Help! There are walls on two sides and wet paint everywhere I need to step!

[BWFoster78]

Near the end of my book, my intrepid heroes exist in a set of conditions I'll call State A. State A is a bad place to be, indeed. They're all about to die! Luckily, my protagonist has agency (His agency consists of three beautiful women who used to be police officers. They go undercover to... Wait. No. He has a different kind of agency. I get confused sometimes.). He comes up with a plan:

If they can just perform Action B, Action C can happen. If Action C comes off well, Action D can happen. If they can just make that Action D work, they'll move to State E, where they're lives aren't in quite as much peril.

I show my hero accomplishing B.

C happens off camera.

My hero dispatches another main character to accomplish D.

Yay!

So, in an ideal world, C would not happen off camera. Since it's kinda a big deal and all, my readers would probably rather see it than hear about it happening after the fact. Problem is, I cannot see any logical reason for any of my whopping 8 POV characters to take part in C.

That leaves me with the following bad choices:

1. Don't show C.
2. Elevate a minor character to POV status.
3. Create a really lame reason for one of my POV characters to be there.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Brian

 

[Steerpike]

#3 is my least favorite idea. #1 could work, but isn't as satisfying as dramatizing it. #2 is something done quite often in novels, and that's the approach I'd favor here as well.

 

[Devor]

I think a good reveal, like the characters finding out that "action C happened," can be very effective but difficult to pull off. That's the one I would shoot for.

With 8 POV characters already, adding another this late in the game sounds iffy to me. But certainly it's done all the time.

Can't you create a really good reason for one of your characters to be there?

Luckily, my protagonist has agency (His agency consists of three beautiful women who used to be police officers. They go undercover to... Wait. No. He has a different kind of agency. I get confused sometimes.).

I wish I had thought of Charlie's Angels sooner than I did. It would've been less awkward.

 

[Reilith]

I don't like 1# as it is bland and can maybe disrupt the cause-effect point of the plot. People like to see how stuff happens. 2# is quite good, although I suffer from reading Terry Goodkind's work who used POV's of characters who simply died a few chapters or some time later in the books and it was obvious they were there only to do one thing - show what the main characters couldn't. So I am not such a big fan of it, but if done correctly it can work. 3# again, I don't like, but it could be done, depending on how far away the actions are. If for example the action is set miles away in a different place it would be almost impossible for one of the characters to go there only to show that one thing and would disturb the pace. But if it is something closer, like a smaller scene where during the period between actions they get a little breather it could be done quite nicely.
Another way to handle it is through other mediums. Use a letter, diary or retelling of what happened behind the screen.
Example:
C happened, we didn't see it. Use retrospective for one of the minor characters who witnessed it and make them retell it to the main characters for the sake of the readers. It it was perilous, like an avalanche that buried a massive dragon who was about to destroy a village, make the MCs meet a villager running from the chaos and make them tell the story.

I don't know if I made it clear enough, but it is another approach to take into consideration.

 

[BWFoster78]

After reading and re-reading the responses, I think I've reached the following conclusions:

1. I have to show the scene. There's too much buildup as a part of the overall solution. A reader would reasonably expect to see it. Right?

2. I really don't like the idea of adding POV characters, especially since I deliberately use the importance of a character being given a POV chapter in an attempt to manipulate the reader's perception of her vs another girl.

3. Given 1 and 2 above, I really have no choice but to show it from a POV character's perspective. I'll just have to make enough changes to create a good reason for one of them to be there.

Thanks for the thoughts!

Brian

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Or you could use a different option. You could have your MC, knowing that action C would have to happen in advance, having prepared that action in advance. So for example he has to kill someone, he hires an assassin and gives him the time and place.

I have used this strategy before, and I think it can work well. So for example in Days of Light and Shadow, my Action C was that an enemy army - one my MC did not know about - had to be destroyed before they fell upon my MC's army. The way I arranged it was to go back in the story, find a few threads and tie them together to form a new army of vengeful souls who would - without the MC's knowledge of them - clear the path for his army by tearing the enemy apart in a battle royale. It worked well I think. It was emotional - especially when the MC came across the battle ground and found total destruction. It fit within the story line and allowed the plot to advance. But it was told without a POV. Instead it was told from the perspective of an omniscient observer.

So you tell us what action C entails, and I'm sure that we can come up with a way for it to be prepared in advance.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[BWFoster78]

Greg,

Thanks for the suggestion, but no omniscient observers for me. The whole vibe of my writing is to get deep inside a character's head and have the entire narrative of the chapter be in that character's voice. I think that going omniscient would be worse than creating a new POV character.