posted
Well, it's not so much point of view, but a viewpoint character question. I have a slew of characters in my WIP any of whom could potentially be thought of as the "main" characters, but I stick to swapping back and forth between 2 of their points of view. (I'm using 3rd person deep penetration so there's nothing too unusual there.)
The thing is, I have one scene where only one of those characters is present, and he and the others get in a fight and he gets knocked unconscious. I really don't want to have to go into the head of one of the other "main" characters whose thoughts we have never heard, but I can't really skip the rest of the action either. Do I just write the rest of that scene as 3rd person with no deep penetration at all? That seems somewhat... boring. John punched Jane. Jane punched back. etc etc. Without going into someone's head, it gets bogged down.
So do I just write it in 3rd person from no particular person's POV, or do I just have to choose someone else's head to go into for the rest of that scene?
posted
For when I knock out my MC, I just usally do a wake up scene right after he falls unconscious. So it saves me the time and effort of having to change POV.
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posted
But the thing here is that there is a group of characters fighting together, and what happens after he gets knocked out is important to the story and can't just be skipped with him waking up after it's all over...
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posted
But the point is if your MC is unconscious he's not going to know about this really important stuff going on! So it's a case of tough luck for him, he'll just have to discover what happened after he comes back round. At least this way you can build suspense as the reader will be filling in the blanks along with the MC during his attempt to piece it all together.
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posted
I'm going to restate something that is on this site over and over, but is pertinent. You can break any 'rule' as long as you're willing to pay the price. What that means is that if you want to jump around in POV and can make it work for you and your readers, do it.
Personally, I'd suggest doing as Paul-girtbooks suggest--sticking to a single POV for any single scene. If you split it between two scenes as he suggests, I think it would work better. On the other hand, I've seen books and stories where scenes in a story have been told over from different points of view. I don't like this technique because I think its cheating and shows little imagination. It seems like the author in these cases just didn't know how to do it any other way, or had no real good ideas on what to write, so they just rewrote what happened before, but some authors do it.
I also don't think its a good idea for any beginning author trying to break into publishing to break the 'rules'. Once established you can break whatever you want, but before then, it's probably a good idea to stick to standard practice.
posted
AstroStewart, I have a scene very similar to this, so I can understand your desire not to say 'cut' when he goes unconscious. In my scene, the PoV actually has to shift twice (ie, three people) but it also has to show the scene in general.
What I have done for the entire scene is use a type of omniscient viewpoint that can see everything that is going on (beyond what the PoV character is noticing at the moment), but as a rule the viewpoint can only dip into the internal feelings and thoughts of the one PoV character. This character shifts twice, since the first one leaves the scene, and the second one gets incapacitated. At each of those shifts, I leave a blank line in the text and then continue on with my limited omniscient viewpoint, only from the PoV of a different character. It sounds messy when I have to describe it, but it actually flows very smoothly.
Might that work for you?
Edited for verb tense.
[This message has been edited by sojoyful (edited December 04, 2005).]
posted
Actually this is similar to the style I've been using in my story so far. I think I may have said "3rd person deep penetration" too early. I speak from what closely resembles an omniscient voice, but I dip into the thoughts of my characters, usually the same 2-3 characters over and over.
The "problem" I have here is that the only characters left are ones I've never dipped into. They have been central to the story, and the reader knows them fairly well by now, but I've never written from any of their viewpoints (yet, at least).
The feeling you get (or at least, I hope a reader would get) is not necesarrily that you are following a "main character" through a story, but that you are following this group of 4-5 people, but with an emphasis on those 1-2 whose thoughts I dip into. As such, it feels like cheating for me to cut the action scene right as it's really starting up, just because one of the characters falls unconscious.
Is it really "breaking the rules" to change the viewpoint character (NOT the POV, just the character you're focusing in on) in the middle of a chapter, with a line break like sojoyful suggested?
posted
You can change PoV when using Third Person Limited Omniscience anytime you change sections (usually denoted by a blank line in a book or a # in a manuscript).
It is difficult to use Full Omniscient and still draw the reader in. However, I dont think you need the Full Omniscient.
You do not need to have previous used a character's PoV if you need to use a new PoV to describe action.
But, I agree with the theory of letting us know as the primary characters figure out what happened while they were out.
posted
Right. I've read all the posts. I believe I understand the issue at hand. My personal preference, if this were my story that is, would be to stop the action once the character is knocked out. Then, when he comes to, he can learn about it (which someone mentioned above). Again, that's how I'd do it.
That said, you truly can switch POV in the same scene. I've done it, and nobody moaned. The trick, I think, is making it so smooth that it's almost unnoticeable. In my case, I had the MC fall asleep while his neural implant AI finished up some tasks on the MC's computer. In that case it worked. I switched from 3rd person to omniscient, and perhaps importantly, it occured at the end of a scene for only one paragraph.
The very end of a scene is a good place to do something "unorthodox." But you have to have a good reason for it.
And someone above mentioned using a scene break. Perfectly legimitate if you absolutely must show the fighting as it happened. Break, and immediately pick up where the action left off. No gap in time. You can even go back in time to have the new POV see the previous character getting knocked unconscious, if you want.
Of course, another option is to write the entire scene from another character's POV. Nothing wrong with that...
There's lots of things that can be done...
You can do whatever you like, really. Some people will moan about POV this, or 'you can't do that' that, but if something is done well enough and for good reason, most people won't even notice.
posted
On further inspection I ended up choosing that last option mentioned. I just decided to write that entire chapter from another character's POV. Actually, I think it might end up working even better from that POV, as I go inside that character's head later (in a few chapters or so) anyway, and she gradually becomes one of the most important characters in the story. This way, I can just have the same action take place, and the other character be knocked unconscious without having to negociate some tricky POV swap on the spot, or break up the scene with a scene break, or have to stop altogether and skip to where the other character regains consciousness again.
posted
Astro, I know you've made your decision already, but here's another suggestion:
Whenever a head injury "knocks" a character unconscious it smacks of 1970s detective TV melodrama. It is both cliche and unrealistic.
You can have your POV character taken out of the figtht without losing consciousness. The scene will be more dramatic if the character witnesses the battle while he/she is helpless and in pain.
quote:Whenever a head injury "knocks" a character unconscious it smacks of 1970s detective TV melodrama. It is both cliche and unrealistic.
I think that's a personal opinion.
Yes, if it's done a la the early James Bond films, where one clean *clunk* on the back of the neck always put the bad guys out, then it'll be a bit hard to take seriously (unless you're going for satire!) But I think it's plenty reasonable for someone to get knocked out during a fight. Especially if they already have other injuries making them weak. I used to do martial arts, and I can promise you that a blow to the head definately befuddles the ol' noggin. Hard enough, and it would put me out, at least.
posted
I agree with the idea that someone shouldn't easily get knocked out with a blow to the head that causes no real damage to the person (a la "vulcan nerve pinch" from star trek). But in this case, that's not what happens. The MC whose POV I usually use gets ambushed before his friends can help him, and quickly gets beaten to the point of near death.
In fact the only reason he survives at all is my story is in a fantasy setting and one of his friends uses some magic to keep him alive while the others engage the people responsible.
I was thinking of making it from his helpless POV for awhile, but he would be so critically injured, I don't think he could rationally understand what was happening, even if he did stay conscious.
[This message has been edited by AstroStewart (edited December 08, 2005).]
The cliche and unrealistic scenario is when characters are frequently knocked unconscious by head injuries but later make full recoveries. I believe it is especially unrealistic in a battle, where their helpless body seems unlikely to survive unmolested.
Never mind James Bond, that sort of writing might as well be The Three Stooges.
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