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i work third shift and last night i saw a "scene" in my head. almost as if it were out of a movie. it involves a "shadowy figure" with a hood over his/her head so the reader doesn't know who it is. the chapter follows the "figure" as it travels into town, gets in a fight, and kicks some butt, which in turn starts the town on fire. at the end or the chapter, the person throws back the hood, revealing to the reader who it is, and it'd be shocker.
now.... for the life of me, i can't figure out how to follow the actions of the character without constantly refering to it as "the figure", or "the shadowy figure".
posted
> last night i saw a "scene" in my head. > almost as if it were out of a movie.
Movies do better at that kind of thing than books. There's no awkwardness of language to deal with when a movie does this.
It sounds like you intend to write the scene using cinematic POV -- not going inside the figure's head. (Even the name for this POV suggest that it's movie-like.)
Unless you're working on a screenplay, I suggest you at least consider not doing it that way. Take advantage of what written fiction can do with POV better than a movie. For example, tell it from the POV of a character in the town who sees the figure arrive. That makes it much more personal, because you can give us the emotions of the character while watching the mysterious figure fight people (perhaps satisfaction that a bully is beaten that turns to horror when the town's on fire.)
You don't have to do it that way, of course. I'm just suggesting that you consider alternatives.
posted
Is the shadowy figure the man he is following? Perhaps he went back in time? Or maybe the figure is his wife? He's in trouble now!
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Eric beat me to the punch, but let me just reiterate: Books and movies are not the same and cannot do the same thing. When you find yourself writing a movie scene (and not in the form of a screenplay) you may want to stop and think. A movie has sight and sound to move you through the scene. They have ominous background music. THey have tricks of light and of camera. They have an artform that tells a story in a vastly different way than a book.
A book inspires imagination. It coaxes you into sharing a moment of your life with the words on the page. It tantilizes through senses that are evoked rather than real. And the one thing it does much better than a movie: It crawls into people's heads and helps the reader find true emotions there.
I've seen cinematic stories -- from amateurs. They tend, especially, to come from young amateurs who grew up watching TV. z(I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be young or to have watched TV...it may just be a strong influence.) It never works for me. Here's the bottom line: If you are trying to write in a cinematic point of view what you have writen will only pale in comparison to the big screen, or even the smlal one. Words and descriptions can't compete with being there and seeig firsthand. That is part of why TV and movies are so popular.
So I strongly advise against the cinematic approach.
That said, realizing a dream is not impossible. Identify your POV character, the one who will be shocked to discover the identity of the hooded character. In the dream, it was you, or the dream you, I suppose. Find a way to let that POV character observe the action as you observed it in the dream. Perhaps the POV character is a secret agent/ninja trying to follow the hooded perpetrator back to some larger organization. Perhaps the POV character is running a high tech flying surveillance camera from a remote location. Whatever, figure out a way to have a POV character that will take your place in the dream. Then tell the story you saw in your dream.
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The problem is in a movie the audience is the eyewitness. wheras something written is an eyewitness account that is given to the audience. Like Survivor said ask whose eyes you saw it through.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
You could always do the "The mysterious figure, henceafter known as Bob (Mr. X or whatever), blah blah. Depending on the POV this is acceptable.
Then at the end you have the reveal "And Bob was exposed as...Mr. Withers!" or what not.
posted
Of course It wasn't a suprise to anyone who had played any of the previous metroid games. But of course that was a visual thing also. We need to figure out how to do it with words.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
What gender are the metroids, after all? The chick fighting them has had anatomical cues since she was 8-bit, but I'm not clear on how to sex a metroid, or whether they even have sex at all.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
It's a weird robotic suit thing. How can it give any anatomical cues when the anatomy can be morphed into a ball if the situation calls for it?
Posts: 341 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
There is the other option of giving the person a nickname, the character speaks to the reader and at the end of the scene you reveal your surprise, that way you can use all the usual he she or it stuff and then arent that constrained.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Right. You can use the advantages of books in spite of the disadvantages of movies (much like how Asimov got away with the end to Prelude to Foundation).
For example: in movies you don't have to call the figure something every time it does something (at least in the finished medium). But with books, the audience can't hear the figure talk and therefore can't recognize it at all.
So Strider was actually the rightful king of Gondor, Aragorn son of Arathorn. Do that.
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SExed a metroid, eh? Sure, and this one time, in band camp.....
sigh....
Survivor, Christine, and EJS hit the nail on the head. You can't "lie" to the reader like that. It's almost like turning on the light in the bathroom, looking at the mirror and expressing shock at what you see. "My God! It's ME!" Doesn't work.
I agree with the concept of having a different viewpoint character and see it through their eyes, just replace you with them and you're set. Now you're not hiding anything from the audience that isn't ALSO hidden from the POV character.
Here's an option on the POV of the character watching the shadowy figure of Mr. Whithers. Make it a child, around ten. That would give the scene more of an ominous hint, as you see the actions of the character through the child's eyes. It also sets a disparity between the childish innocence of the POV's thoughts and the chilling darkness of the events.
posted
That's crap about how the POV character shouldn't know more than the reader. I have to use the Foundation series again. In Foundation we assume the POV (in 3rd person, however) of a Mayor for about 1/4 of the book. Most of the time we can only see what's happening, and at the end of that section, his plan is unraveled for us. The POV character knows exactly what's happening and what's going to happen, and half the fun comes from watching the Mayor reveal his trap to his enemies.
Posts: 341 | Registered: Jun 2004
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ArCHeR, I think you have missed part of the point. Let me see if I can explain a little bit better.
Third person point of view is broad. It ranges from omniscient, with the all-seeing all-knowing narrator, to limited, with us only seeing and hearing through one character's eyes. When it is limited the viewpoint can penetrate deeply or shollowly.
Think about how you are telling the story. If you are using a deep penetration limited third person point of view then it is absolutely true that the POV character cannot know more than the reader. It's the style you chose. Either we're deep in his head or we're not. If we *think* we're deep in his head and find out that we were never allowed to see the most crutical bit of knowledge in there then we've been lied to, deceived, and believe me I feel cheated when that happens.
On the other hand, if you are using a shallow penetration (and this is difficult to do with current expectations and trends. You have to somehow show us that you're not telling us everything that character knows), then you can leave out some bits. Of course, if the bits you leave out are of supreme importance to the POV character I will still be left feeling a little cheated. Some things are just important, something come up, some things you have to say.
In fact, the best way to withold information from the reader if you want to still have us reside inside a character's head at all is to use omniscient viewpoint. Then you put us inside all the character's heads but we won't assume that we know all or any of what they know.
posted
What if third person limited is used, but some of the suprise comes from exposition the character would not need to think about?
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Obviously, it is possible to create suspense by withholding from the reader information known to the POV character. However, I call that "cheap" suspense. You can get away with doing it, but that doesn't mean you couldn't have done it better.
I am a big fan of Tom Clancy's books, but the last book I read by him was a big disappointment, mainly because it relied almost completely on "cheap" suspense.
***** SPOILER WARNING FOR "RED RABBIT" *****
The main plotline of the book is about the defection of a Soviet citizen with valuable information. The CIA agent comes up with a plan for extracting the spy, but the plan is completely hidden from the reader. For the remainder of the book, we watch the plan unfold and come off without a hitch. The characters are never really concerned about what is happening, because they know everything is going according to the plan. The only suspense is that the reader doesn't know what happens next in the plan.
The book would have been much more exciting if the reader had been told what the original plan was -- and then things started to go wrong. That would have required changes to the plot, of course, but the book would have been better as a result.
***** END SPOILER WARNING *****
In almost any case, if you are deliberately hiding from the reader information known to the POV character, you can improve the story by revealing the information up front and then complicating things.
An exception: With mystery stories, it is a long-accepted tradition that once the detective knows whodunit, that information can be withheld from the reader during the setup to the big reveal (such as a meeting with all the suspects.)
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited January 05, 2005).]
posted
Red Rabbit was also set back in the 80's and several of the characters involved were recurring characters from earlier Clancy books, so you knew they would survive. Which sucked a chunk of suspense out of the novel as well.
Posts: 552 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:An exception: With mystery stories, it is a long-accepted tradition that once the detective knows whodunit, that information can be withheld from the reader during the setup to the big reveal (such as a meeting with all the suspects.)
While this is done in some detective stories, the better ones avoid it. Some techniques involve never really getting inside anyone's head, esp. the one figuring it out (i.e. Perry Mason), or the story is told completely from a POV outside the main detective (i.e. Sherlock Holmes -- told from Watson's POV).
posted
Most stories are mysteries, by the way. It's rare and usually stylistic if you know what's going to happen.
Anyway, how about the Sixth Sense. One of the best suprise endings in the history of storytelling. It wasn't cheap, and it really had depth and meaning to the story. But Cole knew the secret the whole time. We penetrated very deeply into both characters, and when Cole revealed the things he knew, it was done with no feeling of cheese or corn (although "I see dead people" would be unfairly turned into a joke).
posted
Is there a novel of the Sixth Sense? Because there are things you can do in film that you can't do in literature.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
If I were writing a novel of The Sixth Sense, I would not go inside the kid's head. I would keep it strictly in the Bruce Willis character's POV.
Movies are great for doing that kind of surprise ending exactly because we are not inside the characters heads. Movies and written fiction have different strengths. The ability to show us what people think and know is a strength of writing. Use that strength.
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Eric beat me to the punch on the movies vs books but let me repeat and add a bit. We can draw on movies for certain examples of good storytelling. I have done so many times on this forum, using movies to explain a point. Popular movies tend to have reached a wider audience and so often more people will be familiar with the example. However; we would be foolish if we did not recognize a difference between movies and books. If they both did the same thing there would be no longer any need for books. In fact, I believe that many of the stylistic changes that have occurred this century have been as a result of writers trying to find a niche for books that movies cannot compete with. We have. That niche is showing character's thoughts, emotions, and attitutdes. Movies cannot do this. They CANNOT deeply penetrate. They can scarcely shollowly penetrate a character's thoughts. You can extrapoliate from the acting, the character emotions, but that could be al ie. What's really going on inside? Unless you read a book, you can only guess.
The Sixth Sense was a good movie. I am afraid to say that I seem to be one of approximately five people on the planet who had it figured out and in my case, right away. Still, it was a good movie once I figured out that the main character didn't know what I knew. I watched him figure it out. But there wasn't an ounce of deep penetration in that movie. By definition, there cannot be. As Eric said, in a book I would have stuck entirely to Bruce Willis' character.
By the way, the reason I bring up knowing the end to the Sixth Snese is this: It did not cheat. For those who had an eye or the mind to notice, the answer was right there in front of your face to see it. I was impressed with the way it did not cheat, actually. Cheating, by the way, is deliberately hiding information for no better purpose than to try to maintain suspense. This technique fails hard. In fact, it creates annoyance rather than suspense.
NUMBER ON MISTAKE OF NEW AUTHORS: Keeping secrets from the reader. Not every story is a mystery. Most are not. A few are, but those need to be done well and you need to set up a circumstance such that it is not cheating to keep the mystery from the reader. Often, the POV character doesn't know the answer him/herself and so you solve the mystery together. But simply witholding information to attempt to create suspense through mystery is a false pretense. That crutial pice of information is usually the thing that would make me stop nodding off or asking "So what?" in annoyance.
There are many ways to structure a story. Mystery is one of them. But according to OSC's MICE formular there are three others:
millieu: Explores a new locale. idea: your mystery character: goes through a character's need for change and eventual resolution...often romance qualifies here. Will the character change? do what's right? Break away? Find love? These are the questions that keeps a reacher reading. event: something is wrong with the world and needs to be right. Typical epic fantasy. Usually what we wonder about here is how will the hero do it and will he succeed? No hidden information, just nail-biting suspense if done well.
posted
David Gemmell used a good example of this when he mentioned in Waylander that the lead character had often sat in taverns listening to the tales that got darker during the night and he himself was used by the storyteller to put the fear of what lurked in the dark to the listeners.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Why do you say that Cole knew about Bruce's character being what he was, Arch? I didn't get that impression, because there was no fear in his reaction to him, as there was when he dealt with the others. Personal opinion, of course, but logically based.
[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 06, 2005).]
posted
Cole ran from Bruce Willis the first time he saw him. In fact, he went to a church for safety. Much of his fear of the other characters was related to the grotesque way they died. Willis's wound was very subtle.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
The first time he saw him was in the apartment. They had the bit about the psychic game, and then they cut to something else, I don't remember what. He was cautious of him, but I don't feel that he was afraid. And the wound was covered up. How would Cole have seen it. I could be wrong; it happens on occasion. Just ask my wife.
Posts: 331 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Why do you say that Cole knew about Bruce's character being what he was, Arch? I didn't get that impression, because there was no fear in his reaction to him, as there was when he dealt with the others. Personal opinion, of course, but logically based.
He knew since the first time he saw him. That's why he ran away into the church. It's also why he looked so afraid of him when he was sitting on the couch in his house. It was the first time he had actually tried to communicate with a ghost, and that's why you always see fear in Cole until he gets to know him.
He even told him the right things that would let him realize what he really was. Telling him to talk to his wife when she was asleep was the last thing he had to say to him to make him realize the truth and pass on. That's one of the great things about that movie. It's the stuff you slowly realize after watching it a few times...
But saying that you can't do something like that in a book is riddiculous. You don't have to reveal every thought in the character's head. There are plenty of people who keep secrets from the reader, and they pull it off very well. As I stated before, Asimov does exactly what you are saying not to, and he does it in one of his most well known books after I, Robot.
The fact is that you should almost never try to put any sort of rules into your writing, unless they are rules you set for yourself.
The same can't really be said for film. For example you shouldn't show a child being sad. You can show them being afraid, but sad is something that no audience can really tolerate.
But saying that a POV character can't know more than the reader is just silly.
quote:But saying that you can't do something like that in a book is riddiculous. You don't have to reveal every thought in the character's head. There are plenty of people who keep secrets from the reader, and they pull it off very well. As I stated before, Asimov does exactly what you are saying not to, and he does it in one of his most well known books after I, Robot.
Nobody is saying you can't do something like that in a book. What we are saying is that a book is generally better if you don't.
Of course an author can tell an effective story while breaking just about any "rule." However, what some of us are trying to explain is that in general, your story will be more effective if you don't intentionally conceal vital information that is known by the POV character. Doing so distances the reader from the POV character, merely for the sake of creating a cheap form of suspense. A more meaningful form of suspense is one in which the reader shares the character's suspense. If your story relies on cheap suspense, I'd say there about a 90% chance you can make it better if you rework it so you doesn't.
quote:The fact is that you should almost never try to put any sort of rules into your writing, unless they are rules you set for yourself.
I think that's a backward way of looking at it. You should start with the foundation of sticking to the general rules (after learning what they are) and then deciding which ones you must break in order to achieve the story you want.
quote:The same can't really be said for film. For example you shouldn't show a child being sad. You can show them being afraid, but sad is something that no audience can really tolerate.
Where on earth did you get the idea that movies shouldn't show a child being sad?
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote: The fact is that you should almost never try to put any sort of rules into your writing, unless they are rules you set for yourself.
What? I could have sworn we've had many discussions on the so-called "rules" of writing. The concensus is that they are there for a reason -- because in general, they create emotional and dramatic impact that a reader can relate to. No one doubts that rules can be broken, but yo7u must *know* these rules and understand them. The reason being that a rule you understand you may then break, knowing full well what the results and consequences will be for your story. Educated and timely breaking of rules can work very well, but rampant throwing the rules out the window because they're not convenient never works unless you get lucky.
But mostly, I completely disagree with the above quote. You should never try to put any sort of rules into your writing? So we should ignore the trial and error of centuries because we're young and rash and know so must more than our elders? We should set rules for ourselves? How? With what foresight and knowledge and based on what? True wisdom comes from learning from other people's mistakes, not your own.
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The modern short and modern novel both work within consensual "rules" enforced by editors with checkbooks and readers with wallets. To be successful, we writers must know and abide by the current consensual "rules" of fiction. When we deviate from them, it had best be for a very good reason that advances a story to an editor's check-writing and a reader's wallet-opening satisfaction.
When you break the "rules," it's got to be important to the story and not simply because you can.
posted
By the way, Arch and Mary, my wife agrees with you, and pointed out that I would have paid more attention to the movie had my visiting sister not intentionally ruined it by spouting off the ending the first time I watched it. But I got her back on all three Matrix movies.
[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 06, 2005).]
posted
I think that the great thing about The Sixth Sense is that it doesn't rely on the ending being a surprise. Like most good movies, I actually liked it better watching it for the second (third, fourth...) time.
The basic rule of any art, and most especially of art in a highly competitive market like writing, is that something must have staying power to have real value. It must satisfy the same audience again and again.
posted
It must also satisfy new audiences again and again. That's why, as said by Entertainment Weekly, the Beatles are one of the biggest cult bands for students these days. It's also why people from every generation went to see Episode I. If something has staying power for the first generation, the second generation will almost always discover it on their own.
Posts: 341 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
There was a Dr. Who t.v. movie that came out about a decade ago. I kinda liked it, but I've heard others (who apparently have more refined movie tastes than I) didn't appreciate it much.
Also, while not necessarily in the mainstream (whatever that happens to be for spec-fic ), Dr. Who has quite a cult following. I think I even noticed some Dr. Who novels at a bookstore about five years ago.
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), Dr. Who has quite a cult following. I think I even noticed some Dr. Who novels at a bookstore about five years ago.
