I think Jay would say that he doesn't want the reader to know the character is surprised, he wants the reader to feel the surprise.
The best way to do this is for the reader to actually be surprised. And a simple formula for achieving this is to have the reader know what the character knows.
This applies to a variety of feelings and responses other than surprise. The exceptions are really interesting, but the general rule applies.
So, if there is the same focal character for the whole book, the formula is satisfied. If the book switches focal characters, it isn't. That can lead to two very different types of books.
I like feeling surprise, well-done. But, I think more importantly, if I am feeling something different from the character, because I know more or less, I am not as attached to the character.
First person present has the problem that the narration is the readers current thoughts. So presenting the character's knowledge-base is not as straightforward as presenting current thoughts. Solutions include remembering, the information comes up in dialogue, or (ugh) the main character just talking to the reader.
I have already noted Card's third person in Wyrms, which is mostly the character's current thoughts, but occasionally just what the character knows, with me as reader having to decide which is which.
Creating mystery -- the character knows more than the reader -- creates this problem (and others). Describing the future is also a serious problem.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
I wanted to start a new topic, but I still stuck on POV. But this seems to be a between-the-cracks issue -- the difference between having the same focal character for a book or not.
So, sorry about a well-worn topic.
For example, in the book I am currently reader, there are short chapters from the perspective of the serial killer. So I can tell that an interview will be pointless and the chapter is just a filler. And nowadays I skip the chapters from the perspective of the killer.
Posted by Jay Greenstein (Member # 10615) on :
quote:So, if there is the same focal character for the whole book, the formula is satisfied. If the book switches focal characters, it isn't. That can lead to two very different types of books.
I don't see the problem. Surprise is only one aspect of it. The goal is to have the reader react as the character.
So yes, if we move into the viewpoint of the one who's been misunderstood, we'll ruin the "surprise." But that would be dumb.
Take a romance. If we make the reader know he loves her, and that she loves him, why go on reading till those two idiots realize it, too?
It's not a matter of a specific point, like surprise or shock. The idea is to calibrate the reader's responses to those of the protagonist of the scene, to give them an emotional stake in the result of what they do/say. Fail that and the reader won't cheer for the protagonist's success. And if they don't care, why will they turn to the next page?
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Emma, I think you are over complicating a task every writer should have well in hand--the management of information. If you are hoping for the sort of surprise you’d get if someone snuck up behind you and went, “Boo!”, you won’t get that with the written word.
Of the other sort of surprise, the revelation of hitherto unknown information (to either the reader or the character or both) is the most common. This requires the writer to NOT give the game away beforehand. It would appear the writers you read are incapable of keeping their own secrets.
It’s as simple and easy as managing the flow and release of information. This can easily be done, regardless of the number of viewpoint characters, if you keep your eyes on the ball.
If you are seeking to get the reader to feel the same emotions as the character, that’s simple too. At the end of the day, writing is all about manipulating the emotional state of your readers. Perhaps a re-reading of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is in order.
Phil.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jay Greenstein: The goal is to have the reader react as the character.
No. I means, often yes. But that can't be the goal in, say The Da Vinci Code.
For example, Langdon is woken up by a phone call. He is annoyed and hangs up. He gets another phone call and "groans in disbelief". He is not happy about the visitor. Then he is shown the picture of a dead body, he learns there is a murder, and all annoyance disappears. We understand that how he was treated was appropriate for a murder.
But the previous chapter told us of the murder, so I knew from the start that he was being treated appropriately. He was annoyed, and I wasn't. He was surprised by the second phone call, I wasn't.
The whole book is like this. They even have the best example, the suspense the reader feels when the bad guy is in the same building as them spying on them, and they do not know he is there and hence don't feel the same suspense as the reader.
One reasonable goal in writing is to have the reader react. For that goal, it doesn't have to be the same reaction as the temporary focal character. I have wondered if that book would be better if told from just Langdon's perspective, but it would be a very different book.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
Hi Phil,
In theory, an author can present different viewpoints without detaching the reader from the focal character's feelings and emotional reactions. In special circumstances, that might even happen.
But, If you are saying this actually happens, name the book.
In Wyrms, the focal character for a scene (Ruin?) is presumably surprised to learn that the person she thought was a young woman is actually a young man. The reader already knows she's female, and Card doesn't even try for surprise in the reader.
Then we can imagine our main character being surprised that the focal character knows she is female. IMO, Card does write that for impact. But the previous paragraph already told the reader she knew.
So, presenting multiple points of view detaches the reader from the character. Yes, authors can have more or less skill in this, or more or less awareness. And more or less caring about this goal.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
Thanks for the responses.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Try reading War and Peace. Or, though poorly done, Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice-Burroughs. I have one draft which contains a love story among other things. One character knows the other loves him, the surprise for the other character, and reader, is her realisation she actually does.
But you're right, some people don't care about surprise, or even see the need for it.
Phil.
[ July 20, 2019, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
Posted by Jay Greenstein (Member # 10615) on :
quote:He was surprised by the second phone call, I wasn't.
But you're critiquing a given author, not the method. His work is filled with crap like that. He has entire book devoted to finding a bomb that anyone with a radio-direction finder could have pinpointed in ten minutes. And no pro in the story knew that?
He has a man dive out of a helicopter into water and survive, using his clothing as a parachute. He tends to be sloppy abut detail.
But in any case, People screw up. Ascribing to a given approach doesn't mean you'll use it well, or even consistently.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
You know, the whole purpose of mystery and crime novels is to surprise the reader as they try and solve the mystery before the end of the story.
Phil.
Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
The Da Vinci Code is in omni POV. This is signaled by the very first line of the prologue, and continues into Langdon's first chapter, despite the illusion of close third caused by numerous internal thoughts.
This and a few other scraps is all I've read of the book, but it's fairly obvious therein that the author is describing the action TO the reader; the reader is not LIVING the action with the characters.
So it has descriptions OF feelings, rather than feelings, eg.: When Silas hung up the phone, his skin tingled with anticipation.
We're TOLD his SKIN tingles and anticipates. We don't experience the tingling, nor the anticipation -- and neither does he.
This can produce a sort of lack-of-reaction (eg. surprise) because the story's emotions are flattened by being secondhand information.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
I don't think anyone has ever accused Dan Brown of being a good writer. But being a hack has never been an impediment to writing a best-seller either.
Phil.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
Wyrms and The Da Vinci Code were examples; any book that changes focal character will more or less have this issue.
The problem is statistical -- a lot of information the reader knows and a character doesn't will sooner or later create a discrepancy between one of the emotional responses of the character and the reader.
For example, things are going wrong. When the reader learns there is sabotage, the reader will have a different reaction from the characters. (Jurassic Park)
A boy is promoted much sooner than anyone is ever promoted. He would expect to be bewildered. The reader has been told this boy is special, so the reader will not be as surprised. (Ender's Game).
There are interesting ways of minimizing this? Yes. Can it be avoided completely? I would like to see the book.
Also, I didn't mean to criticize Brown. I'm just trying to describe consequences. Actually, I plan on using this technique in one story.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
It gets interesting to see how authors work with this problem.
The book I am reading mostly follows the detective, but an off-character chapter implies that there is someone the the detective needs to learn about.
So I know more than the detective. One technique for dealiing with this is "Catching the Character Up to the Reader." All the next chapter had to do was have this detective learn the needed information.
But it didn't. So I read chapters that I perceived as a waste of time, as the detective interviewed people I perceive as irrelevant.
The previous two books I read were good about catching the characters up to the reader. In one, two boys mostly alternated being focal characters, and their typical day ended with them telling each other what had happened.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Preempting my next post in NSG (Novel Support Group) my current WIP is a mystery, of sorts. A character is snatched from this world into another; the hero doesn't know why--nor does the reader. The hero follows and ends up in a world she knows absolutely nothing about--nor does the reader.
What follows is the unravelling of a mystery as the hero makes her way through this strange society in search of her friend. The character, and the reader, only know what other characters tell them in answer to the hero's questions. Most of the time the answers are reliable, though limited to what that particular character knows. Sometimes the hero, and the reader, get led down the garden path.
As the writer, I want to keep this situation going for as long as possible. It isn't about 'fooling' the reader, it's about frustrating and goading the reader until the 'big reveal' when everything makes sense. This way the reader will feel the same frustrating impatience to find out what is going on as the character does and, I hope, will feel the same relief (and disgust) the character does when all becomes clear.
This is not something you make up as you go along. It takes careful planning and preparation with a particular eye on NOT treating your readers as fools.
Phil.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Will you end with the Big Reveal? Just wondering because sometimes, if that is the point of the story, it has to be satisfying enough to the reader to make it worth the time and energy spent reading to get to it.
You might want to consider following the Big Reveal with at least enough "denouement" to show what the characters will do about things once they know "what is really going on."
There are a lot of short stories submitted to editors that are rejected because they really should be the first chapter of a novel - chapter one is about figuring out "what is really going on" and the rest of the novel would be about what the characters do about it.
A whole novel spent figuring out "what is really going on" works in the mystery genre, but the writer needs to be sure the payoff is worth it if it isn't a standard "who-dunit" kind of mystery.
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
'The Big Reveal' will occur when it naturally occurs within the narrative. Currently, I feel it will happen about half-way through; about the time Susan finds Tommy.
Phil.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
There are two ways of thinking of this. One is that the story is the story, when the reader is done the reader will know the story and enjoy it.
We can then delay information until to the end to keep the reader reading.
The other is that the reader is supposed to somehow enjoy reading about the main character's experience. Then you might delay telling the "whole story" precisely because you want the reader to read about what it's like to be thrown on a strange planet.
The issue isn't your book, it's the general principle. But I am not thrilled about your goal of "frustrating" the reader. [Added later: If the character is frustrated, then I have no problem with being frustrated as reader.]
[ July 27, 2019, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: EmmaSohan ]
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
Again, in a sense a "story" is a series of events; it's most easily understand when the events are described in chronological order. Doesn't the Odessy do this? The Da Vince Code?
And when Phil has a single focal character for the entire book (I am guessing from his description), that's a very different way of telling the story. And it's limited, literally.
Why have a focal character? To delay the reveal so the reader finishes the book? Or so that the reader will have the same experience as the focal character?
Posted by Jay Greenstein (Member # 10615) on :
quote: One technique for dealiing with this is "Catching the Character Up to the Reader." All the next chapter had to do was have this detective learn the needed information.
You can do that to the whole novel. It's called a synopsis. But where's the fun of reading that?
And if we spend a scene with another character it should never be to learn detail the reader needs, and that can be told in synopsis without loss of impact. It should never be, in effect, "Little did Jack know that at that very moment..." It might be to meet, or follow a character who will become important later, and develop an opinion of them. Sleepless in Seattle, is a good example of parallel lives that will later collide.
And you're right, in part. A Story, with a capital "S" is a series of events we call the plot, which can only be appreciated in retrospect. But story, with a lower case "S" happens page by page, and is lived in the protagonist's moment of "now." Story has no uncertainty because it's nonfiction—a historical overview of events. But story is filled with uncertainty and worry for both reader and those living the scene, which is what readers feed on.