Hatrack River Writers Workshop: About Dune

This is topic About Dune in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Silver6 (Member # 1415) on :

I reread Dune the previous week, and I noticed that much of the book is written without consistency of POV: within the same scene, we get into the minds of several characters. My question is, why does this not hamper the story? It goes against everything we were taught on coherent POVs.
I think that it is because the milieu and the philosophical considerations are more important here than the actual characters, but I could be wrong.
What's your opinion?

Posted by JBShearer (Member # 9434) on :

Just like language structure in general, POV is a totally subjective thing. Dune may be written in third-person omniscient, where the reader can get into everyone's head, or it may be shifting between limited and omniscient. (I don't know, I've never read it.)

As any of the big authors will tell you, every rule is made to be broken. The problem is---most beginning authors would do well to follow the rules, and they might not get published in the first place if they don't. Once you are established, or if you've written an otherwise outstanding book, or if it just works with your project---you can break about any rules you want.

Like Thomas Edison said, "HE@#, there are no rules, we're trying to accomplish something."

[This message has been edited by JBShearer (edited April 04, 2004).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Ditto.

Another thing to remember is that Silver6 is correct as well. Dune does involve both extensive prescience and some telepathy, with the idea that all humans share some kind of collective mind by virtue of their genetic descent thrown in for good measure. Part of the essence of the story is concerned with the idea of something like human omniscience (or at least polyscience)...so it isn't at all surprising that the individual POV of some of the characters, particularly Jessica, Paul, and all the other Bene Gesserit and Mentats blur the lines a bit.

Even if Herbert were to be a stickler for 3PLO (which he is not), there would still be plenty of scenes where a single main character is seeing things from multiple points of view. So some of the appearance of poorly defined POV is actually misleading. Herbert is following the rules better than he seems, but he is concerned more with effects than with rules.

A crazy book, but well worth reading (and re-reading, though I don't have my own copy). Don't try to emulate it, though. Not if you're a beginner, and not even if you're pretty hot stuff. When you're ready to write your own Dune, you won't be imitating anybody.

Posted by msylvia (Member # 1775) on :

Any rules can be broken. The key is to break them correctly. Herbert did that in places.