpose of using POV. So I don't know how it fits into the more general discussion we had there.
posted
What exactly is the use of POV, Survivor? If you want to mock a character, should you not use POV? A passage without POV, now that's a new idea.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I wanted to see what a few people had to say before I jumped in here.
First of all, I can see that use of voice in narration doesn't bother people too much. I still have reservations about it, but it honestly wasn't too teribbly offensive in your story, wetwilly. You were just trying to be a little informal and come down to the level of your character.
The real trouble is that your use of language is not all that good. THe tooken here is a good example, and many people took exception to it. A little further on I seem to recall you attaching -ed to the end of everything and it driving me nuts. (Both in and out of dialogue.) It doesn't sound like language a real person would use. My advice: If you want to use a sub-language, a dialect of english that an uneducated person would use, then you need to study their speech patterns. I'm not sure how. This is one reason I never use language like this in narration and I just don't use terribly uneducated characters all that much. I would almost need a degree in linguistics before I felt comffortable using the language in that way. The occassional one-liner in dialogue can often be faked. All the way through a story it better be real and it better be good.
On a side note, I'm not sure what Survivor is talking about. The use of character description at relevent times it perfectly reasonable. At this time, Fatty's twitch is bothering him more than usual, so it will be clear and present in his mind. It might even remind him of a cat with rabies, I can see that as something the character would say.
And I humbly disagree that POV is always about identifying with a character. It is always about showing a character's point of view. (Gee, imagine that ) Many stories have sections with the bad guy's point of view, and I like this. It gives me insight into his motivations and often makes him less black and more measured, more gray. I don't like him, but at least I find him believable. This is one of those cases. (I know from having read the entire story.)
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited June 25, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited June 25, 2004).]
posted
Yes, I know that there are other uses of POV (although when you use a POV segment to make a villian "less black and more measured, more gray", that effect comes from successful identification with the villian by means of sharing his POV).
The point is that in the other thread we discussed using a diction closer to the character's level as a way of increasing sympathy, which is not the case here. We specifically talked about the danger of mocking the characters by using their diction poorly.
If the cat-as-mirror thing didn't bother you at all, then feel free to leave it in. I personally thought it sounded a hell of a lot like somebody watching Fatty from the outside, thinking that he looked like a rabid cat. I would think that Fatty would worry more about how it feels to have these twitches. Maybe if he wants to look good for someone he'll worry about how it looks, but right now, I think he's more intersted in his own perspective.
When I do the BIC thing for a few hours at a time, I worry a lot more about whether I'm going to end up with various bits sore or cramped than whether I "look like a writer." Other times I worry about how I look, and I'll take a gander in the mirror. Some characters are intensely self conscious about physical oddities that set them apart. But Fatty isn't doing anything to make himself stop twitching (with anger that he is busily stoking), so I guess he's not worried about how he looks.
posted
I guess whether or not to use dialect in the narrative is just a personal preference. Some like it, some don't. Personally, I like it. I guess I do need to do it better, though. I'll work it over and come up with something more natural.
Note: The use of "tooken" is lifted directly from an Eminem song. Not saying it as a defense of my usage of it, just a bit of trivia. "Got beat up and my coat and shoes tooken" or something along those lines.
Reading it out loud will probably go a long way towards making it read better.
posted
Does "tooken" rhyme with anything else in the "song"? That might give you a clue as to why it was used there.
As long as the purpose of this passage is to make Fatty even more repellent and laughable than he would otherwise seem to teh reader, then the passage is a success. I think that this is probably the case, you did mention that the protagonist is someone else.
Whether or not to use dialect is a matter of whether it serves the purpose of your writing, not merely "personal preference". In this case, it well may, but I still think that this is an exceptional case. Usually, you don't drop into a person's POV in order to make the reader take them even less seriously as a human being (though there are clearly valid reasons for doing so in most types of literature and particularly in SF and Fantasy--where non-humans are apt to play more significant roles).
posted
You know, I have to disagree that this passage mocks the character. For me, when an author drops this deeply into a character's rhthyms I am more empathetic to the character, because I'm thinking about everything in the scene in their voice.
If you cleaned up the english in this to the best the author has available, it would strip all of Fatty out of it.
-- Fatty waited outside the infirmary. His twitch was pronounced, as it always was when he was angry. Unable to stop his face and shoulders from ticking and twitching like one possessed, Fatty thought that he probably looked like a rabid cat he had once seen. It had twitched in exactly this manner.
That lazy half-penised Papa Daddy should be showing up soon to take care of his wounds, and Fatty had to do some business with him.
Fatty laughed. Papa Daddy would be taken care of, that was true. He would be well taken care of.
If you don't believe that this passage mocks Fatty, then clearly you weren't getting a clear idea of his character from it.
I just think that I would need to see a passage about a sympathetic character before I could judge how well this narrative dialect business works generally.
posted
The point of the passage is actually to make the reader hate Fatty. Not to mock him, per se, but to show what a despicable person he is. I do NOT want the reader to empathize with him. The reaction I want to get out of the reader is, "Good Lord, this guy is horrible. Somebody needs to stop him."
The dialect was actually just a passing whim when I wrote it, but I like it. I think it contributes to the feeling of being in Fatty's head so the reader can see that not only is he a scumbag when seen from the outside, but he's still a scumbag from the inside.
posted
It certainly does that. I still take issue with "tooken" and the rabid-cat mirror, but Fatty comes across loud and clear as a moral imbecile of the first order.
I find that portrayal a mocking one, however "true to life" it might be (I'll leave aside the philosophical difficulties that question would tend to raise). You might call it something else. It might be simply a matter of personal perspective, I find idiotically wicked people darkly funny, probably some other people don't think them funny at all.
Still, the crude idiom adopted by the POV in this case contributes to our aversion. I wonder whether you have any good examples of a third person POV using a lower diction to enhance our sympathy and identification with the character. After all, that was the direction of the other discussion.
Hmmm...thinking about it, this whole thread should probably have been in the other forum from the beginning.
posted
An example of 3rd person POV with lower idiomatic diction that enhances sympathy with the character. Hmm, I'm not coming up with anything off the top of my head. Definitely nothing from my own writing, and nothing pops into my head immediately from any other writing. I will give it some thought, though. This is one I would really like to figure out. It seems to me like the lower diction narrative could be effective in making a main character easier to identify with, but I can't think of any cases where it's been done.
Except maybe Alvin Maker, but I'm still not sure the actual narrative was really all that idiomatic. It seems to me (without looking) that the idioms (of which there were many) were mostly in the dialogue.
quote:An example of 3rd person POV with lower idiomatic diction that enhances sympathy with the character.
How's this?
--- Little Peggy was very careful with the eggs. She rooted her hand through the straw till her fingers bumped something hard and heavy. She gave no never mind to the chicken drips. After all, when folk with babies stayed at the roadhouse, Mama never even crinkled her face at their most spetackler diapers. Even when the chicken drips were wet and stringy and made her fingers stick together, little Peggy gave no never mind. She just pushed the straw apart, wrapped her hand around the egg, and lifted it out of the brood box. All this while standing tiptoe on a wobbly stool, reaching high above her head. Mama said she was too young for egging, but little Peggy showed her. Every day she felt in every brood box and brought in every egg, every single one, that’s what she did.
Every one, she said in her mind, over and over. I got to reach into every one.
The little Peggy looked back into the northeast corner, the darkest place in the whole coop, and there sat Bloody Mary in her brood box, looking like the devil’s own bad dream, hatefulness shining our of her nasty eyes, saying Come here little girl and give me nips. I want nips of finger and nips of thumb and if you come real close and try to take my egg I’ll get a nip of eye from you.
posted
Is there a difference? Can you have sympathy for somebody you don't know? I think the better you portray a character, the more sympathy the reader can have for him/her.
My conclusion (open to change) from this whole thing is that idiomatic diction can enhance sympathy for a character, but you have to do it right for it to work. For example, the passage from Alvin Maker probably wouldn't have made you like Peggy if it read like this:
Little Peggy paid attention to what the hell she was doing. She shoved her hand around in the straw until she hit something hard and heavy. She didn't even give a crap about the chicken sh*t. After all, when dudes with babies shacked up at the roadhouse, Mom never even said nothing about the most stank-nasty diapers. Even when she got that crap all over her hands, little Peggy didn't give a crap. She just shoved her hand through the straw, grabbed herself an egg, and ganked it. Etc. etc. etc.
The narrative is every bit as idiomatic as the way OSC wrote it, and the diction every bit as low, but it doesn't grab your sympathy for Peggy at all.
The way OSC wrote it, it was not just low diction, but it was the diction of a child, and maybe that's why it makes you more sympathetic, because people usually feel more sympathy for children. People don't feel so much sympathy usually for the piece of trash who was narrating the way I wrote it.
So maybe the idiomatic narrative only works to grab your sympathy for the main character when it's the diction of a person you would usually feel sympathy for.
posted
The other difference (nice rewrite by the way) is that your Little Peggy is angry. OSC's Little Peggy is scared and conscientious. The choice of words lets us know the characters' attitudes as well as their station.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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