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What POV do you want your reader to have. How do you do that?
In another thread, Jay wrote "I don't see this as being in her viewpoint." That presumes I would want a third-person scene to be from a particular character's viewpoint. Do you always write that way? I did, but I think I don't always want that.
Then I thought his rewrite was more distant. So we have differing opinions on how to achieve that goal. So there is a question of how.
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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” ~ E. L. Doctorow
Copied from Jay. I almost completely agree with this. Jay is, I think, talking about POV, in its most meaningful way. How do I, as a writer, accomplish this?
Actually, if you told me a book gave me the feeling of being rained upon, I might think I get that enough already. Why do we want the reader to feel rained upon?
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Viewpoint and narrative point of view, if distinguished, accords Jay Greenstein's points.
If a reader vicariously experiences through a viewpoint persona, say, rainfall for the definite time span rain falls, that's E.L. Doctorow's point. Less immediate would be if a rainfall description invokes separate readers' personal memory experiences of rainfall. If instead, a writer-narrator summary and explanation tells that rain falls, that's the more remote approach, and is a writer-narrator's representation, not a viewpoint persona's personal experience; that is, rather, how a narrator accounts the unfiltered, received reflections of a viewpoint persona's personal experiences.
An idealized reality imitation rainfall description would not even use the words "rain," "rainfall," or "rain falls," etc. Rather, would describe personal visual, aural, tactile, olfactoral, gustatoral, physical sensations and strong and clear simultaneous, contemporaneous, and sequential congruent opposite personal emotional responses to the sensations.
None of which Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 Paul Clifford weather report start accomplishes, three nondiscretionary grammar errors, too:
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which[that] swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies[lays]), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame[s] of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
That sentence, to me, is a mime passage, portent-fraught though never the weather as foreshadow import realized soon or late. The novel continues more or less similar artless summary and explanation tell, rushes and forces overwrought expression at leisure and never starts any substantive dramatic movement.
Exceptions to when a focal agonist is not who readers are intended to align rapport with abound, most common for pre-Modernism era narratives, there, intended to align with narrator or writer. William Faulkner's first-person plural, "we," the town gossips' grapevine narrator, "A Rose for Emily" is an example of excellence from the Modernism era. Noteworthy that the story's dramatic movement wants a remote narrator and occasions a nonlinear timeline, due also, in part, to the macabre topic and subjects of the story.
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The epigraph poem of Paul Clifford and the rest of the novel's first paragraph:
"Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose, Who press the downy couch while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance, Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease To name the nameless, ever-new disease, Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain and that alone can cure, How would you bear in real pain to lie Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would you bear to draw your latest breath Where all that's wretched paves the way to death?—Crabbe." (George Crabbe, The Village: Book I, 1783)
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added, 'But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!' Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written 'Thames Court.' Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford, 1830, Project Gutenberg hosted)
What does a dark and stormy night have to do with either, or any of the lots' related thematic relevance, that is. At least the man Dummie's want motivation somewhat presents among the overwrought clutter, though artlessly withheld what. Harrumph.
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quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: The Sherlock Holmes stories would not work as well if told from his point of view.
I suspect a big fail. But why? For this example, we would find out the murderer too soon.
Trivially, a character cannot tell about events if the character is not in a scene. Normally we stop explaining there, right? But that isn't the problem for Sherlock Holmes.
I once starting writing a two-person scene in third person, accidentally switched to third person, and found I couldn't rewrite the scene/story from either POV. Instead, I had to deliberately (and very awkwardly) transition mid-conversation from one POV to the other.
The start of the scene worked only if the reader was a fly on the wall, watching the scene. The second half only worked from inside her mind.
We should explain to beginning writers why that is. I was very surprised.
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Part why Sherlock Holmes is a less than ideal viewpoint persona is he's an insufferable atypical personality. Watson at least is typical and filters Holmes' maniacal episodes through that personal and insider lens; at times astonished, at times merely patient, at times offended by Holmes.
"The start of the scene worked only if the reader was a fly on the wall, watching the scene. The second half only worked from inside her mind."
Two different facets of one viewpoint, one narrative point of view, though two different, distinct narrative distances. The fly on the wall is a remote to middle distance outsider looks on; from inside her mind is a close distance insider looks outward and inward.
Why that is, without reading the passage, presumably, is due to narrative distance's variable accesses to viewpoints and personas. The outsider access is invariably a superficial and filtered narrator's paraphrase report of the woman's externalities. The insider access is also a narrator report, though unfiltered internalities by narrator of reflections received verbatim from the insider woman.
Narrative distance is the degree of separation between a narrator and a viewpoint persona's accounts of events. First person, by default, and third person, close, limited are, respectively, the closest narrative distance narrative points of view. Either may at times pull back to middle to remote distances and may close in to danger close distances.
Narrative distance is a prose aesthetic, not a technical grammar facet of narrative point of view, and includes outsider looks in and insider looks outward external stimuli accounts and inside sensation stimuli and thoughts. Close distance cannot observe a self's externalities, except from trite reflective surfaces' mirrors of the self.
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To merge technical with practical, we can talk about the POV found in a book. For example, we can look at the use of pronouns. But there is also the reader's POV. This has been called who the reader empathizes with, who the reader identifies with, and I think who's perspective the reader takes.
Our goal as writer is to control the reader's POV. Pronouns are just one tool. So it's important to distinguish goals from tools.
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Control readers' point of view? Many sessions spent at face-to-face studio workshops demonstrate that control is unlikely, maybe shape, maybe guide, maybe persuade, at best, more likely reach a shared understanding, if that, if a work on the proverbial hotseat, either a model story given for study or a project in progress, someway occasions cooperative rapports, alignments, emotions, attitudes, mores, values, beliefs, subjects, and topics.
Then, though, that's "preaches to a choir." Or alternatively, contradicts readers' presupposed anticipations and appeals all the more from circumstances readers love to hate yet are tragically beautiful nonetheless.
Maybe a writer might control a narrative's intents and designs; once given to the world, all points of control are left aside. One or so matters might shape readers' appreciation and as likely alienate readers. How then do so many narratives rise above their inherent limitations?
Fresh insight, fresh method, fresh expression that persuades or massages adjustments of Standpoints' outlooks.
One of the more influential science fiction works, writer aptly refuses the label, is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, for that matter, less known though a model story for narrative point of view study, "There Will Come Soft Rains," May 1950, Colliers, (Hosted by Broome-Delaware-Tioga BOCES, a community Board of Cooperative Education Services, PDF text.)
The first paragraph of "There Will Come Soft Rains":
"In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!"
The story title alludes to and cites a July 1918 Sara Teasdale poem Harper's Magazine published (copyright lapsed):
quote:There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Few, if any, personal pronouns throughout the short story, "it" most of all, and, overall, a peculiar detached narrator, yet a close narrative distance that's also as wide open as all the world.
Third person, detached, main simple past tense, and auxiliaries, indicative mood, objective, bright, lively tone narrative point of view.
No viewpoint persona. No focal perspective. No rapport or alignment target. A mobile "spy-eye drone" perspective overall. An altogether uncommon prose narrative point of view and appeals from a vignette "day in the life of" a post-apocalypse automated house, the Specimen, and what vignette does best: social commentary about human vice and folly -- satire. Controlled? Maybe. More so shaped, tight, beautiful, true, and persuasive about human capacity for self-destruction and annihilation.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Control readers' point of view?
I had a scene that wasn't working. I didn't know it, but I had reader's POV problem. I successfully rewrote the scene, without knowing how I was solving the problem I didn't know I had.
The moment is when my MC does something unexpected, which as I now realize, is difficult to pull off for the focal character. To give the reader her perspective throughout the book, I always tell the reader all of her (story-relevant) thoughts.
So I hopped outside my normal box for the first time and didn't tell the reader her intentions. Without knowing her intentions, it suddenly became impossible to take her perspective on that moment.
quote:"Will you help me off the horse?"
He gets off and then helps me down. He expects me to go off into a nearby clump of trees and do my private affairs. But I start walking towards the signs.
What I realized yesterday was that I also have her mention his point of view! Not all of it, but she mentions it again a few sentences later.
So it could have been an easily diagnosed problem and a formulaic solution. And I note this fits my idea of thinking about reader POV and learning the tools for trying to control it.
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"He gets off and then helps me down. He expects me to go off into a nearby clump of trees and do my private affairs. But I start walking towards the signs."
A non-subjunctive, indicative conjecture the second sentence there that is an irrealis expression, that is, a conditional "mood." She "expects" she knows what's on his mind; though firm about it, she cannot really know. Works for me.
That she doesn't express her true intentions is a dramatic irony of the moment. And a facet for show occasion, show her true intentions through sensation perceptions and actions rather than tell through her thoughts. Readers would anticipate revelation soon enough. Works for me.
I don't know about "He gets off", too many other than intended meanings attend that expression and similar "go off," some vulgar. Doesn't work for me.
//He dismounts//
Other considerations:
"'Will you help me off the horse?'"
A would, or will-shall mistake, either case, synonymous to "must." //"Would you help me off the [dang?] horse?"// Since she's being formal and a mite uptight, even offended by some slight.
"He gets off and then helps me down."
"and then" is tip-off to a run-on clause join and a forced not-simultaneous mistake, albeit sequential compound predicates governed by subject "He." Triplets defuse not-simultaneous sequential clauses.
//He dismounts, [he]grumbles under his breath, and [he]helps me down from the [darn?] horse.//
"He expects me to go off into a nearby clump of trees and do my private affairs."
Third short succession "off." Again, a fused sentence (run-on) and awkward, not-simultaneous merger of disparate ideas and actions "He expects . . . to go off . . . and do."
//He expects me | to go behind nearby bushes, | to do my private business.//
Infinitive tense participle auxiliaries, and seamless tense sequence: main simple present | to infinitive participle modifier | to infinitive participle modifier.
"But I start walking towards the signs."
Contradiction conjunction "but" is widely deprecated for all composition forms and types, albeit tolerated for some personal expressions and judiciously restricted. No call for other contradiction conjunctions common to formal and sophisticated compositions, either: however, though, rather, etc. The situation is thought; a personal thought contradiction diction and/or syntax is wanted instead.
Likewise, much debate about whether prepositional particle function "towards" or "toward" takes or receives subject-verb number agreement. Preferred British variant: towards (Old English preposition case); preferred U.S. variant: toward (Old English adjective case). Compare untoward (adj) <untoward visitors> : intractable, unruly, adverse.
A "start -ing" mistake, too.
//Nope [or Huh-uh, or Instead], I walk toward the [bathhouse?] signs.//
Definite article (adj) "the" uses want definite and specific distinction, often another adjective (bathhouse) or proper noun name. Ideally, though, for prose purposes, adjectives, adverbs, and modifier phrases entail an emotional facet.
The above demonstrations shift narrative distance, as part of narrative point of view, to an increment closer distance.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: //Nope [or Huh-uh, or Instead], I walk toward the [bathhouse?] signs.//
I'm worried about that "nope". There's no question, so why would she think "nope"? You as writer might have created the question "What is she going to do?", and you want that question in your reader's mind.
Whether or not this example is apt, I think we are agreeing that the closest narration has to take the perspective of the character, not the writer or the reader.
(Original context: "He expects me to go off into a nearby clump of trees and do my private affairs. But I start walking towards the signs.")
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"Whether or not this example is apt, I think we are agreeing that the closest narration has to take the perspective of the character, not the writer or the reader."
Close enough, though close and etc., are labeled narrative distance by writers and theorists who need labels for conversation and discussion purposes. Other labels predate that current one, similar: psychical distance, 1890s, and psychic distance, 1970s.
Another consideration about "but" whenever: and often works at least as well or better for contradiction purposes. Syntax changes somewhat to fit.
//He expects me to go behind nearby bushes, to do my private business, and I walk toward the [gateway] signs.//
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Another consideration about "but" whenever: and often works at least as well or better for contradiction purposes. Syntax changes somewhat to fit.
//He expects me to go behind nearby bushes, to do my private business, and I walk toward the [gateway] signs.//
I am still thinking about "but" in terms of POV. Can it pull the reader away from the character's perspective?
However, for this quirky example, that was the goal. "But" seems to work well for her taking his perspective, which I wanted the reader to also do.
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Instances of "but" are not per se reader pulls or pushes, more so inert, except that cultural deprecations of the word cause bumps disproportionate to the conjunction's contradiction function.
Grammar school children, and later ages, bring the word to their English compositions like a slam of sloths, and grammar instructors forbid it for that reason. The muse also forbids it, for the simple rationale that the word wants conscious consideration, as do many of the two thousand most common English words.
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Third person allows showing thoughts (feelings, perceptions, memories) of multiple characters.
Joe thought the plan would work; Bill thought it wouldn't.
But, third person authors often follow only one character, and present the thoughts of only that character. Then, thoughts of that character can be unmarked. Andie is talking to her ex-husband:
quote:He straightened the papers on his desk into one stack.
A lot of really big trees had died to make that desk. His mother had probably gnawed them down... (Cruise, Maybe This Time)
The second two sentences have to be the focal character's thoughts. They show attitude.
In first person present, the narration is all the focal character's thoughts. The third person author can do that too. I think Cruise does. I think Connelly (The Last Coyote) does.
For other authors, some of the narration doesn't belong to the focal character and some does. In Wyrms (Card), most of the narration could be her thoughts. But some doesn't fit.
quote: Patience murmured the Come Kristos in eight seconds -- she had it down to a science -- kissed her fingers and.....
Having it down to a science would be a difficult thing to think, and an odd thing to think, and it doesn't fit her character. Other authors are the same; I looked at Clancy today.
It's strange to realize that, as reader, I am assuming some of the narration is what the character is thinking and some is not.
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan: Third person allows showing thoughts (feelings, perceptions, memories) of multiple characters.
Joe thought the plan would work; Bill thought it wouldn't.
Those two clauses leave open whether Joe and Bill's thoughts are their actual internal paraphrases, narrator paraphrases of viewpoint personas' spoken sentiments, or another third person, close, limited or first person viewpoint persona's paraphrases of their known or knowable thoughts or spoken sentiments. The latter is a strength of free or tagged indirect discourse, this case, tagged and thought implied as spoken reflections someway. However, could be free indirect discourse if a focal viewpoint persona thinks the sentence's paraphrases.
quote:But, third person authors often follow only one character, and present the thoughts of only that character. Then, thoughts of that character can be unmarked. Andie is talking to her ex-husband:
quote:He straightened the papers on his desk into one stack.
A lot of really big trees had died to make that desk. His mother had probably gnawed them down... ([Jennifer Crusie], Maybe This Time)
The second two sentences have to be the focal character's thoughts. They show attitude.
"Third person authors", narrators, really, may follow one or more characters, dependent upon psychic access degree and persona thought motility. Third person omniscient accesses multiple personas' psyches: psyche in terms of narrative point of view and narrative distance as concerns interior external and internal stimuli and perceptions, responses, and thoughts, plus degree of a volition-involition axis. Albeit, usually only one persona is accessed at a given time.
Journalistic objective narrative point of view, though, may entail multiple internal viewpoints in close sequence, irrespective of narrative distance, if an overall viewpoint persona is after-the-fact aware of others' known or knowable internal sentiments, paraphrased or verbatim. That narrative point of view, though, mandates past tense.
"He straightened the papers on his desk into one stack." entails a somewhat volitional act and an external perception, a degree deliberate, that is, and is an action's attribution setup that details who thinks what follows, not, though, in itself, as is, Andie's interior external perception of her ex-husband's action. Prior context wrap would, probably does, does clarify that is Andie's interior external perception. The next part is indeed Andie's thought, attitudinal, nonvolitional, internal responses to and observations of the desk.
quote:In first person present, the narration is all the focal character's thoughts. The third person author can do that too. I think Cruise does [Jennifer Crusie?]. I think Connelly (The Last Coyote) does.
For other authors, some of the narration doesn't belong to the focal character and some does. In Wyrms (Card), most of the narration could be her thoughts. But some doesn't fit.
quote: Patience murmured the Come Kristos in eight seconds -- she had it down to a science -- kissed her fingers and.....
Having it down to a science would be a difficult thing to think, and an odd thing to think, and it doesn't fit her character. Other authors are the same; I looked at Clancy today.
It's strange to realize that, as reader, I am assuming some of the narration is what the character is thinking and some is not.
Comments?
"she had it down to a science" is a trite expression, cliché anymore, and, therefore, apt enough for personal internal discourse : thought, stream of consciousness. Might be off kilter for the overall novel Wyrms and non-science milieu in which expressed. Like, say, an arquebus used pre-gunpowder firearms, circa early 1400s West, mid 1500s East, or used since rifle replacement for any event except reenactments.
"It's strange to realize that, as reader, I am assuming some of the narration is what the character is thinking and some is not."
More so a remarkable insight. A writer's obligation is to indicate clearly when a narrative distance transition transpires or, otherwise, rather, gradually shifts among several distances such that some narration is patently only a viewpoint persona's, some somewhat a viewpoint persona's and somewhat a narrator's, and some patently a narrator's, and all of it kept in touch to a focal persona's complication, conflict, and attitude. That's an axis of narrative distance, from danger close to close to middle to remote, maybe to detached.
Depends on the wants of a given narrative's parts and wholes, narrative points of view, narrative distances, viewpoints, Standpoints, perspective fields of view, subjects, topics, and, most of all, writer intents and craft aptitudes. Of course, too, book-length narratives favor greater all-around flexibilities than shorter prose.
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