My book is set in a complex milieu, and my main protagonist is deeply integrated in that milieu. The first time my writer's group critiqued my story, two problems were cited again and again:
1) My protagonist didn't seem qualified to undertake his difficult mission. After all, even Frodo had a certain resistance to The Ring of Power. My character had nothing.
2) My milieu didn't make sense. I barely explained its economic and social structure, I just allowed it to play out for the reader. I only gave explanations when the POV character would be thinking about them, and my main protagonist was too deeply enmeshed in the milieu to think about these details.
I corrected both of these problems. First, I gave my main protagonist more skills and resources, making him uniquely qualified for his quest. Now he is even more deeply intertwined with my world. He's my James Bond.
This brought me a new problem: it is even less logical for my James Bond to stop and think about how my milieu relates to Americans in 2003.
I corrected the second problem by introducing the main hero through the eyes of a minor character who would think about and talk about little details. He is able to look at the world a bit like an American in 2003 would. He's less intertwined with my world. He's my Gulliver.
The strategy met with some success.
When the next round of critiques came back my writers group understood my milieu very well. The thoughts and actions of the Gulliver character had worked. The group also believed that my James Bond would logically be recruited to take on his quest. Hooray!
But now I've got a new problem. By introducing the minor character before the main character, I've forced my readers to expect that he's more important than he really is. Some of my writer's group members love him so much they want him to become the hero, and I don't blame them. But if I make him the hero then I'm back to my old problem . . . he can't possibly succeed.
So here I am. I have a miliue so complex it needs a Gulliver for the first eight pages, but a mission so difficult it calls for a James Bond for the next eight hundred pages. I teamed them up, but even that wasn't enough; in order to make readers understand the James Bond is the main character I need to introduce James Bond first. But my readers can't possibly understand James Bond unless they've seen the world through Gulliver's eyes first. But if they see through Gulliver's eyes first they will want him to be the main character.
This problem must come up frequently in fantasy and science fiction. Has anyone ever seen a good solution?
I've already rejected the Sherlock Holmes / Dr. Watson solution, which would make my Gulliver character the POV character, always describing James Bond through Gulliver's eyes. I want to get into James Bond's POV because of several plot twists, including a romance, that can't be shown otherwise.
I've also rejected the Buck Rogers solution, which would make Gulliver into a kick-butt-and-take-names hero. Buck Rogers is a stupid premise. If you believe James Bond is a lot like Buck Rogers, then think of my hero more like Tom Clancy's CIA agent Jack Ryan. It's easy to believe that Ryan has the skills to do the things he does. But Ryan can't stop in the middle of a scene and think about little details, like why humans use money or why houses have floors.
There is no one solution, it really depends on the story. It's good you understand these issues, as a starting point.
I can tell you about a solution I used. My main character is also highly a part of a different millieu. I introduced the story through the eyes of an important character. I manufactured an opening chapter (it could even be a second or third chapter if you can't manufacture something exciting enough to be an opener) that introduced a minor character I could use to contrast my alien world. The minor character was also an alien, but he had an important characteristic in common with 2003 Americans that I wanted the POV chraacter to think through/about for the benefit of the reader.
The more complex your millieu is, the more of these sorts of things you'll have to manufacture, though, so it might not work for you. (Like I said, depends on the story.)
Here's another possibility, from what you said of your own story. Make Gulliver more imoprtant! He doesn't have to be the hero, but why don't you give him a couple of skills and have him tag along? Have him even do one or two key things that help the hero, possibly along the discovering something clever route. People like minor characters all the time, I don't find it to be a big deal, just as long as I can *also* sympathise with your hero.
Could you maybe not use your Gulliver character not as a POV character at the start, but someone that the James Bond character notices because of the way that he sticks out, and the way that Gulliver sticks out is in those very ways that make him relate to 2003 Americans? Then the similarities of the Gulliver to the reader would be highlighted through his differences to the James Bond character, but the importance of keeping POV stays with the Hero.
Maybe also the importance of the James Bond character could be made immediately evident thought the actions/responses of the Gulliver? Sort of use the Watson POV idea, just for the opening. Gives you the Guillver response there at the start, but places full emphasis on the Hero right from the beginning.
Christine, your solution sounds very similar to my second version. The problem was that it made my readers like Gulliver more than James Bond. In a way I don't blame them, since it's easy to identify with Gulliver I like him a lot, too.
This didn't just come from my writers group, I've run into it in a lot of writing books. It's especially important for beginning authors to introduce their hero as early as possible.
My group came up with the "have Gulliver tag along" solution, too. I'll give that a second consideration. The first problem is that Gulliver has a handicap that means he can never leave home, otherwise he wouldn't be able to make Gulliver-like observations. I planned for Gulliver to meld into Dr. Watson at a distance. When James Bond does something incredible Gulliver will see it on the evening news and marvel. If Gulliver can leave home, I've got to change my world.
The second problem is that I've already created a sidekick for my James Bond, though they won't meet until chapter three. Sidekick was originally supposed to be Gulliver, since he's young and is learning the ways of the world he will give me opportunities to explain how things work. I tried to start the book through Sidekick's eyes, but even he is too far removed from 2003 Americans.
GZ, I'll think about the "show Guilliver through James Bond's POV" solution. FWIW I am already making James Bond's importance immediately evident through Gulliver's reactions. As soon as James Bond enters Gulliver makes it clear that Bond is the hero. But James Bond can't enter until Gulliver has introduced my world by thinking about little things that 2003 Americans would understand.
As long as Gulliver worries about his own problems for two or three pages the reader will understand James Bond's world. But by that time the reader wants to stay in the comfy, familiar world of Gulliver instead of the bold, exotic world of James Bond.
Some of you weren't here last fall, when I mentioned that I'm setting my story in a futuristic Utopia. I struggled and struggled to find a way to introduce my vision of bountious luxury while plot and action was unfolding. I finally discovered that I could do it by showing the society through the eyes of its lowest member for a few pages. After readers see the way he lives, the rest of my world makes sense.
For an example of what wouldn't work, consider this:
quote:
As his personal 747 touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport, James Bond glanced at his watch. Naturally he was ahead of schedule, with plenty of time for a martini with The Prime Minister before his date with the movie starlette. The virgin silk carpet stretched itself out in front of him, and lightly scented luminous butterflies showed him the way with delicate butterfly music, as they did everywhere he went. I sure am glad I wan't born in twenty-first century America, Bond thought to himself. By their standards I would be in the middle class socioeconomic strata. Those twenty-first century middle class Americans lived like savages.
This would be ridiculous. Introducing my world through his eyes, or the eyes of any ordinary citizen of utopia, would make my book sound like a comedy.
On the other hand my lowly Gulliver character introduces the world perfectly, since everything he does is dictated by his position in society. I do plan to give him his own adventures in the future, but there is just no way I can make society's lowest member the hero of this story. Heck, in the first version my group didn't even belive James Bond was up to the challenge. I agreed, so I pumped him up some more.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited June 09, 2003).]
See if you can narrow down how much actually *needs* explaining, and then see how much of it effects everyday life (_Ender's_Game_ is a great example of this). If you have a complex caste system, each character should have his/her caste mentioned at introduction (and maybe one character who's cast is ambigous, so that you can explain more, e.g. "He's officially artisan caste, but his grandfather was a foundling, so no one really knows. Still, that's three generations of skilled blacksmiths and the guild council acknowledges him, so I guess that counts"). If you're milleua doesn't effect everyday life, how important is it really?
And remember, you can always get away with a few sentences of infodumpery here and there.
I've got an action-packed opening, and I'd prefer not to slow it down with an infodump. Unfortunately the actions, as well as all characters but Gulliver, are all incomprehensible until the reader sees things through Gulliver's eyes.
In my first draft I held back too much background, and no one could understand what was going on. The bias of twenty-first century Americans makes the very premise of my story seem stupid. My characters can't do anything until I've demonstrated a little bit of how the utopian future works. I'll consider a breif infodump as an alternative to Gulliver. Thanks again.
Utopia can be an undramatic place. Because I want drama, I asked myself the classic OSC question "What can go wrong?" As a result I've already got a prologue, and it's two scenes long. First, something goes wrong in Utopia. This disaster triggers the second scene, an epiffany in my villain, who sets out on his evil plan.
Based on my efforts, it's impossible to hook a reader in Utopian story without doing this. If you start a story in a perfectly functioning Utopia you can't have danger or conflict. Thus, I need to have something go wrong before I can describe how my Utopia works.
Currently I've built these two scenes into chapter one, but sometimes I pull them out as a prologue. It doesn't really matter. Chapter one or prologue, it's still two scenes before Gulliver.
In the third scene the reader gets to meet Gulliver and understand how Utopia works. The reader also meets James Bond in this third scene, through Gulliver's eyes. James Bond doesn't become a POV character until the fourth scene.
And that's my problem. Readers want to meet James Bond first. But if he's just lolling in a perfect Utopia he's boring, so I can't introduce him before something goes wrong. Thus I inserted the other scenes to show that:
1) My world is vulnerable (hook).
2) It's more than vulnerable, my world is in imminent danger from a villain.
3) This vulnerable world is a complex Utopia. Gulliver, Bond and other interesting people live there.
4) James Bond is heroic, it would be fun to see him take on the villain.
After this point I am fine, except for the fact that by now my readers think they are reading a story about Gulliver instead of James Bond.
James Bond can't be in scene 1 because he would be dead. He can't be in scene 2 because he would immediately know of the villain's evil scheme. He enters in the middle scene 3, but he's not the POV character because I need Gulliver to think about how Utopia works before readers can understand what makes James Bond tick.
This brings up a new possibility that I must consider. Perhaps the villain can think about / talk about how the world works during his scene.
Gulliver worries about money, personal security, and dignity all the time. He has to. James Bond, and everyone else in the world, don't worry about those things as much. If any middle class character did spend every moment worrying about those things, readers would think he/she was insane.
Gulliver can't be the hero because he can't afford all the travel and other expenses needed to succeed. If he could, he wouldn't be able to obsess about money, security, and social standing when I need him to.
Of course this is Utopia, so my homeless man lives about as comfortably as Bill Gates. The middle class characters like James Bond are much, much more wealthy. And then I have the ultra rich characters . . .
Unfortunatley I cannot use any comparisons to anything that would be familiar to my readers. I cannot say "James Bond paused to consider that a homeless man in Utopia lived as comfortable as Bill Gates did way back in 2003." No character would think that thought, not even Gulliver.
When I tried to introduce my world through James Bond's eyes my group could not comprehend it. When I introduced through Gulliver's eyes it made sense.
I've studied the two characters closely, and I am confident that the only reason my group wants Gulliver to be the hero is because he was introduced before James Bond. The previous interludes, "Something is wrong in Utopia" (4 pages) and "Meet the villain" (4 pages) had left them expecting to meet the hero. Instead, they spend 4 pages with Gulliver having a little adventure while he introduces Utopia. They finally see James Bond through Gulliver's eyes on page 12, and they get to see a bit of James Bond's position in the world. They finally get into James Bond's POV on page 18.
After that the book goes just the way I want it to go.
FYI I have set my font size so that my page count approximately matches a paperback. It would solve all my problems if I could find a way to introduce everything on page one. But if I could do that I'd have the magic power that every fantasy / sci-fi writer dreams of, wouldn't I?
Thank you for your generous offers. That's so nice of you!
I believe there is still a possibility that some of us might find ourselves in the same writers group someday. If that happened, I'd prefer that you were seeing my story with fresh eyes.
That said, I will spend at least another day or two struggling with this problem on my own. If I don't solve it I will probably take one, two, or all of you up on your kind offers. Thanks again.
I must get into James Bond's POV before Gulliver's. At the same time, I must get into Gulliver's POV before James Bond's. I should have named this thread "The Viewpoint Paradox."
I wish I could write two simultaneous stories, one for the reader's left eye and one for the reader's right eye. By the end of page one my problems would be solved!
Also, I've loved story where my favorite character wasn't the hero. Actually, the series that keeps springing into my mind through all this is OSC Hatrack series. Peggy is not the hero, although she becomes important, but she introduces the first book. After spending several chapters through her eyes we skip years and distance and catch up with our true hero, who the readers soon come to accept as that. (Perhaps the title helps, because from the TITLE, we know from the beginning that Alvin is the hero, not to mention the birth scene.) And to be honest, I like Peggy more than I like Alvin (oh, I like him fine, it's probably just because I'm female), but I still enjoyed the books.
So, what's my point? If you introduce Gulliver first, you have to give him an important role in the book somehow. (radio is one way) However, you don't have to introduce the hero first. Make up a title that says clearly, Gulliver's just here for a bit, we'll get to the hero. Then, after you've finished with Gulliver's intro, stick with your hero for a while to firmly establish in your reader's heads that this is the person to watch. Then give your critique group those pages, and see if the hero doesn't start to grow on them.
Another 2 cents worth...this is getting expensive : )
I inadvertently did this with one character, so much so that in the early writes I, and my son when he read for me, got the idea of never actually writing in the character, but just letting her persona be bandied about -- sort of like Godot in Waiting for Godot or Marris on Frasier. I needed her, though, so I wrote her in fully, but it could have been done.
Maybe Bond's reputation can precede him.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited June 11, 2003).]
Christine: You are right about writer's groups, of course. But many writer's books have emphasized the importance of introducing the main character at the beginning. It's supposed to be one of those rules that established writers can break, but beginning writers can't. It's one of those deadly flags that tells a publisher "This writer doesn't know what he's doing."
I'll try to hunt up an excerpt that says this.
So, what do you do? Do you contrive some way of making the main character appear first? Sometimes that works, but if it really does not, does that mean you story just isn't worth telling? Well, that last one if up to the discretion of the author, but I'd hate to see good tales go to waste because the author couldn't make the main character appear in chapter 1.
Good luck with your story.
Why not use a character like...Mcgyver (I have no idea how to spell that), you know, the guy that Richard Dean Anderson used to play? He had Bond-like abilities, but his superior abilities came from his ability to think about the world he lived in from unconventional points of view. That kind of character would be perfect for both explicating and being the hero. Or try Spock. Or, if you need a human, Chief O'Brian, an engineer that is always being called on to improvise with highly technical equipment.
Use your homeless guy, but make him a bit of an underworlder...hacker/thief/con-artist, always on the make and rebelling against the system. He's homeless by choice, because he doesn't like the way society is set up in "Utopia". So he's always finding fault with the way things are(and it would even be fun to let him wax nostalgic over the good ol' days when men were men and women were women...whatever that means).
Want a champion of order? Well, try a guy whose dedicated to keeping the system running. When he sees economic transactions, he sees the entire economy in all its futuristic glory. When he gets on the tubeway, he feels a quiet pride in the advanced infrastructure that...I hate this guy already. Forget about him. He can be an obsticle character to homeless revolutionary.
Make your hero someone who can get things done, not because he has a bunch of money and gadgets, but because he understands the world he lives in and how to do things himself. That's a much better hero than James Bond anyway (by the way, Bond obviously has to rely on his own brains when push comes to shove, he has to figure out what the villian is up to in the context of things we usually take for granted, and he has to notice everything...so you could just go ahead and use James Bond, if you like).
These two characters aren't that much like James Bond and Gulliver. Those are just tags I gave them in this thread which exaggerate one aspect of each personality. I could have used Richie Cunningham (Happy Days) to tag my middle class hero and The Savage (Brave New World) to tag my homeless guy.
I've already got a character who is poor by choice. I tried to describe the world through her eyes, but it couldn't work. I had to force her to think things she wouldn't think, comparing her life to 2003 America. So I took it away from her and gave it to Gulliver.
The root cause is the same issue that plagues all speculative fiction writers: how do you describe a strange world without a hundred pages of info dump? Without a big chunk of exposition, 2003 Americans can't relate to any character in this world that could actually get anything done. It doesn't matter if I make the character MacGyver or Spock or O'Brien, readers could not relate to him until they've had some exposition.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited June 12, 2003).]
quote:
I've studied the two characters closely, and I am confident that the only reason my group wants Gulliver to be the hero is because he was introduced before James Bond. The previous interludes, "Something is wrong in Utopia" (4 pages) and "Meet the villain" (4 pages) had left them expecting to meet the hero. Instead, they spend 4 pages with Gulliver having a little adventure while he introduces Utopia. They finally see James Bond through Gulliver's eyes on page 12, and they get to see a bit of James Bond's position in the world. They finally get into James Bond's POV on page 18.
I keep wondering if it would help for you to start Gulliver's part with something along the lines of "When I first met James Bond...." so that Gulliver's part is all about James Bond (as well as introducing the world).
<shrug>
If the differences make a difference in how the story unfolds, then your POV characters will notice them (not necessarilly in contrast with the early 21st century, but they will notice). having sympathy for a character is not a function of belonging to a similar socio-economic class or system. It is a function of the interior geometry of the character, virtues (and vices) that transcend accidents of time and place.
If you believe that a person with a car can never really understand a person without one (and vice versa) then give up on speculative fiction right now. If you don't, then what exactly is the problem? If your readers are imaginative enough to read science fiction in the first place, then they don't need a &^%$%#( point to point map of what in that world is equivalent to what in their world. If they aren't that imaginative, then they won't read your story no matter what.
If you like, I'll read your opening and tell you what works and what doesn't, and why. But of course, you might not like it as much as you thought you would... 
See what you can develop along those lines. If you feal like it, post your basic premise here and I'll see how few action sentences I can show it in. I enjoy that sort of challenge :-)
Survivor: I can describe the world through James Bond's POV just fine. I just can't introduce it that way. In the first version of my story my writers group was confused by his every action. "Why did James Bond do that? Is he insane? What's wrong with him? I would never do that!"
It's my judgement call. If it's bad to trick readers into believing Gulliver is the hero, it's worse to trick readers into thinking the hero is insane. I'd prefer not to trick my readers at all. That's why I started this thread.
Perhaps the problem is that my milieu feels familiar, with space ships and robots and such, so readers expect the characters to behave in familiar ways. For example, characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 behaved pretty much like 20th century Americans. Even the most outlandish aliens had jobs, social duties, homes, families, and such.
Gulliver is the only person in my whole universe who can even think about those things in a context that would make sense to readers.
I could shorten Gullier's first scene, but I think that would do more harm than good. The scene is already pretty short. I believe the problem is the placement of the Gulliver POV scene before the Bond POV scene, and shortening it would not solve the problem.
Gulliver can do the same thing with one sentence. But jumping into Gulliver's POV for one sentence violates a fundamental rule of fiction writing, and would be a horrible aberration of my writing style. So Gulliver gets a whole scene.
It does seem like that would be a very fast way to tell a story. Considering the emphasis on speed we see in today's adventure stories I'm surprised we don't see more of it. I wonder why people don't use it all the time.
Any thoughts?
I deal with just such a character in my current work. He's a cybernetically enhanced subspecies of human, owned as nominal property under lease. He doesn't have a job, social duties, home, family, etc., but I would have no problem writing the story entirely from his point of view and making it clear why he is different because he has to deal with normal humans and is aware of the difference. In fact, I start with the POV of a normal human simply because she is important to the story (and I'm having fun with her in the opening scene [shame on you, what do you think I mean!]).
More to the point, when he does something, he has a conscious reason for acting. This is what some actors call "motivation" and is a key element of making a character plausible. If you aren't showing your character's motivation, then you are not doing a very good job as a writer.
I don't know anything about this magical one fact that must be established before getting into Bond's POV.
As for third person limited with full omniscient interjections, if you are going that direction then you should just go ahead and use full omniscient. The entire purpose of third person limited omniscient is to limit the audience to the POVs of the POV characters so that they will be limited to experiencing the story from the POV characters' points of view. If you step out of POV whenever you feel like explicating something, then the audience doesn't experience the story from the POV of the characters, eh?
Omniscient works well for some authors, Tom Clancey's best works are all in full omniscient. But it is much harder to pull off simply because you have to persuade the audience that you (the author) know everthing[/i}--or at least far more than they know. Factual, scientific, motivational, or logical mistakes in your story will simply not be forgiven. We [i]expect a POV character to have limited knowledge and understanding, we require an omniscient author to be omniscient.
For a fantasy, I would prefer heroic narrative to full omniscient. Tolkien and Ursula K. Leguin's EarthSea Trilogy are good examples of heroic narrative. We are encouraged to admire the main characters, more than to sympathize with them. For science fiction heroic narrative is less...acceptable to most people. Just the way things are, I suppose.
If you are writing more stories in your Utopia, it might not be the characters or your writing that is the basic problem. You may have a milieu that is simply not believable to most people. Or it could be this magical "one fact" of yours.
When I started out in a middle class POV, with a lifestyle (job, social role, family, etc.) that's utterly alien to my readers, the exposition was confusing. When James Bond considered himself in relation to people with even more alien lifestlyes it got downright unreadable. My group naturally tried to compare themselves to my James Bond, which was impossible until Gulliver described the baseline and his own relationship to James Bond.
Motivation was the most confusing part. My James Bond had motivation, but the group could not understand it. To them it seemed like James Bond was godlike, ruling the entire universe in my milieu. They could not understand why he would want or need anything. I keep coming back to socioeconomis status because it was an recurring complaint, though other things were confusing. My group could not understand why James Bond demured to certain other characters, even though I made it clear that these characters were much more powerful than James Bond.
There was no way to communicate that James Bond was the equivalent of a middle class American from 2003 without some really lame exposition, or a brief introspection from Gulliver.
My exposition is kind of like that in Dune, except that readers could identify with Paul Atrades because he had a social role and family relationships they could recognize. Everyone in my milieu has roles and relationships readers can learn to understand, but they will not recognize them immediately. It's when readers think they recognize something that trouble starts.
Amazingly enough, as soon as Gulliver placed the baseline my readers understood the milieu perfectly. But Gulliver entered the story at the moment when they expected to meet the hero, so they were upset to learn that Gulliver was just a part of the ensemble.
Thanks for your advice, Survivor. I shall look into the heroic narrative.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited June 12, 2003).]
quote:
Amazingly enough, as soon as Gulliver placed the baseline my readers understood the milieu perfectly. But Gulliver entered the story at the moment when they expected to meet the hero, so they were upset to learn that Gulliver was just a part of the ensemble.
If it helps at all, Doc, go take a look at C J Cherryh's DOWNBELOW STATION. As I recall, the beginning of that book deals with a character and setting that introduces the story, but which the reader never visits again. I remember being frustrated by that because of the very problem of identification you are talking about; but I think the book won the Hugo, so if anyone else had a problem with it, enough of them got over it to give the book the award.
I've got to tell you that you've made my day, and it was already a pretty great day. Answering my question with the words "Hugo Award" puts it all in perspective. Gosh.
Of course CJ Cherryh had a book or two published before Downbelow Station. The warning which keeps me up at night is addressed to new writers. I'm confident that C.J. Cherryh could get away with my beginning. So could Joe Haldeman, Larry Niven, OSC, or Isaac Asimov (though at this point one word published by Asimov would be less likely to win a Hugo Award than a Bram Stoker Award, followed by a special Nobel Prize for Medicine.)
Why don't you start the story with JB meeting G, from JB's perspective? That way, meeting a character who thinks more in line with the reader could prompt JB to think about what the differences between himself and that character are, and maybe even discuss some of those differences with him. And of course these differences are similar (although I would expect not identical) to the differences between JB and the reader.
Coming at it from the side that is different can be a bit harder to understand, but it should resolve the problems.
Also, is there actually anything wrong if your readers wonder why your hero is acting like he is for a couple of chapters? It would certainly create a mysterious character which would help maintain reader interest... unless its too far unrelated to life for them to even be able to digest what's going on.
What sort of things were your group having trouble with?
Gulliver has a PhD, doesn't have to work, lives in a nice house, dates beautiful women, and owns a private jet. James Bond has six PhDs, doesn't have to work, lives in a castle, dates supermodels, and owns a fleet of private jets. My writer's group liked Gulliver more than James Bond. Unfortunatley, Gulliver is so inconsequential that he can't get anything done in my world.
The story says very clearly that James Bond isn't perfect, he has a plain, middle class lifestyle. But my writer's group just couldn't grasp it. No matter what happened to him, they kept thinking of James Bond as a spoiled rich kid. He didn't act like a spoilied rich kid, but neither did he think to himself over and over: I'm middle class, I'm middle class, at least not more than once. That would be stupid.
Gulliver, OTOH, can think to himself: I'm poor, I'm poor. His poverty rules his life, so he can think about it with everything he does. One sentence of description plus a few pages of action puts my world in perspective.
At one point I did experiment with having James Bond think about Gulliver's lifestyle over and over. But because James Bond is busy with his own adventures, his obsession with Gulliver seemed very strange. It slowed down the pace a lot, and made their relationship seem ambiguously homosexual.