posted
I have a scene in my WIP that I think should technically be removed, it occurs outside the POV character's experience; he is not there nor does he find out about it until much later. It is written from the POV of the only participant in the scene but it is a minor character with no further role in the story. But the scene adds depth and clarity to the story as a whole and I am sad to lose it.
The story will still work if I remove it just not as much punch -- what should I do?
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 01, 2005).]
posted
Nah, you're not thick, but it's very difficult to do well. The attempts I've seen on this site often come across as broken third person limited.
Third person limited omniscient tells a story as if you are in one person's head at a time. The at a time is important, because you can switch to a different POV character in between section breaks of chapters. (Not in between sentences or paragraphs, it has to be a significant break.)
Full omniscient tells a story as if you are God. You know all, see all, but are typically slightly removed from it. You can see inside character's heads and report it to us, but you tend to do it sparingly and you don't spend time there. In fact, you can report one character's thoughts in one sentence and another's in the next and be completely within your rights because, after all, you are God in this story.
But full omniscient is hard to do well, as I said. It often comes across as broken third person limited. Often the person whose story this is (the main character) is good enough to tell a story. My WIP has three point of view characters that switch off between chapters: the hero, the heroine, and the bad guy.
posted
If the story is in all third person limited, why not do like Ursula LeGuin recommends in her book. Use a dingbat or another seperater to parition POV characters.
David Farland in the Runelord series did this for a single paragraph. Worked for me.
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited February 01, 2005).]
posted
Wait a sec. Is this scene it's own standalone scene? With only one character in it who isn't your main character?
If so, it should be okay as long as you have a scene break / line break as such
#
Tell the scene you want to do with the minor character... add another scene break
#
Go back to your main character in the new scene.
Additionally, you have to consider the importance of this character -- who are they to the story? Are they really needed? Do they do something that affects the rest of the story. If they are important, say like an scientist who accidentally lets loose a virus, but we never see them again. It's fine. Or any variation thereof.
Things like this happen all the time in novels and long-ish short stories. Very short stories, it might be best to avoid that as some would find it jarring.
You can even transition POV within the same scene (very carefully), though I know many say "NO!" it can be done and it has been done effectively. I've done it, people read it and nobody complained about it. So it can be done.
posted
I don't understand. Isn't there another way to provide the information to the reader? Doesn't make sense. Tell me more.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
In summary: the main character is in a house while, unknown to him, another character is outside putting a 'hex' on the house. The scene is what happens outside and is in that character's POV. It is standalone except when the scene changes back to the main character, he could swear he heard something out there.
It occurs simultaneously with another important scene inside the house.
I will separate it with a #
I think what HSO said is probably right in this case, I am just a bit wobbly on POV DOs and DON"Ts.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 01, 2005).]
I'm worried about two different scenes that occur in the same timeframe, but from two diff. perspectives. While this can be done, I think it would be better to pick one and stay with it.
But a read of these scenes would help answer that question.
posted
My novel is full of simultaneous scenes, and nobody's complained yet. I did get one comment that I had too many POV characters, though. But I have about fifteen, and, just at a guess, you probably don't approach that.
However, a few of the POV characters are relatively minor, and their POV is used as yours is, simply because they were present at a scene and no one else was. This was also flagged by the same critiquer. On the other hand, she might not have minded it happening once if I didn't have such a POV overload to start with.
posted
If I've said this once, I've said it 3.589 times. There are no hard and fast rules about writing fiction. Your readers will forgive almost anything, as long as you keep them enthralled, and you don't confuse them. I once read a book, an entire book, that was written from the point of view of a gun. And it was well written. I've also read epics with thirty or more different character's, each with their own POV. The Deathstalker series is a good example.
Now, that being said, consider the advantages of each type of storytelling.
We have first person, which is basically a glorified fictional memoir. In first person you are restricted to your character's eyeballs - everything that happens- happens in your prot. experiences. Everything else is hearsay. "Bob later told me that it was Suzie's Tarette's syndrome that caused the outburst. The nuns simply didn't know about Suzie's condition, or they wouldn't have called in the exorcist."
One of the advantages of 1st Person (and many will have conflicting opinions, but they're not writing this) is that you can play with character personality quirks to alter the tones of your story. Imagine To Kill a Mockingbird told from Scout's POV, as compared to Atticus', or even Bob Ewell's. It would be a drastically different novel, although the events would remain the same. (I'm speaking of the events shared by the characters, not event's isolated to one character)
Another advantage is that there is an immediacy to the story, an intimacy to the narration that cannot be achieved in other POV's. (again some will disagree) Consider the difference between a first person character reacting to being raped, as opposed to a 3rd person character.
There are disadvantages as well. In a novel that is being told with a first person pov, you are relatively restricted to what the prot. is actually experiencing. Anything else has to be filtered through the same hearsay I mentioned earlier, and this can lead to problems where you have a lot of extraneous dialogue or exposition, when in 3rd person you could just cut to that scene and show the actual events themselves while both keeping the action going, and creating suspense. In the movie Collateral, had the story been told only from our protagonist's viewpoint, we wouldn't have seen the scene where the assassin hunts the assistant D.A. in the darkened office building, thus heightening the suspense. 'Will the hero get there in time?' Now, having said that, remember what I said about there being no hard and fast rules. This is an art, after all.
In the novel Armor, by John Steakley, the story starts out in 3rdP, but changes to 1stP in the fifth or sixth chapter, and stays there for a while before going back. And it works. I will admit that there was a gimmick used, but it was central to the plot, so it wasn't hokey.
Now consider 3rd person pov. There are three types: omniscient, objective, and limited. Omniscient is where you narrate the tale from the viewpoint of God. This can be especially useful when telling a large, sprawling story with a multitude of characters. Peter F. Hamilton pulled it off admirably with the Night's Dawn trilogy. In 3rdP Omni. there are is only one rule - the protagonists are never 'I'. (unless they are talking in dialogue, obviously) Other than that, just write.
And then we jump to 3rdP objective. Objective is where the story is told basically from the viewpoint of a ghost sitting on the protagonist's shoulder, narrating what the prot. saw and heard and did. There is no knowledge of internal motivations or thoughts or feelings.
This pov can be very effective in adding suspense.
quote:He walked casually into the bank, a briefcase held very still in his hand. Just inside the door, he paused, and looked around slowly, his eyes hidden behind the wraparound shades he wore like a second skin. After a moment, he smiled, set the briefcase down just to the side of the door, turned on his heel, and walked out.
We're immediately wondering what's in the briefcase. Is it a bomb? We don't know what he was thinking, even though it is his point of view we are following. We have to judge by his externals. For all we could know, the briefcase might have been filled with lunch for his wife, who just happened to be a bank teller, and was too busy at that moment to meet him, so he left the case for her by the door. Or it could have been a tactical nuke on a twenty minute timer. Further into the story we would find out what it was, but at that moment, we are left in suspense.
And finally, we have 3rd person limited, which is the most commonly used pov. This, in many people's minds, makes it the 'proper' pov, but it is just another way of telling the story. In 3rd Person Limited we are following one person around, and we see this character's thoughts and feelings and actions and every other odd, vulgar, sweet little tidbit of this character's life. This is only limited to that one character during the length of a scene though. You can switch characters when you switch scenes. This is only to prevent confusion in the reader, and is what separates it from omniscient. All the other characters in the scene are seen in their externals from the viewpoint of the POV character for the scene. One of the advantages to 3rd person limited is that it allows you to fully flesh out a character, throw things at him/her, and write about how the character reacts, thereby inviting us to care about this character, or inviting us to hate them as much as the rest of the world. In many ways, it is the 3rd person limited character's reactions and growth throughout a story that give us the thrill of watching this character live out the events in our story, because we our living vicariously through the protagonist. Many otherwise excellent stories fail in this respect. We have a character that we have described, that we have given life to, and then put through trials, only to have the character diverge from it's normal mode of behavior during an event. If our protagonist is a coward, and we have taken pains to show how much of a coward he is, and then on page 347, we have him perform an act of extreme bravery, the reader will groan in disgust, because that isn't the character they were following for 346 pages. So in 3rd person limited, consistency is the key. Now, I'm not saying that the character shouldn't grow in response to events; a thoroughly static character is boring, as well as unbelievable. If we have our coward begin developing bravery, starting small, then increasing as events demand it, then the reader cheers, because this is something they respect.
One of the disadvantages of 3rdP limited is that in thoroughly intimate situations, there is always that gap between the reader and the protagonist. Namely, the writer. For example, in the previously mentioned situation where a character is reacting to rape, if the writer is not very careful in writing the thoughts and actions of this particular character, then there is a breakdown in the intensity of the scene, as well as in the flow of the writing. The reader is reminded that there is a writer behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Now, mind you, this can be a problem in 1st person, but since it can be easier to associate emotions with actions in a 1st person character than in a third(depending on how it is done), the risk is lessened. But by no means is it completely gone. It's just a matter of knowledge of the subject, coupled with knowledge of the character.
Now, I haven't gotten into 2nd Person pov, and I'm not going to, because it is so rarely used in fiction that even I don't know how to do it well, so I won't lecture on it, as I have these others. (I guess I'm just in that kind of mood, sorry)
If you want to consider a trick, think of pov as a camera, except this camera can record feelings and thoughts, as well as actions and descriptions. In 1st Person, the camera is firmly rooted in the protagonist's head. The protagonist is the camera. In 3rd Person Omniscient, the camera is floating above the events, watching each character at once, and is recording each character's thoughts and feelings, as well as their actions. In 3rd person Objective, the camera is only able to record the external actions of the characters. Obviously, this includes dialogue. This can be applied to only one character, or multiple characters,however the writer dictates. In 3rd person Limited, the camera follows one particular character at a time, recording only the thoughts and actions of the character in the scene whose pov we're following. Everyone else is put into 3rd Objective for the duration of the scene, which can be a paragraph or a chapter, depending on the writer's preference.
The basic idea that I'm pointing out in this rant is that you are the writer. It's your story. If you let people tell you what's right and wrong, then you're placing constrictures around yourself that will only stifle you. Now, obviously, there are things that are considered common because they are what has been done lately, and things that are old-fashioned compared to those things. That doesn't make them wrong. Practically every classic that comes to mind at the moment would be considered old-fashioned, outdated, boring, and probably wouldn't even be published these days. Can you imagine a modern publisher accepting The Count of Monte Cristo in this day and age? Dumas would have had to cut half of it before they'd even talk to him. Yet look at how many times it's been ripped off. If you write a story, even if it's done in a weird way that I haven't seen before, switching POV's right and left, jumping from 1st to 3rd to 2nd and back to 1st, and (and this is a BIG and) do it in such a way that I am thoroughly entertained, and can't go to sleep at night because I have to look at just one more scene, then you have done your job. Critics may write rabid statements about your work and your lineage, but if you grab the reader's attention like a man pulling an Uzi out during church choir practice, then you can laugh at their reviews while your cashing that big, fat royalty check. Just don't let people make your decisions for you. After all, as I've said elsewhere, who is writing this? You, or a chorus of conflicting opinions, of which I am but another?
(Sorry to get so preachy. I wrecked my ankle, and the percocet is making me bombastic.)
[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited February 02, 2005).]
If there is a bump in the night, then the character doesn't have to know what it was for the audience to know it was important...as long as you've used dramatic economy to good effect.
posted
When I read your description of the story, hoptoad, this is how the narrative formed in my head:
Scene from main character inside house, doing whatever it is main characters do in houses. Takes up timeframe [a]. # Scene from other characters POV, putting hex on house from outside. POV character makes some noise. Takes up timeframe [b]. # Scene from main character inside house. Time frame [b]. Main character hears noise that the other character made in the last section.
I'm not telling you how to write your story, just saying that there is a way (among many other ways) to do what you're describing. I think it would be perfectly fine for you to do the POV switch, especially if it's not very long. It wouldn't bother me in the least if I came across something like that in a story.
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