posted
I've got a question on how to do something in writing that's easy to pull off on film - give the reader some information that the protagonist isn't picking up on. Since I'm in third person limited, I'm not sure how to show something to a reader that the character doesn't notice.
On film, it's easy - just put something in the background and never have the character notice it. For example, if the character is in a room talking to someone else, the TV can be on in the background with a news anchor reporting something you want the viewer to know. The character is too busy talking to notice, but if the movie makers balance the audio right, and the audience is paying attention, they can pick up on information not given to the character(s).
How do you do that in writing without switching out of your chosen PoV style? Is it even possible?
Thanks...
[This message has been edited by taerin (edited July 25, 2003).]
posted
To do a serious, limited 3rd person point of view correctly, this is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, if the pov character doesn't notice it at all, you can't describe it without switching to a different point of view. You can, however, let the pov character see if but not recognize it's importance, or misinterpret it. He can get distracted by something more important, be preoccupied, or be so caught up in some other theory about what's going on that he forces this into his world view. (The whole Sherlock Holmes thing about theorizing before you have data.) But if he just doesn't see it at all, if it doesn't register at all in his subconscious, then you just can't put it in there.
posted
It's pretty hard to do if the character would understand the information but just isn't noticing it. If the character doesn't understand it (at least at the time) but the reader would, then you can slip it in. For example, if your story is set on November 20, 1963, and your character meets up with a Mr. Oswald in Dallas, the astute reader will understand things that the character will not.
This can also work if you're using multiple POV characters, so the reader has learned the significance of something during a previous scene which did not involve the current POV character.
But if you're only using one POV character, then you face a real challenge.
One way I've seen this done is to change the POV in such a way that it doesn't really register as a POV change. For example, by interspersing quotes from newspaper articles. If a chapter starts off with a quote that doesn't then get tied directly to the POV of the character ("Joe finished reading the article, then took a sip of coffee..."), it's really a shift to an omniscient POV, or at least the POV of a person who reads a lot of newspapers. But it doesn't feel like it.
I think that's why authors use made-up news articles instead of just coming straight out and telling the reader the information in the narrative voice.
posted
I've found two effective ways to deal with this problem. If I have multiple POVs, then I can let something drop that seems of no special significance the the character but is recognizable to the reader based on a previous scene. The other is often used by OSC, and involves placing snippets of conversation or an e-mail or letter at the beginning of every chapter.
Posts: 1 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I second the approach mentioned by EricJamesStone. If your reader already knows something (and knows that you know it as well--which can be another sticking point), then you can reveal things that the POV character doesn't pick up on because he doesn't know what you and the reader both know.
For instance, if you have a murder mystery with a novice as the POV character, and a forensics expert tells him that it isn't possible to recover fingerprints from paper, the reader knows that either you are a fool or that the forensics expert is lying. But the POV character won't pick up on that fact, eh?
Ditto for information from other POVs. If we earlier learned that Mr. Mac is married but he later claims that he has never been married, we know he is lying even though the current POV character might not know this, and the POV character that knew he was married might not know that he claimed not to be married, thus only the reader (and Mr. Mac) know that he is lying.
Of course, for the first approach to work requires that your POV character not know things that almost anyone in your audience would know, so the character has to be pretty ignorant (especially given the level of knowledge that passes for general these days). As EJS indicated, it would work best for someone unwittingly about to participate in a well known historic event. It might also work well for someone from another world visiting this world for the first time.
The use of information revealed to another character's POV is more common.
A more relevant consideration is why you want to do this at all. Setting up a situation where the audience knows something the character doesn't (but should) know is called dramatic irony and has the purposive tendency of increasing the seperation between the character and the audience. The purpose of using a single POV is to maximize the identification of the audience with a specific character. If it is not your purpose to maximise the identification with that character, then don't use a single POV. If it is your purpose to do so, then I can't readily think of a reason to use dramatic irony on that character. Feel free to use it on the other, non-POV characters all you like.
posted
I don't think that it separates you from the character at all. If you saw a strange old woman wandering in the street, she doesn't have to mean anything to you for you to worry as a car races toward her that she's too deaf to notice. It makes the reader care about the character just because they're in danger, and if you have other character development (which you certainly should) than this just increases.
I think fake newspaper articles draw you out of the story a good deal more. Does anyone have an example of when you'd have to do it that way?
For instance, let's say there's a bomb under the table. (I'm stealing this from Hitchcock but trying to adapt it for print.) The two characters, one the POV character, are arguing, sitting at the table. The argument provides enough tention, but let's say that the bomb also makes a noise. Even though bombs don't tick anymore, we'll use that as an example. The argument falls silent for a second a character hears the ticking, but he's too angry to notice. He keeps arguing but in the back of his mind he can't help but hear the ticking--so his anger increases even more. Maybe the other character is violent and throws over the table--then they both see the bomb and realize the source of the ticking. It was there the whole time, at first unnoticed by the characters, but continually pointed out to the audience. If they already knew the character was in danger, then they'd have an even clearer idea it was likely to be a bomb.
quote:I think fake newspaper articles draw you out of the story a good deal more. Does anyone have an example of when you'd have to do it that way?
Well, you'd never have to do it that way if you're having multiple POV characters, because you could just have a one-scene POV character who sees the meteor flash across the sky, or sees the lunatic escape from the asylum, or whetver it is that you want the reader to know but don't want another character to know.
But if you want to stick to one POV character, you need a device that allows you to switch to the omniscient viewpoint without becoming the narrator:
Timmy was unaware that the previous night, something strange had flashed across the sky and crashed in the cornfield.
That's very intrusive, because you're hearing the narrator's voice, not the character's. But, by using the fake newspaper device:
FARMVILLE NEWS August 2, 2006
METEOR CRASH? Several Farmville residents called the police last night at around 11:00pm to report a strange light in the sky, followed by an explosion. Because reports from witnesses were contradictory, police were unable to identify a crash site. According to Sheriff Smith, the FAA did not report any missing or crashed planes. Professor John Jones, who teaches science at Farmville High, said that the light and crash were probably the result of a meteor from outer space, or possibly the remains of a satellite...
Yes, it's a different POV than the rest of the story, which is focused on Timmy. But since it's not another POV character, the reader won't get the feeling that Timmy is sharing POV with someone else. (If you had John Jones's POV, seeing the meteor, you'd think John Jones was an important character, when in fact he'll never get mentioned again.) And there's no feeling of the narrator intruding into the story.
Of course, people may have different opinions on this, but I think a fake news story or other artifact is a useful device.
quote:The argument falls silent for a second a character hears the ticking, but he's too angry to notice.
OK, now write that in third-person limited POV.
If he doesn't notice something, you're going to have to pull out of his POV in order to tell the reader.
posted
They stormed into the kitchen, forcing themselves into chairs but not breaking their stone gazes. Cheryl twirled a finger through her hair and tapped her nails on the table. Jack hated that habit of hers--always the tapping. On her cup of coffee, on the bedside table, on his back when they were dancing. She always had to be moving, had to be making noise, couldn't just sit still.
"I want to know why you think you could just get away with this."
Jack finally broke eye contact and looked at the checked table cloth. "There's nothing to get away with. Nothing even happened."
Silence for a minute except for the thud, thud, thud of his heart pounding. Only there was something else. Something faint he couldn't quite pick up--
"That's ridiculous, Jack. I saw you. You were practically groping her in the middle of the restaurant."
"Weren't you supposed to be at work, anyway?"
"That's completely beside the point." Still tapping, twirling her hair, like some hyperactive kid forced into a woman's body.
"I don't think it is. You told me work was going great, that the client had pulled through and everything. I--"
"It was! Everything was going fine!"
Jack jerked hard on the table cloth just as her fingers hit it, yanking it a few inches and balling up the edge of it in his head, trying not to strangle her. "I called Stephens. He said you'd quit a week ago."
She finally sat still, clasping her hands together and looking through the kitchen window. God, he needed a drink. His heart still pounding, and that noise, it was just behind his pulse, the same kind of even beat but a little bit slower.
Maybe it was in his head. Maybe he was finally snapping.
"All right," Cheryl said finally, barely above a whisper. "I got tired. You don't know what it's like, day in and day out, stuck with the same people and all their aggravating habits, always forced into doing things you hate, their eyes always watching you . . . I couldn't take it any more."
"I don't know what it's like? What do you call this marriage?"
Balling up the table cloth ever tighter, now. It left exposed mahogany wood on her side, but at least he wasn't grasping her frail neck.
"I don't even know you any more, Jack. I wake up every morning and I look at this person beside me, and he's nothing more than a stranger."
And she started sobbing. Always so weak and dramatic.
The fridge was just feet away--his eyes burned through its door, past the ketchup, mustard, rotting lasagna, straight to the sleek bottles, screaming for Jack to just have one, something to take the edge away.
"Cheryl."
She gave great big heaving gasps now, scooting her chair away.
"Cheryl, stop it."
Only he's not in the kitchen, listening to her sob. He's behind the couch, his father just back from work, and he doesn't understand why Mommy seems so scared. He's behind the couch and Father seems to slither towards her as she slinks into the corner and he starts to undo his belt. He's closing his eyes, trying to drown out the scream, and he can hear the tick. tick. tick of the large clock over the fire place, nice and steady--
Jack opened his eyes and Cheryl was still stobbing, but even though his memory had faded he still heard the ticking. He wasn't imagining it at all. He looked--no clock on the counter but a digital one. The only clock that still ticked was in their bed room and Cheryl had asked him to replace the battery months ago. So where was the noise coming from?
"Do you hear that?" he asked, but no answer--she was dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her stained skirt.
Jack crossed his arms, laid his head down on the table, so exhausted and sick of this, but that only made the ticking louder. With a growing suspicion, suddenly remembering the warning Sarah had given at the restaurant, Jack pushed back his chair and crouched down on the floor.
Under the table was a bomb.
[This message has been edited by writerPTL (edited July 27, 2003).]
posted
The scene is well done, but you didn't fulfill the assignment because he did notice it.
quote:Silence for a minute except for the thud, thud, thud of his heart pounding. Only there was something else. Something faint he couldn't quite pick up--
The point is, if you let the reader observe something that the POV character fails to sense, then by definition you have moved out of that character's POV.
Now, writers do it all the time and if it's minor it's rarely noticed. Most readers wouldn't throw down the story in disgust if you had written:
quote:Silence for a minute except for the thud, thud, thud of his heart pounding. He failed to notice the faint ticking of the time bomb under the table.
But if the bomb-maker was using one of those digital timers that counts down to 00:00:01 before you can defuse the bomb, and had remembered to turn off the one-per-second beeping noise, then the POV character would have had nothing to notice. And if you wanted the reader to know there was a bomb under the table before the POV character, you would have no choice but to use another POV.
Now, obviously a newspaper article (Extra! Extra! Bomb under Jack's table! Read all about it!) would not work for your scenario. But hearing ticking from under the table wouldn't work to let the reader know that a meteor had crashed the night before, and that if Timmy goes into that cornfield, there's gonna be trouble. (Unless, of course, the ticking was in Morse code, and the reader understood Morse code.)
posted
I still find newspaper articles in stories really fake sounding, but I'm not a huge fan of anything like that anyway--diary entries or medical transcripts or whatever. I imagine it's just a personal thing.
I guess maybe it's just something that film will always do better. I still think what I did was close enough, though. If I had drawn it out even more then the ticking could have been even more gradual, and there would have been the scene at the restaurant where the woman warns him about it . . . but I didn't want to write a whole novel or anything.
As far as the cornfield, wouldn't Timmy notice the cracked corn and the smoke smell and the gigantic crater? If you held that out suspensefully enough, why would the reader need to know before that there was a meteor? If they figure it out around the same time, then they have a closer connection with Timmy.
posted
Of course, one way to tell the story would be solely from Timmy's POV. It might even be the best way.
But the whole point of this discussion is, assuming that for some good reason you want to give the reader information that the POV character doesn't know or notice, how can it be done?
I'm just saying it can't be done without breaking POV.
Minor breaking of POV won't be noticed by most readers, so you can just slip in some information that comes up around the character that the character doesn't notice. The ticking of the time bomb would fall into this category.
However, information that occurs far removed from the POV character can't really be slipped in without the reader noticing that you have changed POV. That leaves you with three basic choices:
1. Slip into omniscient narrator mode and tell the reader the information.
2. Add a new POV character to witness the information.
3. Use some device (such as a newspaper article, court record, inscription on a monument, etc.) to convey the information.
With each of those choices, you pay a different price. Depending on the story, any of those three could be the best choice.
posted
I'll go with my previous point. There are reasons that you might want to let the audience in on information that the character doesn't recieve, but this will always decrease the audience's identification (note that this is different from sympathy) with the character.
Because maximizing character identification is the primary purpose for sticking to a single character's POV, in any situation in which you would want to "sneak" information to the audience "behind the character's back", you are already subordinating the issue of maximum character identification to some use of dramatic irony.
Therefore, in any situation where you feel that raising dramatic irony about what the main character doesn't know is important enough to lessen the degree of identification the reader feels with that character, feel free to use another POV.
posted
I'm not certain about this, but while I see your point that by knowing things that the protagonist doesn't know the reader's identification with that protagonist is diminished, I think in most cases dramatic irony increases sympathy with the character, possibly to a much greater degree than the strength of the identification that the POV can generate.
I think what I'm saying is that dramatic irony is a great way to create suspense, and used correctly suspense can make the reader care a lot more about a character than seeing the world through their eyes. It makes the reader worry about the character, which is a much higher level emotion.
So I think that in most cases, this is worth sacrificing your strictly disciplined POV for.
As an aside, I was wondering about how to do this from 1st person perspective. Somehow "I didn't realise it then, but ..." seems a little too corny. I guess you could be a little more subtle than that. Maybe something like "I know that I shouldn't have carried on, but I did" - the reader will wonder _why_ the character shouldn't have carried on.
I guess I'll have to write something non-trivial in 1st person soon, I really haven't got the hang of it yet!
You're right: decreased identification with the character is one of the prices you pay for departing from strict 3rd-person limited POV. That's part of what I meant when I said you pay a price for choosing to depart from the POV. Other prices may include interruption of the flow of the story, the quaintness associated with omniscient POV, the reader being decieved into thinking a second POV character is important, etc.
I agree that in many, if not most cases, doing something like this in print does decrease identification with the character, whereas doing it on film might not. Maybe my main problem is that some scenes for this story come to me more in screenplay-style than as written material.
Using a newspaper headline is still the author speaking directly to the reader, unless the PoV character is reading the paper. In a filmed scene, that newspaper could easily be visible to the audience without the character seeing it. It's something the audience *might* notice, and would give them a clue about what's going on.
From my character's viewpoint, she's in the middle of a mysterious and increasingly scary situation. She's trying to figure out what's going on. However, I'm intending the reader to be able to actually grasp what's going on a little before the character does, if that reader has been paying attention.
One way I'm doing that is by including a few short paragraphs between each chapter that give the readers information the character couldn't have. Another way I want to do that is by providing information within scenes of the story that the character doesn't notice.
Like a news reporter on a TV in the background that the character isn't watching, because she's talking with another character. Like yesterday's newspaper sitting on the table at breakfast, which the character doesn't read because she's reading today's. Like a radio DJ making an announcement between songs that the character doesn't hear because she suddenly has to deal with an urgent traffic situation.
These things would slip information in easily on film - the audience might be paying enough attention to notice them, despite what else is going on that they're taking in.
It sounds like the essence of what everyone has said is that what I want to do is extremely difficult at best. Oh well, thanks for your input, everyone. I'll keep pondering how I might pull it off, or maybe look into how to write a screenplay. :-)
posted
There's another way to do this. You can leverage some piece of the reader's knowledge. It can be scientific
quote:The city had been boasting about their new ultimate weapon, but no one knew if it was for real or not. The only clue was the new mines they'd been opening, seeking a mineral with no known uses, except that it was always warm. Some people thought it was cursed, because those who handled it often suffered from cancer. No one could imagine how to turn it into a weapon, though.
or, if the setting is right, historical,
quote:He watched the planes overhead. To his inexpert eye, they looked like Japanese warplanes, but that didn't make sense. The only thing in that direction was hawaii, and the Japanese wouldn't dare attack there. The were probably US planes, returning from a survalence mission. That made more sense.
Admittedly, not all things can be conveyed this way, but it's worth a shot.
Other than that, if you have two POV characters, you can easily give each of hem half of the information. Failing that, something like the chapter beginnings in Ender's Game may be your best bet.
quote:Using a newspaper headline is still the author speaking directly to the reader, unless the PoV character is reading the paper.
Well, sort of. It's outside of the POV character, but it's quite different from plain omniscient narrative. Omniscient POV subtly (or blatantly) reminds the reader that they are being told a story, and thus it takes them out of the story's world a bit. An artifact such as a newspaper is something that is still inside the world. It's a curtain behind which the author can hide.
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:It sounds like the essence of what everyone has said is that what I want to do is extremely difficult at best.
Unfortunately I must agree, this is a very difficult thing to do. Still I wouldn't encourage you to give up.
What if you had a character with mental disability or a memory problem which allowed them to notice something one moment but have a horrible habit of forgetting it if side-tracked.
But then again that may be a difficult POV to tell the entire story from.
Oh well, my point is you have possibilities. If there are no alternatives rather than dropping the idea all together I suggest having a POV change.
quote:What if you had a character with mental disability or a memory problem which allowed them to notice something one moment but have a horrible habit of forgetting it if side-tracked.
Doing that sort of character would be an extremely complex endeavor. First of all, there's the question of... Umm... What were we talking about?
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