My biggest concern is I feel uncomfortable with the writing. Like I am trying too hard to build tension and interest. There is also a good amount of expostition which I tend to avoid excessive backstory, but I feel it is nesscesary to the story without making it five thousand words longer.
Here is an exerpt.
quote:
Abruptly the music stopped. Triston panted—despaired; he suddenly felt lost. His tattered flashlight fell from his trembling hand into the shallow (cess / mire) and he leaned back against the slime-covered stoned, sliding down to a kneeling position. His stomach grumbled. Emptiness and want—things he hadn’t felt in a long while. How long had he droned about, eating pressed yeast and soya curd without ever feeling hunger? How long had the people of his city lived like this.
I am really here. It was an unsettling realization as a cloud of confusion mingled with shards of memories. Before the landing. That is when things began to change; it was the last time he could remember tasting, smiles, music. That was when the streets became empty; his friends no longer played
I know this is a short clip, but does anything here seem excessive or out of whack?
Does anyone have some suggested reading for narratives in a similar style?
Any other advice?
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited March 09, 2009).]
Omniscient third person does have access to all thoughts of all characters, however, it's god-like close psychic access is generally regarded unfavorably.
Objective third person is the default distant or remote narrator, as though a correspondent who was not present is reporting on an event where all the facts are known to the narrator after the fact, thus primarily in past tenses. Some psychic access is possible but challenging in objective third person. Generally, in objective third person, the narrator has psychic access to thoughts at the external superficial level of spoken discourse, expressions, gestures, and exterior emotional responses to causal stimuli, but not to interior introspection.
Objective third person is a best practice narrator when multiple disparate perspectives, points of view, characters, and settings are at the focus of an emerging dramatic action.
A worthy example of an objective narrator is Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Many of his stageplays have what for all intents and purposes is an objective narrator, which means the introspective passages have to be spoken aloud. Philip K. Dick's objective third-person narrator stories follow the same parameters. The android Roy's death soliloquy to Decker in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a classic example of a spoken introspection.
I posted the intro in F&F. But I can't post anymore without getting edited so if anyone wants to look there for more example of the voice.
I will read the Philip K. Dick novel you mentioned. I have it on the shelf and thanks for the reference. It has been a long time since I read it last.
Please, first set aside the term point of view. It's a term that is likely to cause difficulty in understanding. For narrative the full terms of art are either point-of-view character, which is a character whom a narrator's moveable perspective orients from or toward, or narrative point of view, which is whom a story's perspective sensory experiences comes from, the narrator's. A narrator's perspective can orient on more than one character and from more than one perspective location in any given dramatic unit. What a narrator's standing to a story's action and caliber of psychic access to thoughts is, is a more useful first principle than point of view or perspective.
For more in-depth information, here's a good place to start;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 09, 2009).]