# Point of view



## Rkcapps (Jul 9, 2017)

Aargh! I suspect I've written my book in the wrong Point of View. Have you ever done that? What to do? The danger of reading is I confront Point of View that work and I feel mine doesn't. Just started a new book and my doubts rise to the surface. I'm about 30,000 words in (after ditching 70,000).


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## skip.knox (Jul 9, 2017)

Why do you think it's wrong? What is not working? Have your beta readers told you the same?


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## Rkcapps (Jul 9, 2017)

I wanted an "in the moment" perspective and I felt third person did that but I think I should've used first person. I think 'meh' my work would get by but a first person perspective could make it pop. For example, this is my first paragraph:

Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach. 

I feel like an observer but the idea of changing it is daunting (due to my physical challenges).


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 9, 2017)

1st or 3rd is bigger than what will make a paragraph pop. My bigger issue with the stories (long format) I tend to write is that 1st doesn't cut it for getting all the information in that's needed. Multi-POV, for instance. I need the reader to know things the character doesn't to achieve what I'm gunning for. So, first off, you have to ask whether the novel will work from 1st POV. What you gain can be offset by what you lose.

Also, you can make your third pop more (maybe) if you rethink the question marks, narrate in more certain terms to drum tension. Get the reader more into the scene.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jul 9, 2017)

I wrote 70k words a a couple years ago just to realize the majority of the story needed a major overhaul; a whole new story line. The 1st person 70k story line is now relegated to a 10% recurring flashback that ties the past to the present. 

So, yeah, it happens. In my opinion, as long as my changes make the story better, I'm willing to put in the work. But, you should have a clear definable reason why the already written parts do not work, and a clear understanding of how your proposed changes would make it better.

In my example, in the 1st person story (the original 70k), I felt that POV choice didn't work as the story proper because, being told in past tense, it robbed urgency. It would be obvious to the reader that the main character survived, which needed to be in question for the story reveals to work. 

As it stands, I had to create a whole new character cast, several new story lines, backstories, and settings for what now accounts for 90% of the story told in third person. As I said before, the first person accounts are now flashbacks given periodically. The structure changed to the "Story Within a Story" framework.

I feel it works now. The changes made it better.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Jul 9, 2017)

Yes, different POV's work better for different stories. But if your writing doesn't "pop," my instinct is that maybe you should look deeper than POV. A change in POV won't fix something that already isn't working. 

It could be that you need to switch POV though. That could for sure be a pain. Most likely it'll be more than changing the pronouns; first-person POV often has the character's individual voice and perspective bleed far more into the narration. 

Not sure i've ever had this problem. but i feel for you.


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## Steerpike (Jul 9, 2017)

The notion that this is inherently a POV problem may be part of the issue. People seem to operate on assumptions about POV that aren't necessarily true, and constrain their writing accordingly. You can do just about anything with one POV as another. If one comes more naturally to you, you may be more effective at getting the desired result initially (e.g. getting that close perspective in 1st person may feel easier than third), but with practice you can do it just as well with another POV. This includes having multiple points of view, which can be (and is) done in novels with 1st person POV.


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## Steerpike (Jul 9, 2017)

T.Allen.Smith said:


> It would be obvious to the reader that the main character survived, which needed to be in question for the story reveals to work.



As a bit of an aside:

Is this true, though? I've read first person narrations where the narrator doesn't survive, so I don't assume anything anymore. First person narration is a stylistic choice like any other. The narrator doesn't have to live through it and actually be recounting it to the reader. You can do it that way, as an option, but it isn't a requirement. 

Which isn't to say your choice for your novel was wrong, by any means. I'm sure it was not and that it works better in its current form. But I've seen first person narrations follow a character right up to the moment of death, when they can't possibly be recounting a series of events. A first person POV does not mean someone is actually recounting past or present events to the reader.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jul 9, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> As a bit of an aside:
> 
> Is this true, though?


Not always, but for this story, because of the way the reveals work, yes.


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## FifthView (Jul 9, 2017)

I tend to agree with Steerpike. Just about anything can be accomplished in a given POV choice. I do believe that the different POVs have some differences, accomplish some things and have some limits that don't arise outside those POV approaches. But I'd explore other factors in the writing before making the snap decision to switch POV styles.

So you want "in the moment" feels. The obvious, and maybe good or maybe not, decision would be to go with present tense:

_Tizania clings to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screen her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumps. If she hides here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What are the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suction her to the tree. What if she possesses magic? Her kind of healing isn't considered magic, is it? She despises magic, but the fact no one has been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years does not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach. _

I don't know the precise "in the moment feel" you want, or whether it's just for some parts of the book and not others. Normally, I don't much like novels written in present tense. But it can work wonderfully.

There are other things to look at. Your character is musing on past events here. Her mental focus—_that POV_—is NOT "in the moment." So if you want an in the moment feel, you might need to rephrase or eliminate altogether those parts where her mind is elsewhere or contemplating timeless, ongoing realities.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 9, 2017)

Multi-POV 1st person for more than a couple POVs, as far as getting a publisher's attention, will raise the hurdle. So, depends on the goal. The same goes for 3rd, but from what I hear from agents and pubs, doing more than 2 POV's in 1st tends to be problematic. For one, because you must make the voices vary, with distinct patterns, if it's to be done well. The more POV's the greater distinct voice hurdle. In 3rd, the writer's voice gets more of a pass because of narrator mode. 



Steerpike said:


> The notion that this is inherently a POV problem may be part of the issue. People seem to operate on assumptions about POV that aren't necessarily true, and constrain their writing accordingly. You can do just about anything with one POV as another. If one comes more naturally to you, you may be more effective at getting the desired result initially (e.g. getting that close perspective in 1st person may feel easier than third), but with practice you can do it just as well with another POV. This includes having multiple points of view, which can be (and is) done in novels with 1st person POV.


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## Steerpike (Jul 9, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> Multi-POV 1st person for more than a couple POVs, as far as getting a publisher's attention, will raise the hurdle. So, depends on the goal. The same goes for 3rd, but from what I hear from agents and pubs, doing more than 2 POV's in 1st tends to be problematic. For one, because you must make the voices vary, with distinct patterns, if it's to be done well. The more POV's the greater distinct voice hurdle. In 3rd, the writer's voice gets more of a pass because of narrator mode.



You have to be able to make it work, certainly. Anything non-standard is likely to present a bigger hurdle. The books I've seen where multiple POVs are used often have a single first person POV, and then other characters in third person. But you'd be surprised how many new authors I come across who think if you use a first person POV you're automatically stuck with that POV for the whole book.


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## FifthView (Jul 9, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.
> 
> I feel like an observer but the idea of changing it is daunting (due to my physical challenges).



I'll clarify something I said in my previous comment. The bit "no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years" is the narrator's mind thinking back to those twenty years, if only briefly, and this could create some distance between present events and the reader. If there's distance between the POV narrator and present events, and we experience those events through the POV, there'll be distance for us also.

Such a tidbit might or might not create much distance. My general thought is that something like a _feeling_ of being in the moment, or not being in the moment, might be the result of a confluence of factors. Something as simple as a change in POV could have some effect, but so could changing other things.

Demesnedenoir's suggestion of using "more certain terms" might also help to make the difference. "The gathered crowd" is a shapeless thing, almost an abstraction. The simple "the sorcerer" is similarly vague, almost an abstraction. If we were instead to see specific details, something sharp enough do delineate a _specific_ crowd and sorcerer, this might give us a sense of really being there.

Also, much of her other thinking is also in the abstract. "If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck." These, I think, are great thoughts for giving us a sense of her present thoughts, hah, but they are abstractions. If we are to experience the scene through the POV, these abstractions take place in the mind and not in the present milieu. Inside the mind is no-place and no-when, heh. Okay, so I'm waxing theory here.

As far as present tense goes...I think it could work, but it might not be what you want for the whole book, hah. Or it might, I don't know. I seem to recall Dan Wells in a recent Writing Excuses podcast saying he'd been sneaky in his books by slipping into present tense sometimes when he's delivering his POV character's thoughts. Would this maybe help too? I don't know. Experimenting with your paragraph, I might get something like this:

Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What are the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possesses magic? Her kind of healing isn't considered magic, is it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.​
Does that work? Heh, I've been curious about this since hearing that podcast. But again, one single change may not be all that's needed; using this method might require more careful thinking about what is thought by the character, how it is worded.

For that matter, using italicized direct thought can give a sense of being in the moment, also. So for example:

If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? _Nil, nil and none again. Not with my luck._ Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree.​
In a way, these last two ideas are almost accentuating the first-person feel of the general third person approach, heh.

Anyway, all this is just to inspire different ways of thinking about achieving what you want. Any number of combinations, approaches to the prose, could be used together.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 9, 2017)

Margaret Attwood uses third person present tense to great effect in  Oryx and Crake. I loved it. 

_ Snowman wakes before dawn. He lies unmoving, listening to the tide coming in, wave after wave sloshing over the various barricaded, wish-wash, wish-wash, the rhythms of a heartbeat. He would so like believe he is still asleep. 

On the eastern horizon there's a grayish haze, lit now with a rosy, deadly glow. Strange how the colour still seems tender. The offshore towers stand out in the dark silhouette against it, rising improbably out of the pink and pale blue of the lagoon. The shrieks of birds that nest out there and the distant ocean grinding against the ersatz reefs of rusted car parts and jumbled bricks and assorted rubble sound almost like holiday traffic. _

I think, that the comments of some of the others are right on. 

You know what I might suggest? I know you said you didn't want to do this, but it is a good exercise... try writing it out in first person, but then go back and change it to third. You may find that you end up with a closer third, which is what you might be looking for. It will take away the "separateness" that you are struggling with, and put you deeper into the head of the POV. 

I'll try to show you what I mean....


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## TWErvin2 (Jul 9, 2017)

As others have said, POV is more than about 'pop' of a paragraph or scene. It's what carries the story to the reader for the enter length. Decision is, which is best to relay the story to the reader?

Similarly, I think sometimes people go for present tense instead of past tense because they want the story and writing to feel more immediate to the reader. While the tense may have an impact, the overall writing and the story itself will have a greater impact on the reader.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 9, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.
> 
> ).



Ok, rewrite from first person, dialling into her perspective instead of the outside perspective... 

_I clung to the thick trunk of the muster tree, trying to ignore the pain as I pulled myself closer against the jagged bark. Only soggy leaves screened me from the throbbing hum of the gathering crowd. My heart jumped to my throat and I whispered a quick prayer that I wouldn't be seen. Between the leaves I could just make out the tall blue, pointed hat worn by the sorcerer. Soon he would be only feet from where I hid, scratched and bleeding from the Muster bark. Magic was something I can never considered, but in this moment, for the first time, I wondered what it would be like. What if I could just reach out one finger and blow him away? Turn him into a cat? A frog? Freeze him on the spot into a statue of ice. The thought brought a small smile to my lips but didn't prevent the multitude of panicked butterflies from popping in my stomach. It was only a fantasy, after all. My small talent in healing wasn't real magic. Not compared to the power of the sorcerer_. 

Ok. So when I have it written out in first person everything comes out from the MC perspective. We are in her head. All I have to do now is clean it up a bit and switch it to third.... 

_Tizania tried to ignore the pain as she pulled herself against the jagged bark of the Muster tree. Only a thin canopy of soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathering crowd. Heart jumping to her throat she choked a quick prayer that she wouldn't be seen. Between the leaves she could barely make out the familiar shape of the tall blue, pointed hat worn by the sorcerer. Soon he would be only feet from where she crouched, scratched and bleeding, pressed against the Muster bark. Magic was something she had never considered, but in this moment, for the first time, she wondered what it would be like if she could just reach out one finger and blow him away? Turn him into a cat? A frog? Freeze him on the spot into a statue of ice. The thought brought a small smile to her lips but didn't prevent the multitude of panicked butterflies from popping in her stomach. It was only a fantasy. Her small talent in healing wasn't real magic. Not compared to the power of the sorcerer._

That sort of exercise gets you closer to the POV, so you not so much of an observer. I hope that is helpful


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## FifthView (Jul 9, 2017)

That's adding a lot Helio, heh, but I like the idea of first writing in 1st person and then translating into 3rd.  There are lots of occasions I've discovered I've fallen into the trap of looking AT my character rather than looking AS my character would, if that makes sense.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 9, 2017)

FifthView said:


> That's adding a lot Helio,



Lol! I was following your advice of trying to be more specific.


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## Rkcapps (Jul 9, 2017)

Thanks, guys, all excellent thoughts. I really like the exercise you played out Helio. That would've taken me all morning to type! lol! It definitely feels more in her head. That's what I need to do. I can see, while I like both POVs, I'll stick with the second. I suppose it really boils down to personal choice while doing the story/character(s) justice.

I did start with 3 POVs but dialled it back to 1 POV because while I've had to alter how information is revealed I'm still learning and tackling 3 POVs was ambitious. Best I master 1 first!  

Love that Atwood quote, simply sublime


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## Rkcapps (Jul 10, 2017)

Gotta say, you guys really helped. I feel I unlocked my problem and I'm writing more what I wanted. At least, it sure feels that way. That writing first person trick (well, i think it or I'd take too long) really works. Thank you, thank you, thank you!


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> _Tizania tried to ignore the pain as she pulled herself against the jagged bark of the Muster tree. Only a thin canopy of soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathering crowd. Heart jumping to her throat she choked a quick prayer that she wouldn't be seen. Between the leaves she could barely make out the familiar shape of the tall blue, pointed hat worn by the sorcerer. Soon he would be only feet from where she crouched, scratched and bleeding, pressed against the Muster bark. Magic was something she had never considered, but in this moment, for the first time, she wondered what it would be like if she could just reach out one finger and blow him away? Turn him into a cat? A frog? Freeze him on the spot into a statue of ice. The thought brought a small smile to her lips but didn't prevent the multitude of panicked butterflies from popping in her stomach. It was only a fantasy. Her small talent in healing wasn't real magic. Not compared to the power of the sorcerer._



This thread is prompting me to start another, although I'm not going to do so yet, heh.

I think that closeness when dealing with third person POVs must be some seamless commingling of two narrators. I'll call it the double-narrator for now. There's the actual narrator who is not the character, and then there's the hint (at least) that the character is narrating sometimes.

As a quick example from the above, take the clause _The thought brought a small smile to her lips_. She doesn't see that smile herself, and I wonder whether she'd have the presence of mind to realize that the smile she feels upon her face is small. "The thought brought a smile to her lips." What's the difference between these two, after all, if not a non-character narration adding detail? Many other things in the above passage, particularly the adjectival modifications, fall into this same category. She may well _feel_ that bark is jagged, that the leaves are soggy, that the prayer she utters is quick (probably even an unworded prayer, just a quick flash through the mind), but these words don't come to her conscious mind so she's not narrating.

There is a kind of unreality, especially when we fold in thoughts that can more easily be hers:  _Turn him into a cat? A frog? Freeze him on the spot into a statue of ice._ & possibly, _It was only a fantasy_. *These are Tizania consciously assessing the objective reality* and thereby giving some narration to it, I think, or at least functioning like a narrator. 

So we have bits like a character narration but a lot of other detail that she herself would not consciously add.

In a way, the unreality is similar to the unreality of a first-person past tense narrative that is meant to be read as if events are happening _now_, heh. Tricks of the trade.

I think that getting into the head of a character while writing third person and trying to write from her... consciousness?...can actually backfire, create some distance. Details are lost, specifics might be lost. She's not consciously thinking these things—she might be seeing the sorcerer's tall blue, pointed hat, but all she's thinking is "sorcerer"—and this can ultimately create distance, paradoxically.  This is like the dilemma of using a close 3rd person approach with an MC who lives on a planet that has no moon: How to get across this fact? In other words, operating only from within the mind of the character means that a lot of details a _reader_ would need can be lost, simply because the character wouldn't think about x, y, z detail consciously.

This morning I flipped through _Dune_ and found examples of "double-narration" in the omniscient approach Herbert used. I'd mentioned using direct thoughts, and also mentioned slipping into present tense, for creating closeness or at least a sense of being "in the moment." Herbert's omniscient dips in real close whenever he head hops:

Jessica fell silent, staring at him in the green light of the glowglobes, seeing the demoniacal stiffness that had taken over his expression. She shifted her attention to Jamis, saw the brooding look to his brows and thought: _I should've seen that before. He broods. He's the silent kind, one who works himself up inside. I should've been prepared._​
Obviously, the direct line to a character's present thoughts would create closeness, heh. But this offers the opportunity for letting a character assess situations or comment on what's happening, much in the way a storyteller narrator might in some other types of omniscient third.


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## Steerpike (Jul 11, 2017)

FifthView said:


> This morning I flipped through _Dune_ and found examples of "double-narration" in the omniscient approach Herbert used. I'd mentioned using direct thoughts, and also mentioned slipping into present tense, for creating closeness or at least a sense of being "in the moment." Herbert's omniscient dips in real close whenever he head hops:
> Jessica fell silent, staring at him in the green light of the glowglobes, seeing the demoniacal stiffness that had taken over his expression. She shifted her attention to Jamis, saw the brooding look to his brows and thought: _I should've seen that before. He broods. He's the silent kind, one who works himself up inside. I should've been prepared._​
> Obviously, the direct line to a character's present thoughts would create closeness, heh. But this offers the opportunity for letting a character assess situations or comment on what's happening, much in the way a storyteller narrator might in some other types of omniscient third.



May be semantics, but isn't this still just third person omniscient? The omniscient narrator can provide the thoughts of any character. I do agree that it lends more closeness to the narrative.

When it comes to third limited, if the narration includes details not perceptible to the character, I view it as a break or violation of the POV that has been established (which may be intentional or not). 

The double-narrator idea is interesting. I do see that, for example, in works by writers like Dennis McKiernan, though there is probably more of a delineation between the two in what he is doing.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

lol. Most of the stuff you are mentioning is due to my limited skill, not anything I did intentionally. POV is something I would like to delve into and discuss more deeply. It's something I struggle with. I'm writing from first person a lot and I find and I'm still using phrases like "I heard, I felt, I saw..." I'm pretty ruthless about culling them but they still pop in there. You are correct about the above example you gave about the smile. If it were to be full close third a lot of that stuff would have to be cut. I was going for more of a third omni... and there does have to be a strange intermingling of narrators. It would be fun to explore all this in another thread.


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

I don't think I've ever suggested giving details not perceptible to a character when writing in third limited.

But the issue here, I think, is defining what is perceptible vs narrative.

In Heliotrope's paragraph, there are many things perceptible to the character, such as the roughness of the bark and the sogginess of the leaves, but these might not arise to the level of conscious attention in the character. I myself am sitting at a desk, and for much of the time–until right this moment!–I wasn't thinking about the sensation of the seat against my backside, heh. Nonetheless, that sensation is perceptible. If I wrote a third limited scene about a character such as myself, I might include mention of the soft, cushiony leather chair even if the character is consciously focused on the forum post he's writing and not thinking about the chair. This level of detail lets a reader know the milieu; but, it's a narrative trick that an outside narrator does.

In third limited, there's _always_ an outside narrator, someone besides the character telling the story.

Third omniscient is not really much different. I've thought sometimes that these distinctions are simply categorizations of different types of the same general thing, the sorts of hairs that scholars and others split. "The omniscient narrator can provide the thoughts of any character" – so can the narrator of a third limited story, heh. Just put the two characters in different scenes or chapters and not hop from one to the other from paragraph to paragraph, and stick to each in turn.

The third limited does stick to adding detail that is perceptible to that character while writing narrative involving that character. I'm not going to write about the writer writing a forum post and mention that outside his office and down the road a monster has just pulled itself up out of the ground, heh. But when Herbert is writing his head-hopping omniscient, he pretty much sticks to that character's perceptions also. There is a different type of omniscient, the storyteller type or god-omniscient type, that might mention the monster arising from the earth and setting its sights on the unsuspecting Mythic Scribes member who thinks that the only important thing in the world is writing about writing, heh. (More important than, you know, actually doing his day job, hah.)



Steerpike said:


> May be semantics, but isn't this still just third person omniscient? The omniscient narrator can provide the thoughts of any character. I do agree that it lends more closeness to the narrative.
> 
> When it comes to third limited, if the narration includes details not perceptible to the character, I view it as a break or violation of the POV that has been established (which may be intentional or not).
> 
> The double-narrator idea is interesting. I do see that, for example, in works by writers like Dennis McKiernan, though there is probably more of a delineation between the two in what he is doing.


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> If it were to be full close third a lot of that stuff would have to be cut.



Oh, I disagree. Or at least, if it needed cutting, it wouldn't be a POV issue I think.

But Helio, most of the time I read your writing I'm floored by how good it is, heh. So I don't really know what you mean by "my limited skill."


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

FifthView said:


> Oh, I disagree. Or at least, if it needed cutting, it wouldn't be a POV issue I think.
> 
> But Helio, most of the time I read your writing I'm floored by how good it is, heh. So I don't really know what you mean by "my limited skill."



Oh gosh, thanks  that was a nice little confidence boost for the day!

If you could forward that sentiment to Strange Horizons before I submit my next peice I would really appreciate it


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Oh gosh, thanks  that was a nice little confidence boost for the day!
> 
> If you could forward that sentiment to Strange Horizons before I submit my next peice I would really appreciate it



Heh, I should have specified that I was talking about the prose, not completed works, since I've not read your completed stories.

Your example in this thread prompted many of my current thoughts. If I'd entirely rewritten the original paragraph, I would not have ended up with something much like yours. Yours works for me; I can read that kind of writing and easily find myself absorbed into the story. But as far as writing in that style? Heh, not so much. A lot of threads, a lot of discussions, a lot of examples of writing (here on MS), have given me a taste of your stylistic tendencies–and they are not like my own! But this has also led me to more fully consider how different approaches can lead to closeness in third person.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

I know, I only jest. 



FifthView said:


> Heh, I should have specified that I was talking about the prose, not completed works, since I've not read your completed stories.
> 
> Your example in this thread prompted many of my current thoughts. If I'd entirely rewritten the original paragraph, I would not have ended up with something much like yours. Yours works for me; I can read that kind of writing and easily find myself absorbed into the story. But as far as writing in that style? Heh, not so much. A lot of threads, a lot of discussions, a lot of examples of writing (here on MS), have given me a taste of your stylistic tendencies—and they are not like my own! But this has also led me to more fully consider how different approaches can lead to closeness in third person.



Yeah. Let's do a thread on this. I would love to learn some tricks on how people approach POV, and how they manage to fit voice and style into the mix.


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. Let's do a thread on this. I would love to learn some tricks on how people approach POV, and how they manage to fit voice and style into the mix.



We seem to fall into this pattern of my mentioning something, not committing to a new thread, then you start it. 

In this case, I thought maybe this thread might be appropriate, because it's addressing closeness and POV, which are the subjects of the thread, and I don't know that the answer to Rkcapps's concern is, certainly, "Write like Heliotrope."  * Anyway, I'm going to use that excuse for why I just posted these comments here today rather than start the new thread.

There is something relating to MRUs in all this, which could give it another spin deserving of a new thread, but my general barely-founded impression is that the topic of MRUs might be groan-inducing.

*Edit: There is my tiny jest. Actually earlier today, reading in the random thoughts thread and thinking of writing a scene about a school bus driver and his unruly passenger, I myself thought about trying to "write like Heliotrope"—and I came up short. It was like hitting a brick wall while trying to drive that bus. And yet, if I want that up-close, intimate third....


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

I saw that and wanted to enter your contest, but knew you would never commit to actually posting it  

i agree this thread is appropriate because we can use the OP's example as a jumping off point. I added a bunch of personal, POV thoughts, but you are correct, I also added a bunch of microtension that wasn't there, and it could have even been better if I'd focussed on MRU's. 

And I know, my instinct is to always show how I would do something, but the intention is never "write like me". It is a nasty habit, however, but I'm not sure, sometimes, how else I would illustrate my point? 

But let's move on. 

I have noticed, since you brought up Dune, that close third seems to be a fairly modern phenomenon? Am I correct in this? The big writers on the early twentieth century kept the reader close by mostly writing in first... Hemingway, Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Faulkner all wrote in first. The other, especially for fantasy and sci-fi, used a sweeping third omni. Close third seems to be something introduced, perhaps, in the past seventy years, and I almost feel that the switch came from the popularity of cinema. Close third is the most cinematic of the POV types?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope, please don't stop giving concrete examples. I love to have working examples, and when I read your latest in this thread, I was like, yeah, I want to emulate _that_.


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## Aurora (Jul 11, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> I wanted an "in the moment" perspective and I felt third person did that but I think I should've used first person. I think 'meh' my work would get by but a first person perspective could make it pop. For example, this is my first paragraph:
> 
> Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.
> 
> I feel like an observer but the idea of changing it is daunting (due to my physical challenges).


Write in the pov that is most comfortable to you. Some writers prefer first to third to omniscient. Identify which you enjoy the most, which one brings you closest to the story because that's all that matters. 

One gal from my former writing group wrote intriguing stories in first. When she tried third, her struggles with that pov were visible. We encouraged her to continue writing in first because it's her strong suit. 

Go with whichever point of view you are strongest in.


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> I have noticed, since you brought up Dune, that close third seems to be a fairly modern phenomenon? Am I correct in this? The big writers on the early twentieth century kept the reader close by mostly writing in first... Hemingway, Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Faulkner all wrote in first. The other, especially for fantasy and sci-fi, used a sweeping third omni. Close third seems to be something introduced, perhaps, in the past seventy years, and I almost feel that the switch came from the popularity of cinema. Close third is the most cinematic of the POV types?



I think that cinematic is a form of _objective_ POV, so actually on the surface cinema and close, intimate third are opposite?

Being able to switch from character to character, with a focus on each, might be similar to the way cinema focuses on different characters depending on the scene.

I don't know if there's a direct relationship between the rise of cinema and close third.



Heliotrope said:


> I added a bunch of personal, POV thoughts



Yeah, you know, in trying to isolate my natural tendency and why your approach feels so foreign to me when I try to write like you, I think it might be related to the fact that I tend more toward an objective style and away from so much subjectivity. I don't stick to a purely objective approach, but I trend there, or at least I limit the subjectivity. I can't say too much about this, because I feel I haven't really found my voice yet. More accurately, I'm simply not satisfied with the voice I've managed to cobble together, heh.

But enough of me. Your mention of the cinematic form caused a light bulb to go off.  Let's look at that first sentence of yours:

_Tizania tried to ignore the pain as she pulled herself against the jagged bark of the Muster tree._

The objective facts of the scene are one thing. But this suggests a subjective, or at least personal, reality, right off the bat. If this were just a scene about a girl hiding, afraid of being selected by the sorcerer...Why would you instantly go for that narrowband feeling of pain caused by the jagged bark?  Heh. That's zooming really in to her very private, personal, self-contained, very in-the-moment sensation. This doesn't fit the order of MRU, but nonetheless it's an objective reality—jagged bark—and her personal reaction to it (cause-effect) even if in this case that reaction is also an objective reality (i.e., real pain.) But then she reacts to that objective reality of pain by trying to ignore it, heh. This zooming-in to the moment is something I've seen in a lot of what you've posted.

The first part of your paragraph is thick with this, that zooming in on _each moment's_ objective reality and how it affects her. Then you move into the abstract but subjective thinking with _Magic was something_....

Imagine writing the paragraph from a purely objective POV and how different it would be, heh.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I think that cinematic is a form of _objective_
> 
> Imagine writing the paragraph from a purely objective POV and how different it would be, heh.



Do it! I would have no clue how to even begin!


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

I think the example you gave, of her hiding against the tree, is cinematic, and here is why... 

When I'm writing I always try to write from the POV of the character, obviously, because I feel (and this is my own personal opinion) that emotion and character is what story is all about. I consider writing as a sort of exercise in method acting. So when writing a scene, like a girl hiding behind a tree, my first thought is "If I were hiding behind a tree, what would I be doing? What would I be feeing?" As an avid outdoors-woman I have leaned against my fair share of trees and none have been too comfortable. I imagine if I were this poor girl, it would not feel great to have to press myself against a tree... however, given the circumstances I had better try to ignore the pain. 

_Tizania pulled herself against the jagged bark of the Muster tree_ would probably be the objective, but it gives the reader nothing to hold on to other than a faceless, emotionless girl. 

Think of it like you, as the writer, are the director of the film. Do you want your movie to start out with the camera focussed on the girl's back as she clings to the tree? Or do you want to give the audience a face right away? An expressive face, showing some emotion? The emotion acts as the hook, or the microtension. Something the reader can cling to. Too often, when I see objective writing it is like a dark figure in a dark room, saying some dialogue or thinking about some distant backstory. There is no face, or emotion or sense of place or time. 

_Tizania tired to ignore the pain as she pulled herself against the jagged bark of the Muster tree._ Is like the camera opening up to a face. The girl is maybe wincing. Or cringing. Leave that up to the reader because exact specifics of what it looks like don't really matter to the story at large. All that matters is that she is trying to ignore the pain of the bark on the tree... 

It's the difference between the film starting out with the image of a faceless girl hugging a tree, or opening a scene with the face of a girl, wincing in pain, as she clings to a jagged tree. One has an interesting story behind it, the other doesn't. 


And THAT is the most important part. The emotion is the hook. Why is she trying to ignore the pain? If it hurts, why doesn't she just pull away? Why does she have to cling to a tree that is causing her pain? I must read on to find out...


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.



Just for fun, though, I'll write it out totally objective, Hemingway style  Equally as good (I LOVE Hemingway. Just different. Note, you still need to add in the hook of the pain, but in a different way). 

_Tizania clung to the thick trunk of the Muster tree. The sharp, jagged bark dug into her fingers and she thrust them into her mouth. They tasted of blood. She whispered a prayer and her skin stitched itself back together. The pain dissipated. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. Beyond the leaves the sorcerer scanned the gathered people, eyebrows furrowed. A thin sheen of sweat had gathered on his brow, staining his blue hat a deep violet. He waved his arm at the people impatiently, releasing a shower of glowing sparks. In unison they separated, giving his flowing robes a wide path. Tizania closed her eyes._


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Just for fun, though, I'll write it out totally objective, Hemingway style  Equally as good (I LOVE Hemingway. Just different. Note, you still need to add in the hook of the pain, but in a different way).
> 
> _Tizania clung to the thick trunk of the Muster tree. The sharp, jagged bark dug into her fingers and she thrust them into her mouth. They tasted of blood. She whispered a prayer and her skin stitched itself back together. The pain dissipated. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. Beyond the leaves the sorcerer scanned the gathered people, eyebrows furrowed. A thin sheen of sweat had gathered on his brow, staining his blue hat a deep violet. He waved his arm at the people impatiently, releasing a shower of glowing sparks. In unison they separated, giving his flowing robes a wide path. Tizania closed her eyes._



I think this isn't entirely objective. You had challenged me to try a purely objective version, but I thought I might not be able to, heh. This is because it's so, so easy to slip in non-objective narration by accident, and also I'm not 100% on board with what might be considered a break in the objective POV.

Basically, you are on the right track, although I'm not sure we are on the same wavelength re: a cinematic POV. I think Orson Scott Card used that term, but I haven't actually read what he had to say about it, heh. So I've equated it to Objective, mostly because when I think of watching a movie, I think about how information is relayed to me. Most of the time, that info is only what is in the observable (sight and sound.)

So someone who is feeling pain caused by rubbing against rough bark....we can only know that pain if the director shows us something that will lead us to believe the character experiences pain. She might jerk her hand back, wave it fast, look at it, and the camera will then focus on her palm, showing bloody scratch marks. These are observable things, objective things.

In your example, here are the places I think you might have broken the objective POV:


They tasted of blood.
The pain dissipated.
Her heart thumped.
impatiently
giving

The thumping heart is iffy for me in this case. Technically, it is an objective fact, because hearts beat. But can anyone else in the world, sans magical abilities, not lying against her skin, not using a stethoscope know it is thumping? (Is it observable?) And besides, why not say that it beat? Why thump? That's giving a subjective interpretation of what it's doing, or at least comes across (for me) as the author trying to give it more meaning (describing her internal, emotional state) in a tricky way, heh.

The same sort of personal experience, subjectivity is being used in the taste of blood and the pain dissipating. 

_Impatiently_ is a subjective evaluation. Now, I think it's true that moviegoers can interpret behavior to infer an emotional state; but the objective delivery is the actor making those moves and expressions. That's what we see.

I'm a little on the line with "giving" also.  Maybe they aren't giving him anything but instead are being terrified he'll unleash those sparks upon them if they don't get out of the way, heh. Giving interprets an emotional state or a mental orientation, something that's not observable. So, not objective. _In unison they separated, and he walked between them_ would be the objective delivery? (And giving those _robes_ a path?)

In objective narration, you can still give subjective info...by objectifying it!  Heh, silly use of term, there. Basically, you can make it objective by putting it into dialogue: "Damn, this jagged bark hurts," Tizania said. The content of the speech is subjective, but the speech itself is an objective thing, something anyone within earshot can hear. (Relating this back to MRUs, this also means that M can be someone saying something in dialogue, to which the POV character reacts.)



> Think of it like you, as the writer, are the director of the film. Do you want your movie to start out with the camera focussed on the girl's back as she clings to the tree? Or do you want to give the audience a face right away? An expressive face, showing some emotion? The emotion acts as the hook, or the microtension. Something the reader can cling to. Too often, when I see objective writing it is like a dark figure in a dark room, saying some dialogue or thinking about some distant backstory. There is no face, or emotion or sense of place or time.



Well, I suppose there is bad objective narration and good objective narration. An expressive face can be given in prose, a muttered curse, sudden tears, whatever.



> The girl is maybe wincing. Or cringing. Leave that up to the reader because exact specifics of what it looks like don't really matter to the story at large. All that matters is that she is trying to ignore the pain of the bark on the tree...



Can't quite agree with you there. This would mean all movies are basically failures.  But there are different ways of delivering the same info. The wince, the waving of the hand, the bloody marks are delivering the reality of the pain to the reader. We could just as easily tell the reader, _Tizania felt pain._ Or we could show them a scene of what is happening and allow them to make that mental leap. I like the fact that you used _ignored_ in your first version, because this adds other information about her personality; and, you phrased it so that the pain itself became an objective reality. Tricky, tricky. But you could show her placing her hand back upon the bark, maybe placing her other hand too, and pressing against it to give the same info of ignoring the pain.

Edit: But a lot of the above is going off topic, maybe. I'm curious to know whether a purely objective narration can nonetheless create a sense of closeness, but I'd mentioned it mostly to contrast with what you do, the way the subjectivity can create a feeling of closeness.  Plus, although I said I trend a little away from subjectivity, a little more toward the objective, this doesn't mean I know how to write pure objective narration well, heh, and I don't even try. But I don't use subjectivity like you do, or not as much of it.


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## FifthView (Jul 11, 2017)

Addendum: But now, minutes after leaving the abstract above, heh, the thought has occurred to me that your not-quite-pure version of the objective narration is much closer to what I do than your very close and subjective first version, heh. Takes me awhile, sometimes, to see what's staring me in the face.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 11, 2017)

No, it's bloody hard for me to write purely objectively lol! Probably impossible. I know that it is common for writers to be "warm" (subjective) and "Cool" (objective). We are on opposite ends of the spectrum perhaps. I think it is possible for an objective (cool) writer to be very close... Hemingway is the example I typically use. His works make me feel things that I know are inherently "real" and "true" and yet he never exposes emotion on the page. He _does_ however, write almost totally in first person, and he often does explicitly write out thoughts.


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## Rkcapps (Jul 12, 2017)

Fascinating discussion  I love it  

Back to POV, nothing distracts me more as a reader as when I read published authors who "head swap" throughout a scene. I find the story harder to follow. I've seen it done so many times, I deduce agents mustn't mind if the story is strong enough. Makes me think, "just get the story out" but I do wonder why the "head swap" wasn't edited out in later drafts. Someone has clearly made a call of story v rules. I prefer to the sticking with one character per scene but if a story (as a reader) takes me beyond that, I admit, I'll follow the story.

Much the same applies with objective v subjective. I'll read either - in order to go on story's journey. I'm easily pleased! There comes a point when we, as writers, must find the niche of our story. And we each eventually find our own niche, but this discussion makes me focus and realise I fall into half/half. I like the objective (in that I try focus and describe what the characters' see or hear) and the subjective (because I like to tie an emotion to the objective state to connect with the reader on an emotional level). You've both helped me see that. Thanks!

With the heart thumping, I'm trying to capture that moment when your heart beats so loud in fear that you hear it. Like the moment you lie awake in bed, hear a noise and you think someone who shouldn't be is in the house. My heart thumps - and races (I've had lots of these moments! Invariably my imagination!). Couldn't that be considered objective? Or perhaps "thumped in her chest"? except that makes me feel I'm telling and I should leave the reader to infer, don't you think? Or perhaps that simply boils down to personal preference?

_Ignored _is a tricky choice. I see that now and see your point FifthView. I wonder it's more a voice thing. I'm going to have to ponder on that. Do I edit out my voice but stay true to show v tell? I'm finding more and more that words ending in "ed" sound alarm bells in my head that I may be telling and I may need to edit the telling out in a subsequent draft. I lean more toward the rule because I'm still at a stage of my writing where I need to abide by rules not break them. 

Much food for thought


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## FifthView (Jul 12, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> Fascinating discussion  I love it
> 
> Back to POV, nothing distracts me more as a reader as when I read published authors who "head swap" throughout a scene. I find the story harder to follow. I've seen it done so many times, I deduce agents mustn't mind if the story is strong enough. Makes me think, "just get the story out" but I do wonder why the "head swap" wasn't edited out in later drafts. Someone has clearly made a call of story v rules. I prefer to the sticking with one character per scene but if a story (as a reader) takes me beyond that, I admit, I'll follow the story.
> 
> ...



I think the "objective" in objective narrative is meant to describe the reader's experience more than the general theoretical question of whether something is a "real" concrete phenomenon that happens in-world. The Wikipedia page says it's sometimes described as "fly on the wall." For any given scene, would a fly on the wall hear the heart thumping? How would a reader know about the thumping heart? If there's no dialogue—"My heart's thumping like it wants to get out!" Davis said—and if there's no magical or technological reason for the thumping to be heard by anyone other than the character, then technically we'd need a subjective view (from that character's head—_or_, from the head of an exterior omniscient narrator) to know about it.

But I think there may be a couple reasons for why purely objective fiction isn't common, heh. First, it's probably hard to write well without a lot of new thought given to it; almost all our fiction presents subjectivity in one way or another, so we are used to subjectivity in fiction. Second, readers like the closeness of subjectivity.

I think that considering objective writing helps us to focus on the subjectivity we put in fiction, for the contrast if nothing else. But the level and types of subjectivity and objectivity probably lie on a continuum, and different authors will use these differently for stylistic reasons and/or for effect.

As for head-hopping, my subjective opinion is that it's difficult to do well. I've tried. The issue for me seems to be writing the fluid, "organic" transitions that eliminate or at least greatly soften a jarring effect. But also, choosing which character heads to enter, and when to enter those heads within a given scene, is a major issue. How long to stay in one head before hopping is another issue. I read a book recently that I think would be a textbook case of how not to do all these things. 

There was a Writing Excuses podcast covering intrigue, I think, maybe also suspense, in which _Dune_ was an example: Going from head to head puts all the cards on the table for the reader, so we end up with an understanding of all character motives, plots, etc.—little is hidden—while also knowing that the characters themselves had little clue what others were thinking. This is one potential valuable effect. But head-hopping is hard to do well, heh.

I mentioned "ignored" because I liked the way it was used, heh. A lot of great writing could be better characterized as Show _and_ Tell rather than Show vs Tell, depending on which part of any given book you are reading. "Show, Don't Tell" is a piece of advice that can be followed too fanatically.

On a fundamental level, all narration is telling, insofar as a narrator is telling us a story. "She opened the door" is the narrator telling us she opened the door. So, "She ignored the pain?" Now, because of this thread, I'm thinking that the advice has something to do with the way the objective and subjective are used. Typically, the advice to show, don't tell, refers to emotional or non-rational mental states: Don't tell us she's happy, show us; don't tell us he's confused, show us. These are subjective experiences for the character; no character or reader outside that person can observe those states directly but can only interpret behavior to infer the state. I suppose that showing rather than telling these things gives a solidity for the reader, lets a reader participate in assessing these states which otherwise might be vague or without scope.

But actions themselves can be impossible to observe directly from outside the character. By observing a character's behavior, we can infer that she might be ignoring something, but this is not like observing a character opening the door; we don't have to infer _that_, heh, because we see her turning the knob and pulling the door open.

In any case, slipping into the heads of characters changes things a bit. For Tizania, the pain is an objective fact, heh. Ignoring something is an action, in this case a mental act. So this kinda returns to an earlier thought I had about the double-narrator, or at least about blending narrator with character. Once we are in her head, the idea of ignoring pain takes on the reality, the solidness if you will, of opening a door. It is a new perspective, a new frame of reference, and for me it _feels_ like showing rather than telling.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

There is no "rule" against head hopping, so long as it suits the stylistic choice of the narrator. In my own WIP I use first person for the bulk of the story, but flip to third omni for the prologue and epilogue which does include head hopping between a married couple. 

_But there was an empty space in Honey’s beautiful world. A large beige patch of wall in the living room that desperately needed something to fill it. Every day Honey would divert her eyes from the empty patch of wall so she might forget it existed. Every day she would busy herself with her gardening or her cross stitch or her dusting and hope that maybe, if she saved enough change from her regular trips to the shopping mart in the hidden jar at the top of cupboard, she might purchase a piece of art to place there._

_As a child Honey had rather enjoyed painting. She’d even won an award in senior year for her “exquisite rendition of peonies in oil”.  The piece had been placed in a position of honor at the front of the school. Years later Honey had gone back for the painting, but a new one had taken its place. A cold grey thing that was called “Shattered Glass” and contained, to Honey’s eye, no beauty what so ever. But the times had changed, she guessed. And no one was interested in flowers painted in oil anymore. She never did find the painting. And never owned a brush again.
_
_Mr. Wilbur Perkins enjoyed coffee. Not the coffee made by Mrs. Perkins first thing in the morning, no, he enjoyed coffee shop coffee. He enjoyed nothing more than driving his large luxury car past the drive in window of the local coffee shop on his way to work and handing over the bits of change he found in a jar on the top shelf of the kitchen and receiving a piping hot Styrofoam cup. Something about that cup told him he’d made it. His father never drank coffee from a Styrofoam cup. His father never had change to spare just laying around in kitchen jars._

“_You took it.” Honey said one afternoon, eyes wide and rimmed in red when Wilbur came home late from work._

“_Took what?” He was certain he had never taken anything in his life. He had worked hard. He earned what he had.

“My painting,” was all she could muster before collapsing in tears and running to the bedroom. Wilbur had never heard of this painting. He was sure they had no paintings whatsoever in the house as who could afford such luxuries? It took enough effort for him to abide her constant spending on fertilizer and colored threads.

“Women.” He muttered, reaching for the change jar. “What foolish thing will she blame me for next.” He reached for the jar and removed the last of the coins before finding his car keys and heading for town. ]_
[/I]
Omni style has its place, and is a very valuable tool. 

But this conversation does have me wondering about show don't tell (which I think is a very confusing, convoluted, more abstract-than-it-seems guideline) and why close third is deemed to be "the right way" currently in fiction?


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> There is no "rule" against head hopping, so long as it suits the stylists choice of the narrator.



Yep. Heck, Virginia Woolf could go through multiple heads in the course of a single sentence 



Heliotrope said:


> But this conversation does have me wondering about show don't tell...



The guidelines itself can have value, in context, but it is handled in such a manner as to rob it of much of its value. It's thrown out as a more or less automatic critique comment, without much thought as to how it applies to any given situation.



Heliotrope said:


> and why close third is deemed to be "the right way" currently in fiction?



Is it? I'd have thought the trend is more toward first person. I think the modern trend toward closer points of view is a trend toward more emotional impact and investment in fiction, rather than a more intellectual and removed approach, and may be related to a much more mass appeal of fiction, as opposed to say the 1800s when reading fiction was limited largely to certain social classes.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

Just an add in... I'm reading "The Edible Woman" by Atwood right now and she is genious in the way she uses POV. The book is about a woman who snaps and goes crazy. The first third of the book is in first, so we are close to the narrator. The moment she snaps, however, section 2 of the book, Atwood switches to third. It is very clever because now we as the reader are not only standing outside the character, but we get the sense that she is standing outside of herself. Detached. It is excellent use of the tool.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

But the 1800's was largely third omni, almost never first. Then you got into the late 1800's with Dickens and Poe and they started dappling in first, then the entire 1900's was all about first, as I mentioned earlier, and now we are making a switch to third close... I wonder why? It's a fun POV, but I get the sense it's the way things are "Supposed" to be written?


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> But the 1800's was largely third omni, almost never first. Then you got into the late 1800's with Dickens and Poe and they started dappling in first, then the entire 1900's was all about first, as I mentioned earlier, and now we are making a switch to third close... I wonder why? It's a fun POV, but I get the sense it's the way things are "Supposed" to be written?



Yes, the third omni viewpoint in the 1800s is what I'm referring to with respect to a more distant viewpoint, more of an intellectual approach to narrative rather than emotional engagement. I think the audience of readers at the time may have influenced that. Or maybe it was just a function of earlier stages of modern fiction.

As for the 1900s, I'd be surprised if more fiction was written in first than in a close third-person point of view. I see a lot of first person in the 1990s, but it doesn't appear to trend as strongly before that (though you do see some well known literary figures using it).

Or maybe that's just a function of the books I read. I read a lot more close third person fiction growing up, back in the 1980s, and continuing into books I read in the 1990s, and see a lot more first person past/present these days. I've also read a lot of commentary over the past five years or so, some critical and some complementary, about the trend toward first person. This could all be anecdotal as well, but seems to fit in with my own experience since the late 1990s or so.

I wonder if anyone keeps records of this sort of thing. It would be interesting to see what the numbers actually look like.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

Yeah, I would be interested. The 1980's is when I see third close getting really prevalant, like you say. Before that it was very rare.


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah, I would be interested. The 1980's is when I see third close getting really prevalant, like you say. Before that it was very rare.



Also, could be that we're defining things a bit differently. Third limited generally v. third close, that is.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

Maybe. I tend to use them interchangeably. 

So what I want to know is do any of you guys purposely plan your POV like Atwood does above? Like, under what circumstances would you use the different POV types? I think Fifthview had a great example with Dune, that omni let's the reader see the goals and motivations of every character, which really heightens the tension in many ways. When you enter a scene you know exactly who wants to kill who and why and you wonder how it will all play out. GRRM does this using third limited, but that means he needs a chapter for every character which means it takes him ten years between books. I think Herbert streamlined it nicely with his omni style.

On the flip side, I can see why first person to third limited would be the POV of choice if you wanted to keep secrets from the reader and reveal things at different times, like a mystery. 

I could also see how first person narrative might be a better choice if the character arc is more internal than external... 

Thoughts?


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## FifthView (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> But this conversation does have me wondering about show don't tell (which I think is a very confusing, convoluted, more abstract-than-it-seems guideline)



I don't dismiss the advice of Show Don't Tell out of hand, but I also don't often consciously think about it while I write.

I do often enough think in my head, _How'm I gonna show this?_ But this is a predisposition toward trying to show things more than a fear or running away from telling.

_She was happy._

As I said above, I think that the advice generally refers to how we convey an emotional or irrational mental state, like happiness or confusion. However, I think that sometimes it's also used more broadly in critiques to describe whole passages that kinda short-cut on the action and events and reactions, and maybe it also means a kind of abstract summarization of events. I don't know?

But look at this line from Mark Twain:

_And away she went around the corner, leavin' me as happy as a dog with two tails._

I think that a great narrator or character voice can get away with a lot of telling.

But I think there's more going on here. Happy is abstract, vague, subjective, but using the simile compares it to a concrete, objective thing (even if a dog with two tails is purely fantasy, heh.) In a way, this is like making the abstract or subjective thing into an object, something objective. You can "see" happiness: It looks like a dog wagging two tails.

Also, I think that sentences like "I fought the dark tide of sadness that threatened to drown me" kinda make the sadness/happiness/whatever some kind of concrete thing that can a) be fought and b) can _do_ things like drown a person. That's a lot different than saying "I was sad." The line about ignoring pain was similar; at least it suggested that one can _do_ something _to_ pain, the way one might close a door or spit on the face of a captor.

I'd mentioned earlier putting subjective things in dialogue to make them objective, observable. Before that, I'd been wondering how best to handle abstract thoughts while still keeping things "in the moment," because for most stories, not everything can be concrete objects being moved around on the stage, heh. That led me to wonder if making abstract thoughts into direct, italicized thoughts might work. In a way, that's like putting the subjective into dialogue: something that can be observed, or made objective.

Waxing philosophical...I wonder if there is a kind of fractal thing going on here, insofar as novels are pure abstractions, heh. Yes, there's a true concrete, objective nature: They are ink shapes in books or pixels on an e-reader. But our goal is to make all that in-the-head fantasy seem like a real place with real people doing real things. So this is like taking the abstract and subjective and forcing it into something like a concrete, objective thing for others to experience.


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Maybe. I tend to use them interchangeably.



Yeah, me too. But I think third limited is the prevalent throughout much of the 1900s, probably as the most common viewpoint. Now I really want someone to study this!


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> So what I want to know is do any of you guys purposely plan your POV like Atwood does above? Like, under what circumstances would you use the different POV types?



I tend to go with third limited or first person, most often, and it's just a matter of the particular effect I want to achieve. I thought, for stylistic reasons, I'd like to do my current work in third omniscient, but I keep falling back into third limited regardless, so I'm either going to stick with that alone or go for a combination. 

I do like a lot of the conflict and story to be internal, and I think third limited and first person both work well for that. You could do it in omniscient, but I think the importance of it with respect to the main character might be lost somewhat in the omniscience of the narrative.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 12, 2017)

Yeah, it would be diluted, I think... too spread out among too many characters.


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## FifthView (Jul 12, 2017)

Re: Showing and telling, I think that great, believable omniscient storyteller or first-person can give us the sense of a real person telling us a story.  Maybe this is why certain approaches can get away with a lot more telling, summarization, whatever than other approaches. I would even go so far as to say this is very similar to putting subjectivity into dialogue to make it objective.

_"I'm so sad," he said._ --in a third-limited.

_He's so sad. Poor thing. He's always sad. He tells everyone how sad he is. He's a regular Eeyore_. --Omniscient storyteller or first person.

Ok, these are just quickies. I'm not claiming brilliant prose here, heh.


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## Aurora (Jul 12, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I tend to go with third limited or first person, most often, and it's just a matter of the particular effect I want to achieve. I thought, for stylistic reasons, I'd like to do my current work in third omniscient, but I keep falling back into third limited regardless, so I'm either going to stick with that alone or go for a combination.
> 
> I do like a lot of the conflict and story to be internal, and I think third limited and first person both work well for that. You could do it in omniscient, but I think the importance of it with respect to the main character might be lost somewhat in the omniscience of the narrative.


My worst selling book is written in omniscient, which is interesting because the reviews state they loved how the story was told and they felt immersed. But my better ranking/selling books are written in 3rd limited. I think first and 3rd are indeed in fashion due to readers wanting that intimacy.


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## Steerpike (Jul 12, 2017)

FifthView said:


> Re: Showing and telling, I think that great, believable omniscient storyteller or first-person can give us the sense of a real person telling us a story.



Yes. Take, for example, Steven Brust's Dragaeran histories (starting with The Phoenix Guards). They're sort of swashbuckling, Three Musketeers style adventures, but they take place in the past history of the world and the stories are "told" by a pompous historian, who makes intrusions into the stories and whose voice carries the work forward. This is an omniscient narrator, though he withholds information from the reader.

 By contrast, Brust's works relating to Vlad Taltos, which take place in the "present day" of the same world, are first-person narratives that convey the wry voice of the detective-type character who is the main character.


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## skip.knox (Jul 12, 2017)

I don't let choice of POV override my choice of story. There is no particular virtue in maintaining strict adherence to some literary definition of terms, but there is much virtue in telling the story well. 

I recently visited my grandson and bedtime story was _The Silver Chair_, the next-to-last volume in C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories. He moved around in point of view and committed any number of literary sins, but the story is clear and engaging and no amount of POV editing would have improved it. 

I think also of John Dos Passos' epic trilogy, _USA_, where he has multiple characters with lots of different levels of focus, though it's all third person (it's incredibly inventive for the time it was written). As long as the device does not throw the reader out of the story, it's all good. Also, it only counts if you did it on purpose. If the POV shift, or the closeness shift, is done unintentionally, then the editor certainly should call it out.


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## Rkcapps (Jul 12, 2017)

This is the true skill:

"As long as the device does not throw the reader out of the story, it's all good. Also, it only counts if you did it on purpose. If the POV shift, or the closeness shift, is done unintentionally, then the editor certainly should call it out." (Sorry, don't know how to create the blue boxes with one hand! I only know Cntrl-c Cntrl-v!)

I only have a vague sense of the trends from the 1980s onwards but in my reading there seemed a trend to third person that has shifted to first person of late.

That's a masterful trick Atwood uses and I can't get that image of a dog with two tails out of my mind!


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

POV and the extent and use of show not tell are related, I think. A 1st POV is going to get away with more tell than an intimate 3rd, and an omniscient 3rd with a strong narrator can get away with piles of it. I'll go back to a writing professor/pub'd writer I watched a while back, his example of show not tell was to me, tell versus telling with style. If I took a class with the guy, and he wrote "show don't tell" on my paper it'd probably confuse me, heh heh.

The Mark Twain example is a 1st POV example, telling with style. Italicized thoughts are a way around show v tell, in a sense. See Dune.

Emotion is sort of the low hanging fruit for identifying show vs tell, one of the more obvious. Distancing verbs are one of the other obvious indicators of a type of tell, but in different POV and voice choices, it's more or less acceptable. And of course, involves style points.

I think the rule reads: Show don't tell, unless telling is better... Good luck! heh heh.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> A 1st POV is going to get away with more tell than an intimate 3rd...



Why? I'd have to look for some examples to see if this is true. My general view is that 1st person and an intimate 3d person POV are interchangeable, and that it's just a matter of stylistic choice.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

I would have to see how you define interchangeable. Both can get away with it, of course, but 1st has the advantage of being the "character's voice" and someone directly telling us a story as 1st is purported to be, makes it feel more natural to just say "I was really pissed." Similarly, the thought _I'm so pissed right now_ buffers the tell. If in 3rd tight, you say "he was pissed off" you are way more likely to get hit with a "show don't tell" comment, just from my experience and observations. Plus, you might get hit with the passive. It's a simplistic example.

A 1st POV voice is more forgivable, IMO, because it emulates more how we'd expect someone to talk, just the same as dialogue is given a pass for a lot of things. Passives in dialogue? Not that big of a deal. -ly adverbs in dialogue? not that big of a deal. ?'s, !'s, tells, bad grammar, even profanity to some degree, the acceptance level will change. 1st is, in a sense, all dialogue, so it can get treated differently. Of course, there are totally different styles of 1st POV too... so, no hard laws here.



Steerpike said:


> Why? I'd have to look for some examples to see if this is true. My general view is that 1st person and an intimate 3d person POV are interchangeable, and that it's just a matter of stylistic choice.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> I think it is possible for an objective (cool) writer to be very close...



I had an instinctive kneejerk recoil from the idea of "warm" v "cool," heh. I'm not sure I approve.

But here's the thing. Cinema and television can easily suck me into a story. I become so engrossed, I begin to feel as if I'm there, in that time period, place, in the midst of events. The people are real to me, the stakes are palpable. There are times I find myself snapping out of that experience, and this indicates to me that maybe I was "close" before I snapped out and became distant. 

Audio/visual media has an advantage in being visual and audible, heh. I can't dismiss these things as aids to that closeness.

But I also suspect that much of our normal day-to-day experience of events and people is similar. Those of us who are not psychic do not actually experience the subjective world of others, their emotions and sensory experiences. We see behaviors, we have to infer, and we're pretty good at doing that, heh. 

(On a philosophical level, I think I'd have to say that seeing images on a screen is not much different than seeing people in real life, except that we aren't getting the 3D experience and are missing out on other sensory impressions like smell and touch. And I think this is part of the reason that we can so easily objectify others—not saying that this is okay, but just wondering if this is a partial reason for it.)

So I think that using imagery, objects, observable things can help to make the experience of reading similar to the experience of living, heh. 

But I think I'll add another element to this discussion, or partly borrow from Skip. Closeness, regardless of POV, level of objectivity and subjectivity, verb tense, may require an engaging story, engaging characters, and good writing: _If the hook is anodyne, then the tension of the line makes moot the fishy's twitch, the splashing of the brine._ Heh. I like using "line" for describing tension because there is a kind of unbroken line, an unbroken experience that helps in maintaining focus and seems necessary for creating a feeling of closeness. So in a way, avoiding breaking that line or casting the reader out of the story may be a method of building a sense of closeness. These may include: breaking POV, breaking voice, breaking tense, breaking grammar and syntax, breaking character, breaking style perhaps, breaking the world/milieu, and maybe many other things besides.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> I would have to see how you define interchangeable.



I've done some exercises in the past where I've taken intimate 3d person and 1st person passages and rewritten them in the other POV, and they're very similar. That may be a function of the passages I chose. I'd have to take a look at some 1st person books and see if there are any passages that I don't think would lend themselves to easy rewriting in 3d person.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

I think there really is a type of third-intimate that begins to feel a lot like first person.

However, the difference is that there's also, always, an outside narrator in third, even in third-intimate. The goal of that sort of third intimate is to hide this fact, heh, or create the illusion that there's no outside narrator. Saying, "He was pissed off" begins to feel like someone from the outside telling us about him.

That said, I think that maybe some of this, the whole discussion of closeness in fact, may depend on the general thrust of the narrative, so that occasional minor distancing doesn't leap out at the reader in a way that breaks the closeness.

Edit: I want to describe an example. If I'm really absorbed in the character voice, the narrative, and feel as if I'm seeing the world from his POV, then come upon a line like "He was pissed" in the middle of all that, I don't think it'd break the closeness. It would feel like just another part of the narrative, probably like the character himself telling me that. But maybe if the rest of the writing is weaker, the POV a bit abstract, whatever, that line might be a feather breaking my back, heh.



Demesnedenoir said:


> I would have to see how you define interchangeable. Both can get away with it, of course, but 1st has the advantage of being the "character's voice" and someone directly telling us a story as 1st is purported to be, makes it feel more natural to just say "I was really pissed." Similarly, the thought _I'm so pissed right now_ buffers the tell. If in 3rd tight, you say "he was pissed off" you are way more likely to get hit with a "show don't tell" comment, just from my experience and observations. Plus, you might get hit with the passive. It's a simplistic example.
> 
> A 1st POV voice is more forgivable, IMO, because it emulates more how we'd expect someone to talk, just the same as dialogue is given a pass for a lot of things. Passives in dialogue? Not that big of a deal. -ly adverbs in dialogue? not that big of a deal. ?'s, !'s, tells, bad grammar, even profanity to some degree, the acceptance level will change. 1st is, in a sense, all dialogue, so it can get treated differently. Of course, there are totally different styles of 1st POV too... so, no hard laws here.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

I don't know that there is necessarily a narrator apart from the character, but setting that aside, here is the opening of Hunger Games:








Now, if we switch to third (maintaining present tense):



> When Katniss wakes, the other side of the bed is cold. Her fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of their mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with their mother. Of course she did. This is the day of reaping.
> 
> Katniss props herself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. Her little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in their mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, their mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. Their mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they say.



Not a heck of a lot of change required. You have to vary the wording, of course, but in terms of intimacy and what you can show or tell, I don't see much difference here. Maybe with other passages...?


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I don't know that there is necessarily a narrator apart from the character



The character wouldn't be referring to _her_ this, _she_ that in reference to herself or be using her own name. The outside narrator is there. But this goes back to that double-narrator idea, blending the two. All other things being close and not breaking POV, those pronouns and her name almost become lost in the way _said_ can be unnoticed by the reader.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

"The walls are getting dingy." She said, turning to him. "They need a coat of paint." His eyes never moved from the screen. Eight men in wool socks and shoulder pads slid over the ice. Someone shot, and scored. 

"It's playoff season." 

"Not every minute, it's not." She snapped. She should have know it would turn into a fight. "Besides, I never said you had to do it. I'll do it." 

His mouth twitched. She had him. 

"Like hell you will. I'll have to spend the next month scraping paint off the ceiling." She was surprisingly offended. She had known to expect that but it still stung. 


Ha! Fun little exercise, trying to fit that "she was offended" line in there. It was hard and maybe not that effective lol.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

FifthView said:


> The character wouldn't be referring to _her_ this, _she_ that in reference to herself or be using her own name. The outside narrator is there. But this goes back to that double-narrator idea, blending the two. All other things being close and not breaking POV, those pronouns and her name almost become lost in the way _said_ can be unnoticed by the reader.



Yes, that's true. I wonder in some of these cases whether it makes sense to consider there is really a narrator at all. In other words, for an intimate third the narrator can't be the character, for reasons you stated, but the way it is written is such that no discernable narrator is meant to be present. You have the writer, but no real narrator separate and distinct from the writer. Even the "voice" in intimate third person is typically the voice of the character, as it is in first person.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

@Helio: There's almost a sense of self-analysis there. She's aware of having been offended; perhaps the surprise prompted that self-analysis. And it turns out that having been offended wasn't the surprise–abstractly, she knew it was coming and probably was already offended before he said it, heh–so much as the fact that it actually still stung, was more than mere abstraction. Or somesuch in her self-analysis.

I think this effect often happens when we tell emotional states for the POV characters in third intimate. To the degree that the voice comes across very much like a first person, the illusion of the character narrating, then this effect happens? A curious thing.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

Yeah, you had mention d the "he was pissed" thing earlier and it got me thinking about how that would all work, as far as telling vs. Showing and POV... interesting stuff.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

I'll always and forever say there is an outside narrator in third person narration, because there is.

BUT this is probably far more important, or at least this fact is far more useful, when examining how it can go so wrong, heh. 

I'll give an example. Some thread long ago prompted me to go to Amazon and look at a preview of some random self-pubbed book, and what I found was a narrative that lacked the richness, the description of your Katniss example. Every page, heck every paragraph, had lots of hers and shes and the POV character name, close together, and the overall sense was that I felt I was outside looking _at_ her rather being absorbed by the POV or into the POV. This was a story meant to be in an intimate, close POV I think.



Steerpike said:


> Yes, that's true. I wonder in some of these cases whether it makes sense to consider there is really a narrator at all. In other words, for an intimate third the narrator can't be the character, for reasons you stated, but the way it is written is such that no discernable narrator is meant to be present. You have the writer, but no real narrator separate and distinct from the writer. Even the "voice" in intimate third person is typically the voice of the character, as it is in first person.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

I'm inclined to agree with FV... even with third close, it is sort of an invisible narrator, but they are still there.  Nothing illustrated that more to me than the book I'm reading now. To start out in first, and get so connected to the character and the voice, to be suddenly thrust into third was jarring, like being ripped from my mothers arms. I think Atwood intended it that way, and it was a simple jump from first to third close, but the separation is obvious.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

The discussion regarding narrators raises some interesting questions, at least in terms of academic matters or writing theory. For example, to the extent the narrator really is invisible, what does it mean to say they're there. These are written words...it seems that speaking of a narrator as existing really only makes sense to the extent the narrator is actually perceptible in some fashion. An intimate third person point of view provides the illusion (to use FV's words, which I think are apt) that the character is narrating, but structurally it can't be the character. 

I'm assuming we're all using narrator in a similar way, as other than the writer. The writer is always present. The characters are always present. If the narrator is invisible in a medium where perception of words is how information is conveyed to the reader, than does the narrator really exist (or, perhaps more importantly, does it matter if she exists)?


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

I think there's no problem in saying that the narrator may be the writer, in some cases.

Curiously, this harks back to the topic of objective narration, also. One goal in objective narration, at least the pure variety [Edit: in third person], is to remove the sense of a narrator altogether. So if some subjective thing is given, that breaks the objective narration. If the subjectivity is character subjectivity, then there must be someone outside the events in the story giving it who is able to see inside the character. If there's a subjective evaluation of things exterior to the character, then there must be someone outside the story giving that also.

Then there is the difference between the storyteller omniscient third and other types of omniscient third. I've often thought that the storyteller ought to be considered another character in the story. But other types of omniscient can have a narrator who has no easily discernible personality.

I suppose that some extreme examples of removing the sense of narrator probably might end up at the level of writer=narrator—or being near enough to that to say that.

On a theoretical-philosophical level, I think we'd probably need to consider the split between conscious and unconscious awareness of the existence of a narrator. Even if the pronouns, "said," etc., aren't receiving conscious attention or focus from the reader, the reader is probably still aware of them on some level. Same goes for the narrator.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Jul 13, 2017)

A third person narrative extensively using the device of free indirect speech helps me as a reader to forget about the outside narrator. I'm able to feel like I'm in the skin of the character, even though the pronoun used in the text is "she" or "he" instead of "I." The narrator is not intruding.

Even with first person narratives, the narrator can intrude. I just read an excerpt on this forum where the first person narrator intruded while telling her own story.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Some of this prompts me to ask whether there's sometimes a difference between a narrator intruding and a writer intruding, lol, just in case there are different sorts of things to look for.


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## Steerpike (Jul 13, 2017)

FifthView said:


> Some of this prompts me to ask whether there's sometimes a difference between a narrator intruding and a writer intruding, lol, just in case there are different sorts of things to look for.



I think so. Going back to Brust's _The Phoenix Guards_, the narrator intrudes and is not the 'writer.' But that's somewhat of a special situation in that the narrator is intentionally quite present. Brust isn't trying to make him invisible.

The closer you get to an intimate point of view, it seems to me there less of a difference there is between the two.

I suppose it is worth asking how much the hair-splitting here matters in terms of the craft of writing. I was in grad school and then law school, so if anyone wants to engage in academic arguments I'm always down for it. The practical value of some such arguments may be more than others.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Jul 13, 2017)

FifthView said:


> Some of this prompts me to ask whether there's sometimes a difference between a narrator intruding and a writer intruding, lol, just in case there are different sorts of things to look for.



Who is intruding in the below example? 



> Ben glared at Helen. "I've never been so insulted in my life." Indeed, he had been, but he couldn't remember when. Matt Damon would be a good choice to play the role of Ben in a movie, if the book were ever adapted to the screen. He pointed at the door. "Get out of my house."
> 
> I just rolled my eyes and sat there silent in my old rocking chair. I really loved that chair. It's a shame that two days later, Ben ended up accidentally breaking it. All these years later, I can forgive him. Back then, I didn't.
> 
> Helen bustled out, leaving the door wide open behind her.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

Ha! That's awesome. 

Yeah, I think considering narrative voice is important as writers because I think sometimes (and we've had this discussion before) a lot of new writers try too hard to disguise their writer voice (maybe lack of confidence?) and so they adopt a sort of "serious writer or narrator" voice that is a bit flat and dead. Even when trying to write in strict POV, a lively narrator voice can bring a peice alive... but it comes down to personal write style... I think the two are connected.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I had an instinctive kneejerk recoil from the idea of "warm" v "cool," heh. I'm not sure I approve.
> 
> But here's the thing. Cinema and television can easily suck me into a story. I become so engrossed, I begin to feel as if I'm there, in that time period, place, in the midst of events. The people are real to me, the stakes are palpable. There are times I find myself snapping out of that experience, and this indicates to me that maybe I was "close" before I snapped out and became distant.
> 
> ...



Yes to all of this. This is why, though, I think a purely objective writer has a harder time cultivating closeness. Not impossible, just harder. 

So as you said, in general day to day interactions we don't have the benifit of mind reading. We do, however, have a lifetimes worth of experience reading body language. We understand facial twitches, eye rolls, shoulder shrugs and any other manner of social actions. My daughter has severe autism, and so does not understand basic social gestures, even as simple as pointing at an object. It means nothing to her.

When watching a movie we can easily become engrossed because we have skilled actors who are well practiced in raising eyebrows, commanding tears at will, charming us with friendly smiles, etc. When we watch a film we can see the difference between a shy smile and an arrogant one. We understand all the emotions and personalities in between. 

In fiction, however, it is totally up to the writer to convey all that body language. A skilled writer, who is highly observant in human behaviour will be able to do this. But many of the objective writers I have seen struggle with this. They repeat the same descriptions over and over ad nauseum with very little variation or attention to subtlety. It's exasperating! So while I think it can be done, obviously, in film, with the advantage of real live people appealing to the communication part of our brain adapted to read body language, it is much more challenging for a fiction writer to do well.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

Free indirect speech is something I use extensively in my novel, I think part and parcel to the 3rd intimate. I also use direct thought. And achieving the full effect is still something I'm refining/cleaning up stragglers. Which starts to go in another direction in this conversation, LOL.



Michael K. Eidson said:


> A third person narrative extensively using the device of free indirect speech helps me as a reader to forget about the outside narrator. I'm able to feel like I'm in the skin of the character, even though the pronoun used in the text is "she" or "he" instead of "I." The narrator is not intruding.
> 
> Even with first person narratives, the narrator can intrude. I just read an excerpt on this forum where the first person narrator intruded while telling her own story.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

There is certainly a quality issue. Always is. I don't think 3rd intimate hides the narrator, personally. 



FifthView said:


> I think there really is a type of third-intimate that begins to feel a lot like first person.
> 
> However, the difference is that there's also, always, an outside narrator in third, even in third-intimate. The goal of that sort of third intimate is to hide this fact, heh, or create the illusion that there's no outside narrator. Saying, "He was pissed off" begins to feel like someone from the outside telling us about him.
> 
> ...


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

I don't think any writer could prolong using subtle facial ticks and stuff to convey emotions without getting tedious and repetitive, dialogue is going to have to carry a lot of the load. But then you have books like Dune, where everybody is trying to hide their thoughts and emotions. I find it amusing just to imagine trying to eliminate the omniscient narrator and shoving in an objective view. heh heh. 



Heliotrope said:


> Yes to all of this. This is why, though, I think a purely objective writer has a harder time cultivating closeness. Not impossible, just harder.
> 
> So as you said, in general day to day interactions we don't have the benifit of mind reading. We do, however, have a lifetimes worth of experience reading body language. We understand facial twitches, eye rolls, shoulder shrugs and any other manner of social actions. My daughter has severe autism, and so does not understand basic social gestures, even as simple as pointing at an object. It means nothing to her.
> 
> ...


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

Omg she just drew attention to it lol! 

I'm at the end of the book. She made herself into a cake then ate it, and switched back to first person narrative. Then this little gem happened:
_
"I mean, I think I know what happened but I'm not sure why. He's abandoned his responsibilities, you know." 

"His responsibilities? You mean graduate school?" 

"No," said Duncan. "I mean me. What am I going to do?" 

"I haven't the faintest idea," I said. I was irritated with him for not wanting to discuss what I was going to do myself. Now that I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again I found my own situation much more interesting than his_. 

Sigh. I love you Atwood.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> I don't think any writer could prolong using subtle facial ticks and stuff to convey emotions without getting tedious and repetitive, dialogue is going to have to carry a lot of the load. But then you have books like Dune, where everybody is trying to hide their thoughts and emotions. I find it amusing just to imagine trying to eliminate the omniscient narrator and shoving in an objective view. heh heh.



Good lord can you imagine? Even metaphors are somewhat subjective, so descriptions would have to be completely scientific. 

"Here is your dessert, ma'am," the waiter said as he thrust the vanilla ice cream into the woman's hands. Her mouth turned up four centimetres on the left side, and the brown eye on the same side matched it. Her hands, however, tremored a half centimetre side to side. 

"I hate vanilla."


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

Call him Ishmael.

All stories could be written from any POV, but interchangable isn't what I would call it. In the case of Hunger games I have no idea, I've no plan on ever reading the books. But, the key is how the POV changes the feel. And I think 3rd-I can, and does, have some potential crawl-back and forward in the narrative.



Steerpike said:


> I don't know that there is necessarily a narrator apart from the character, but setting that aside, here is the opening of Hunger Games:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 13, 2017)

Now I might have to read that, LOL.



Heliotrope said:


> Omg she just drew attention to it lol!
> 
> I'm at the end of the book. She made herself into a cake then ate it, and switched back to first person narrative. Then this little gem happened:
> _
> ...


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Cinema certainly has advantages, but prose has advantages also. Probably the biggest advantage of prose is that it actually has these gaps; readers fill in the blanks with their own imaginations. I do think that all the subtle facial tics and such help in movies, but I also think much of that isn't needed in prose. A single cue might stand out. Some actions speak for themselves.

I'd agree with Demesnedenoir that dialogue would probably carry a lot of the work; after all, that's the sneaky way of introducing subjectivity, heh.

I think I've read a lot of prologues that were written in a mostly objective manner. You see a mysterious man going about his business, doing odd things; or, some creature; or, some event happens.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Good lord can you imagine? Even metaphors are somewhat subjective, so descriptions would have to be completely scientific.
> 
> "Here is your dessert, ma'am," the waiter said as he thrust the vanilla ice cream into the woman's hands. Her mouth turned up four centimetres on the left side, and the brown eye on the same side matched it. Her hands, however, tremored a half centimetre side to side.
> 
> "I hate vanilla."



Your earlier example used "in unison," and I had to think about that one for awhile, heh.

But...it's possible for groups of things to act "in unison." I'm actually not sure how literal the objective has to be, lol; does "literal" have equal meaning with "objective?" 

But then, also, our language by nature is rather inexact. Could you say someone grimaced, or is that an interpretation? If something is described as blue-green, will everyone picture that color exactly the same way, or is it a subjective thing? Heh.

I had just written an example of an objective scene and said something like this:

_"You're late," she said.

He paused three seconds, then closed the door._

There was more. But then I erased it. Then I saw that you'd mentioned how descriptions might take on a scientific feel. Hah! But science and objectivity actually do have a relationship, y'know. But I wonder if the sciency stuff here is really about being exact rather than objective, i.e. being extremely literal. And that might not be necessary?


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## Heliotrope (Jul 13, 2017)

Of course it's not necessary. I'm being facetious, it's funny because I was going to say exactly what you said ^^^ pretty much everything we say is going to take its own shape in the reader's mind. Thus the wonderful power of language and word being mightier than the sword, etc, etc, etc. 

I think, what we might be getting at, with all this POV, show don't tell, cool, warm, subjective, objective banter is "what is important to show, and what is okay to leave up to the imagination?" 

You feel emotions and thought can easily be interpreted through actions, dialogue and gestures, and I feel that actions, dialogue, and Gestures can easily be interpreted through thoughts. 

Where you might write

 "_I have never been so disappointed," he whispered, turning his eyes from the boy. The boy kicked the rug but remained silent. _

I might write,

_I had never been so disappointed and told the boys as much. He remained silent, but kicked the rug. I wished I could join him.  _

Same thing, but one assumes the thought, while the other assumes the actions.


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## FifthView (Jul 13, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> I think, what we might be getting at, with all this POV, show don't tell, cool, warm, subjective, objective banter is "what is important to show, and what is okay to leave up to the imagination?"
> 
> You feel emotions and thought can easily be interpreted through actions, dialogue and gestures, and I feel that actions, dialogue, and Gestures can easily be interpreted through thoughts.



I suspect that these things in the second statement aren't equivalent, but I worry that going down that rabbit hole might introduce a lot of complexity. But the first statement hits at one central question: What's important to show/tell, what's not?



> Where you might write
> 
> "_I have never been so disappointed," he whispered, turning his eyes from the boy. The boy kicked the rug but remained silent. _
> 
> ...



You see, here is where the real magic happens.

You can use objective narrative in first person, as you did in the second version above! _He remained silent, but kicked the rug._ For the POV character, the non-POV character's subjectivity is not observable. The same sort of thing would apply to a close third limited narrative. [I'm assuming no special psychic or magical abilities, heh.]

We can use this in multiple ways, but two potential effects are to create a sense of closeness or distance between the characters.

If the POV character in first or third limited is shown to interpret the body language very easily, this _could_ imply familiarity and closeness.

But if we show the POV character experiencing that other character as some inscrutable cipher, this might imply some distance between them.

There is also the option of having a POV character who is simply an astute observer of other humans, or one who is generally unable to read others or too preoccupied, too self-segregating, to take the time.

I wouldn't go so far as defining the type of closeness or distance. Your first person narrator might actually _feel_ an attachment to the boy, perhaps a closeness of some sort; but this is an adult-child (master-apprentice? teacher-student?) type of relationship, so there might be some distance between them. Similarly, a teenager might feel a great closeness with his first love but misread her, and some chasms existing between them might be bridged later or revealed and split them irrevocably apart.

I would also think that the observed _is_ close to the astute observer, in the way a POV character is close to the reader--even if, of course, this is not a two-way street, heh.

I would view this as a tool among other tools, and how much is applied, how it is applied, and what other things are applied, will make a difference also.


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## FifthView (Jul 14, 2017)

I'll add this: The one small example you gave is not really enough to judge the level of closeness or distance between these two. Just using it as a jumping off point. The narrator saw the boy kick the rug, as we did, and if we are able to infer the boy's subjective state from that, he might be able to infer that also. And we might be able to infer that he can, heh!

But extending this small example, using this consistently with other things to show distance, could increase the sense of distance between them.

Mostly, I think this might be an additive kind of thing, probably subtle.

As with other things, when used poorly, or when objectivity vs subjectivity aren't taken into consideration, this kind of effect might really stick out. For instance, the POV character who seems able to interpret other characters' subjective states, even strangers, instantly in the narrative but shows an absolute incompetence when speaking with them or in actions involving them. Or the Mary Sue type.


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## Rkcapps (Jul 14, 2017)

Okay, all this in-depth discussion on POV, objectivity/subjectivity etc has made me rethink if I'm after closeness (which, for the purpose of my story, I am). Therefore, I should try first person. How's this? Expanding on the first para. Is it just me or does it achieve something the previous paragraph did not i.e. closeness?

"_
I ignored the numbing chill in my fingers as I pulled my flat chest into the rough bark of the Muster tree. Only a thin canopy of soggy leaves screened me from the throbbing hum of villagers speaking in huddles, huffing on their cupped hands and stomping their feet. 
My heart leapt into my throat, racing, and I choked on a quick prayer that no one notice me, for between the leaves, I glimpsed the familiar bell-shaped emerald robe worn by the approaching sorcerer. Soon I’d be feet away from him, crouched between the fork of trunk and a branch, scratched and bleeding, pressed against the Muster tree bark. Magic was something I had avoided considering ever since a child, but in this moment, for the first time, I wondered - could I blow him over? Or even turn him into a frog? Maybe freeze him on the spot? Open the heavens? 
My lips jerked into a grin, but that didn’t prevent the multitude of panicked butterflies from battering my stomach. It was a fantasy. My method for healing wasn’t real magic. Not when compared to the power of a real sorcerer. _"


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## Heliotrope (Jul 14, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I'll add this: The one small example you gave is not really enough to judge the level of closeness or distance between these two. Just using it as a jumping off point. The narrator saw the boy kick the rug, as we did, and if we are able to infer the boy's subjective state from that, he might be able to infer that also. And we might be able to infer that he can, heh!
> 
> But extending this small example, using this consistently with other things to show distance, could increase the sense of distance between them.
> 
> ...



The example wasn't about the rug kicking, it was about the disappointment. 

(* but interesting how I focussed on the emotion in the scene and you focussed on the action.) 

In one we saw the disappointment through dialogue and actions, but we have to infer his thoughts.

"I_'ve never been so disappointed," I said, turning my eyes from the child_. 

In the other we saw it through only thoughts, and had to infer the actions and dialogue. 

_I had never been so disappointed and told the boy as much. _

So in the first example we see the character being disappointed throughout the dialogie and actions, but are not explicitly told thoughts. 

In the second we are explicitly told his thoughts and feelings, but have to infer the actions from "I told the boy as much". 

One is the head of the POV, the other is objective. Both are first person narrative.


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## FifthView (Jul 14, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> The example wasn't about the rug kicking, it was about the disappointment.



Yeah, I knew the example was about that. I took it in a different direction. In part this is because the fact that the same general thing can be written many ways goes without saying? (Or does it? Ah, inference....)




> (* but interesting how I focussed on the emotion in the scene and you focussed on the action.)



I think the question of what is most important to show or tell depends somewhat on an author's goal for the story and personal style or voice. I don't know if these are the only things to be considered, but they'll play a major role.



> In one we saw the disappointment through dialogue and actions, but we have to infer his thoughts.
> 
> _"I've never been so disappointed," I said, turning my eyes from the child_.



I don't think this is true, or not quite apt for an example.

In both cases, this and your subjective view, the character is _telling_ his disappointment. We don't exactly have to infer that; it's explicit. 

In this one, he's telling the child. In the other, he's telling us, the reader, directly. But he's telling in either case.

In the first one, the narrator (who is not the character) is essentially telling us that the character told the child this.  And in the second one, the narrator (who is the character) is telling us that he told the child these thoughts. Heh.



> In the other we saw it through only thoughts, and had to infer the actions and dialogue.
> 
> _I had never been so disappointed and told the boy as much. _



In this case, the speech isn't explicit. We don't know if he said to the boy...

_I've never been so disappointed_
_Never in my life have I been this disappointed_
_I'm more disappointed in you than I've ever been_

—there are quite a number of possibilities for what the actual speech was. We might infer from "as much" that it's the first of these; but "as much" may simply be pointing at the general gist, so it could be any of these or others. I'd say the important thing, were an outside narrator to comment upon this, is, "The narrator communicated his disappointment to the kid."

Are there just as many possibilities for the thoughts in the first example as there are for the actual speech in this example? I think probably not. So, it's not a great comparison. A better comparison would be the boy kicking the rug: What are the boy's thoughts/emotions, exactly? But this same question could be applied to both of your examples, heh.

For me, all this kinda folds back into my earlier comment that these things may not be equivalent.

I think it depends on the kind of subjective thing we are talking about. Some emotional and mental states have no sharp definition; they're vague sorts of things, unlike objects being active. So leaving a reader to infer those states, filling in that blank with their imaginations, may be easier, given that the target isn't something that needs specificity. Like that boy kicking the rug: What's he _really_ feeling? Possibly, multiple things, all commingling to create a general attitude and disposition. If asking readers to give a one-word answer to that question, you might get different answers. Kid's disappointed with himself. Kid's frustrated. Kid's embarrassed. Well, there's some angst; and maybe that's all that we need to know, or any of these work.

But a specific thought—_I'm going to betray this man_—might be a different kind of subjective thing that requires a sharper aim. Leaving that to inference can actually work great in a story, leaving a reader on pins and needles. But if you want the reader to know that thought, you might need to make it explicit or at least provide some action or activity that all but shouts it.

You might say that some actions are mostly irrelevant or unimportant. The narrator's exact speech to the boy doesn't matter in your first-person account. And I think that's true. The disappointment is the key thing. However, I would say that a reader might have some bit of speech run through his head in a flash, or might not, but he's _not as likely to look for it_, heh. Whereas, if you are showing objective events, objects and persons being active, I'd say this is more likely to provoke curiosity about subjective states like emotions and thoughts. This is that MRU discussion from before: provide the stimulus, then a reader wants to know its significance. A reader might be more curious about subjective things left untold than about relatively unimportant objective details left untold. Not always, of course, but generally. Anyway, this is why I think the two might not be equivalent:



> In the second we are explicitly told his thoughts and feelings, but have to infer the actions from "I told the boy as much".



—a reader might simply _not_ infer, but just stop on "told" there, and might not be curious about the specifics. [And the exact specifics of actions and objects might be impossible to deduce.]


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## Michael K. Eidson (Jul 14, 2017)

New version:



Rkcapps said:


> I ignored the numbing chill in my fingers as I pulled my flat chest into the rough bark of the Muster tree. Only a thin canopy of soggy leaves screened me from the throbbing hum of villagers speaking in huddles, huffing on their cupped hands and stomping their feet.
> 
> My heart leapt into my throat, racing, and I choked on a quick prayer that no one notice me, for between the leaves, I glimpsed the familiar bell-shaped emerald robe worn by the approaching sorcerer. Soon I’d be feet away from him, crouched between the fork of trunk and a branch, scratched and bleeding, pressed against the Muster tree bark. Magic was something I had avoided considering ever since a child, but in this moment, for the first time, I wondered - could I blow him over? Or even turn him into a frog? Maybe freeze him on the spot? Open the heavens?
> 
> My lips jerked into a grin, but that didn’t prevent the multitude of panicked butterflies from battering my stomach. It was a fantasy. My method for healing wasn’t real magic. Not when compared to the power of a real sorcerer.



Original:



Rkcapps said:


> Tizania clung to the thick trunk of The Muster Tree. Soggy leaves screened her from the throbbing hum of the gathered crowd. Her heart thumped. If she hid here, perhaps the sorcerer might skip her until next year? What were the chances? Nil, nil and none again. Not with her luck. Jelly fingers barely suctioned her to the tree. What if she possessed magic? Her kind of healing wasn’t considered magic, was it? She despised magic but the fact no one had been chosen at a Syphon Day ceremony in twenty years did not prevent a multitude of panicked butterflies popping in her stomach.



My thoughts:

In the new version, we lose the character's name, but okay, that can come later. We also lose a definite awareness of her gender. Males or females can either one be flat-chested. There's an opportunity to reveal the gender in the new version in the phrase "ever since a child," which could instead say, "ever since a little girl," without changing the style.

If she's ignoring the numbing chill in her fingers, why is she mentioning it? Saying that she is ignoring the chill seems like an attempt to convey how she feels about it, but it's at odds with the meaning of the word "ignore."

The first sentence of the second paragraph of the new version gives the reaction of the character before the motivation.

"Soon I'd be feet away from him" sounds more appropriate coming from the person who is moving.

How does she feel about being scratched and bleeding? If you're after closeness, it might help for her to share more of her feelings. The way it's written, it's as though being scratched and bleeding is scarcely a concern; it's just a fact.

At the end of the second paragraph, you're giving her thoughts about magic, but still hiding what she feels about it.

In the third paragraph, we see a reaction -- the grin -- without really knowing what it is in response to. Is it in response to her thoughts at the end of the second paragraph? Then maybe it should go at the end of the second paragraph. And then the panic comes, in response to what? Is it in response to the thoughts that are stated after the mention of panic? Then once again, we have reaction before motivation.

There's more than POV to consider here, imo.


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## Heliotrope (Jul 14, 2017)

What I love about chatting with you, Fifth View, is that I can never skim read your posts or give short answers lol. 

I have a busy day today, my family and I are getting ready to live like gypsys touring across Canada in our trailer for three weeks, but I will get back to unpacking that response tonight


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## FifthView (Jul 14, 2017)

Don't worry about it. 

Truth is, I'm always skimming over mine later and thinking I'd rather write smaller to-the-point comments.

I'll add: I like digging down, exploring these things, and often looking at length at various little parts in isolation, but so much about any of this is "it depends." For instance, almost everything we write will have both subjective narration and objective narration (kinda why I mentioned the objective line in your first-person example), so for me it's not so much about promoting only one approach over the other for the sake of some aesthetic purity, heh. We can apply these things however we want. I might be stating my case by going on at length, but it's not a case I feel I have to win, if that makes sense.



Heliotrope said:


> What I love about chatting with you, Fifth View, is that I can never skim read your posts or give short answers lol.
> 
> I have a busy day today, my family and I are getting ready to live like gypsys touring across Canada in our trailer for three weeks, but I will get back to unpacking that response tonight


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## Heliotrope (Jul 14, 2017)

FifthView said:


> Yeah, I knew the example was about that. I took it in a different direction. In part this is because the fact that the same general thing can be written many ways goes without saying? (Or does it? Ah, inference....)
> 
> 
> I think the question of what is most important to show or tell depends somewhat on an author's goal for the story and personal style or voice. I don't know if these are the only things to be considered, but they'll play a major role.
> ...



Yes, I never intended to say one was better than the other. Sorry. I meant exactly this ^^ actually. That it doesn't matter. Both leave it up to the imagination of the reader in different ways, and both ways are totally acceptable and get the same message across. Writing requires, at any given time, an objective and subjective view, and a combination of telling and showing. 

As far as how this relates to the discussion (lol) a lot of this stuff about POV and showing and telling is intertwined with writer style and voice (I think). The stuff the writer intuitively tries to show, and what the writer knows he/she can simply tell.


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## Steerpike (Jul 15, 2017)

I quoted an opening in another thread, and as the novel progresses the narrator occasionally falls into what seems to be a first person omniscient POV. Not sure I've seen that before. Thinking.


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## FifthView (Jul 15, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I quoted an opening in another thread, and as the novel progresses the narrator occasionally falls into what seems to be a first person omniscient POV. Not sure I've seen that before. Thinking.



I'd not thought much about first person omniscient until Sanderson mentioned it in a podcast once.

Typically, it feels like that opening you posted. The first person narrator is narrating at some distance from events that happened in the past and already knows all the details due to 20/20 hindsight.

I suppose it could be pulled off in a present sense also if the narrator happens to be an omniscient sort, like a god or godlike AI.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 15, 2017)

Yeah, could be done. A writer could have a lot of fun with that.



FifthView said:


> I'd not thought much about first person omniscient until Sanderson mentioned it in a podcast once.
> 
> Typically, it feels like that opening you posted. The first person narrator is narrating at some distance from events that happened in the past and already knows all the details due to 20/20 hindsight.
> 
> I suppose it could be pulled off in a present sense also if the narrator happens to be an omniscient sort, like a god or godlike AI.


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## FifthView (Jul 15, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Yes, I never intended to say one was better than the other. Sorry. I meant exactly this ^^ actually. That it doesn't matter. Both leave it up to the imagination of the reader in different ways, and both ways are totally acceptable and get the same message across. Writing requires, at any given time, an objective and subjective view, and a combination of telling and showing.
> 
> As far as how this relates to the discussion (lol) a lot of this stuff about POV and showing and telling is intertwined with writer style and voice (I think). The stuff the writer intuitively tries to show, and what the writer knows he/she can simply tell.



I wrote all that because I didn't want my own comments to seem as if they're an argument that one is better than the other.

But the problem is that I'm also not comfortable with the "anything and everything is always and forever A-ok no matter what" kind of view. The difficulty in this case is that ultimately I have a bias, a special appreciation of some things, that's impossible to ignore but also not entirely visible: At what point do my views express a personal taste and not an objective evaluation? Heh.

This is one of the ages-long philosophical questions: Whether true objectivity, vis-a-vis human perception and cognition, is even possible. But I'm not going to go there now because I doubt we can answer it here for all time. 

But I'll bring this back to the subject of writing fiction. A limited POV inherently has a tinge of subjectivity because, outside looking in, we know that the character's view is limited, it is his own. Is it a correct view, or is the character also biased? This raises the question of whether we are dealing with an unreliable narrator. Simultaneously, we have the question to ask ourselves: whether we trust this narrator implicitly, in which case closeness is the likely result, or hold ourselves a little distant from the narrator.

Overt subjectivity in the narration pushes this point, brings that last question forward.

This...

_I had never been so disappointed and told the boy as much. He remained silent, but kicked the rug. I wished I could join him. _

...includes an objective view of that boy. Also, the narrator, in saying he wishes he could join the boy, implies an evaluation of that objective view of the boy. Cumulatively, this, for me, builds a bit of trust in the narrator's ability to view things as they really are, heh.

What if we went with something else instead:

_I had never been so disappointed and told the boy as much. He remained silent, but kicked the rug petulantly. An overgrown toddler throwing a tantrum; I knew my words would do no good. The boy was hopeless._

—Well, you might trust this evaluation or not, depending on other things you've previously revealed in the story and about the man and boy and the trust you've already built for this narrator. But that question is still raised, if only slightly, as compared with the other. In my biased opinion, heh.

More broadly...I think this effect shades the issues of telling, author-intrusion, and the like. Do we trust the narrator? I also think that objectively worded descriptions are more often taken at face value.


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## FifthView (Jul 15, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> Yeah, could be done. A writer could have a lot of fun with that.



Yeah, I'd already started picturing how the narrative might go, when I wrote that, heh, and the kind of story I might need.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jul 15, 2017)

Yeah, my first thought immediately turns to a 1stOm where the Om turns out not to be trustworthy, heh heh.



FifthView said:


> Yeah, I'd already started picturing how the narrative might go, when I wrote that, heh, and the kind of story I might need.


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## Steerpike (Jul 15, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I'd not thought much about first person omniscient until Sanderson mentioned it in a podcast once.
> 
> Typically, it feels like that opening you posted. The first person narrator is narrating at some distance from events that happened in the past and already knows all the details due to 20/20 hindsight.
> 
> I suppose it could be pulled off in a present sense also if the narrator happens to be an omniscient sort, like a god or godlike AI.



Yes, these are good points. And this narrator is looking back on past events--I've certainly see that kind of omniscience before. Maybe it is the way it is written. There is a scene break, and we're basically back in time. A flashback. The narrator is observing two people he will come to know, but hasn't met yet:

"I see her sitting alone by the sea, reading a newspaper and eating an apple; or int he vestibule of the Cecil Hotel, among the dusty palms, dressed in a sheath of silver, holding her magnificent fur at her back as a peasant holds his coat--her long forefinger hooked through the tag. Nessim has stopped at the door of the ballroom, which is flooded with light and music. *He has missed her.* Under the palm, in a deep alcove, sit a couple of old men playing chess. Justine has stopped to watch them. *She knows nothing of the game, but the aura of stillness and concentration which brims the alcove fascinates her.*"

Looking at the bolded parts, the narrator is giving information he couldn't have had at the time. I suppose the most reasonable explanation is now that he is looking back in time he sees these people in a way that he didn't at the time, and understands them better. It just struck me as unusual as written--because this short scene is written more like a flashback, transporting the reader and narrator back to a certain time and place, but not confined by that time and place. 

But yes, it is the narrator looking back. He knows things now, by virtue of hindsight, that he didn't know at the time.


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## Daelhar (Jul 15, 2017)

Hello! I feel like third person is just as much "in the moment". It does pop, and you are still able to incorporate her thoughts, driving the feeling. I feel like what you have is just as effective as what you think you should.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Jul 17, 2017)

_Pssst, OP, if you want more feedback on your follow-up question, it seems you may need to post a new question to another thread, since this one has taken on a life of its own._


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## FifthView (Jul 17, 2017)

I think that posting it in Showcase would be a good idea, maybe asking for the specific feedback there. Focusing on one bit of writing is somewhat different than asking the more general question about POV and closeness, especially because a range of other issues might come into play.



Michael K. Eidson said:


> _Pssst, OP, if you want more feedback on your follow-up question, it seems you may need to post a new question to another thread, since this one has taken on a life of its own._


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## Rkcapps (Jul 19, 2017)

I'd really like that sorta thing in showcase FV.


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## R Snyder (Aug 30, 2017)

Demesnedenoir said:


> 1st or 3rd is bigger than what will make a paragraph pop. My bigger issue with the stories (long format) I tend to write is that 1st doesn't cut it for getting all the information in that's needed. Multi-POV, for instance. I need the reader to know things the character doesn't to achieve what I'm gunning for. So, first off, you have to ask whether the novel will work from 1st POV. What you gain can be offset by what you lose.
> 
> Also, you can make your third pop more (maybe) if you rethink the question marks, narrate in more certain terms to drum tension. Get the reader more into the scene.



Coming late to this question (again) but I think your response is a very good one. The thought that I would add is I don't see how it's possible to progress so far into a story before having this thought about pov. I'm not saying one has to outline or approach this (writing a story) in a structured manner, but you must know your main character(s) pretty early on. I've encountered this problem with specific scenes or events -- from whose perspective is it more powerful, but not an entire story.


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## Steerpike (Aug 31, 2017)

R Snyder said:


> Coming late to this question (again) but I think your response is a very good one. The thought that I would add is I don't see how it's possible to progress so far into a story before having this thought about pov. I'm not saying one has to outline or approach this (writing a story) in a structured manner, but you must know your main character(s) pretty early on. I've encountered this problem with specific scenes or events -- from whose perspective is it more powerful, but not an entire story.



Not much difference between first and close third in this regard. You typically use a POV shift to get the information in. Omniscient third makes it easy. Maybe you could even have an omniscient first if writing about past events.


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