Point of view

[FifthView]

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

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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?

 

[Steerpike]

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

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.

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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?

 

[Steerpike]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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.

 

[Steerpike]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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?

 

[FifthView]

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.

 

[Steerpike]

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!

 

[Steerpike]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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

 

[FifthView]

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.

 

[Aurora]

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.

 

[Steerpike]

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.

 

[skip.knox]

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.

 

[Rkcapps]

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!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

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.

 

[Steerpike]

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.