posted
I have a technical question. Perhaps Uncle Orson will respond to it, as I originally posted it to his Writing Class, but in the meantime, I'd like to hear from others on the issue. I think I know the answer, but wish it were not what I think. The question is this: Can an author successfully mix the omniscient third person with the limited third person points of view (in separate scenes, of course)? A limited third-person point of view can vary in its depth of penetration, but what about switching between the limited and the omniscient view point? Example: in one scene, the pov is a specific character and what he observes, thinks, etc.; then, in a subsequent scene, the pov switches back and forth between two characters giving their inner thoughts about what the other is saying. Possible? Confusing? Unacceptable in today's market? Too hokey (reader's ask, why does the narrator know everything in this scene, but not in this other scene?)? What think ye one and all?
[This message has been edited by Speedy (edited 03-31-99).]
posted
Speedy, I'll not try to speak for the planet, the publishers or the troll under the bridge, but for this reader, its not whether you change voice (pov or person) but whether the reader stumbles or is confused by the change. To quote one of my co-writers in the forum, Clarity is All!. If the reader never stumbles and never has any 'Huh?' or questions about the changes in voice, you get points. And if you can establish a consistent pattern, you get more points. Your mileage may vary.
posted
Speedy, I agree with Ellan. I also want to say that I've seen lots of published works in which the POV shifts dramatically. I think one way to succeed with this is to make the transition obvious. I've seen it with different fonts (italicize all the "odd" POVs), I've seen it with the use of sidebars or little boxed off sections of text clearly labeled as to the "source" of the information.
The question I would have about your particular example is how the inner thoughts of your characters would qualify as a third person POV. I'm not sure I understand how you would accomplish that. Wouldn't you be giving alternating "xxx," he thought; "yyy," she pondered kinds of statements. That's just dialog without conversation, seems to me. If the omniscient narrator steps aside for the duration of such dialog, I don't think readers would be any more phased by that than they would any ordinary segment of dialog.
posted
George R.R. Martin wrote a story called Plague Star, which has six or seven main characters. He handled pov in a way that struck me, even as I was reading it, as clever. When all the characters were together, the narative was fairly void of attitude, "neutral" except for one or two personal impressions that may have accompanied a bit of dialogue from a particular character. But when one or two were alone, the attitude of the narrative focused on them, and their impressions, thoughts, and plans were clearly expressed. It worked beautifully (see for yourself, Plague Star is the first chapter in the novel Tuf Voyaging, and you should be able to find a copy somewhere).
So I would say that as long as it isn't a random thing, pov switches are OK. It should never happen in the same sentence or paragraph. In fact, a different section would be good. I think that maybe they should make "Transitional Point of View" its own category.
posted
My answer to the question of whether or not it is permissible to employ changing points of view (and indeed to almost any question of the form ‘can I do xyz in the story I am writing?’) would be ‘it depends’. Specifically, it depends on why you believe it is necessary to perform this contextual shift. Rules on consistency of viewpoint are not simply imposed on writers by editors or the designers of creative writing courses. They are there to improve the identification of the reader with the character who is currently central to a particular piece of writing. The argument goes: in real life you are not able to arbitrarily jump into another persons mind and find out what they are thinking and feeling, and therefore if you want a situation to seem realistic you should not be able to jump about from one perspective to another. This is, needless to say, as much a matter of contemporary literary fashion as it is of dramatic necessity: writers in different periods would have very different attitudes to notions of ‘realism’ and ‘point of view’. To pick but one example, the use of the soliloquy in Shakespeare is a blatantly ‘unnatural’ way of allowing the audience an insight into the character’s inner space. Nevertheless, a convention it is, and the reader will (probably unconsciously, unless he or she happens to be a literature student) expect you to adhere to it. So if you decide you want to break it, you ought first of all think about why you want to do so. If the justification for violating POV is good enough, then the reader will go along with it. This is why (in my opinion) notions such as the use of textual cues (changing fonts etc) to indicate changes of view point, or the laying down of rules about when the viewpoint may or may not be shifted are something of a distraction. If you decide you need to shift POV to achieve an effect that cannot be achieved otherwise and you make the shift consciously and carefully then the reader will accept it. The most extreme example of this that I know is in the novel Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in which the narrative arbitrarily switches both viewpoint and person. These shifts occur not merely within chapters and paragraphs but often within sentences. A sentence may start off with “I did”, shift midway through to ‘Celine said’ and end up back with ‘I knew’ and will only be after you get on to the next sentence that you discover that the ‘I’ at the end of the sentence is somebody different to the ‘I’ at the start. This actually is every bit as confusing to read as it sounds, but the story still works and, indeed, the confusion is part of the point: the authors are seeking to create in the mind of the reader a state which is somewhere between a schizophrenic breakdown and a psychedelic trip. While I’m not suggesting that you (or indeed anybody) should take things to the extremes of Wilson & Shea I do think it is OK for you to go ahead and break the rules on POV or on anything else, provided that you are aware that a rue is being broken, you understand what the rule is there for and you know what you are intending to achieve by going in and breaking it. Posts: 19 | Registered: Feb 1999
|
posted
Thanks for the replies to my question. They have been immensely helpful. I'm hoping to be assigned to a writing group soon, so some of you may get to see if I've employed your advice properly. Again, thanks very much!!!
Posts: 9 | Registered: Mar 1999
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
