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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Dresdenus Prime on October 10, 2012, 03:17:38 PM
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Strangely enough I was working on my story, setting on a first person perspective when a character currently unnamed came to me in my mind and said;
"It's bad enough I don't have a name yet, but you seriously forgot that there's a scene later in the book that I'm in and your main character isn't?! So how the hell are you going to work that Mr. Aspiring Author if your book is in first person?"
So after we fought with phaser sabers (yes I merged Star Wars/ Trek weapons, which I can do in my brain) I decided that I was confident that this book could be written in third person after all.
Anywho, to the point - When I start my chapters I had an idea of how to start them, and that was each chapters first sentence would start with the name of the character the chapter was following. So for example:
Chapter 1
John walked to the park.
Chapter 2
Sarah heard the phone ringing.
Chapter 3
Percy transformed into a herb eating velociraptor before his evening bath.
And so forth. If the following chapter stayed with the same person, then there would be no name. My question to you folks is - Would that bog things down to much? Or turn people and/or baby hippo's off of the book? Would it just be better for me to place the name under the chapter number ala Geroge RR Martin? If that is considered a no-no in the literary creation world I would prefer to stay away from it, but in my mind it seemed cool.
I appreciate all and any advice as I always do 8)
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I've always disliked making a big point of showing the name of the character whose viewpoint a chapter is in, as a title or a starting para; it's kind of admitting in advance "I'm not good enough with voice to make these characters adequately distinct."
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I have to agree with Neuro
If the characters have a distinct voice it will be clear who it is, there is no need to start off by saying it.
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Thanks guys! It actually does sound kind of lame when you put it that way. Much obliged!
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Eh, I generally have lower standards and such things have never really bothered me. It also may depend on your audience; I see such methods used more often in books that are aimed at younger readers, where such extra hints help them regain their bearings faster, especially if you are changing perspectives often, or switching to different views of the same events.
But as Neuro and Galvatron said, it is no substitute for distinct character voices. So Id say write the thing without them, but dont be afraid to add the extra hints in later if you think they'd be helpful
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i dont think you need to start each chapter with the persons name: John kicked the ball... sorta thing. but i do think its a good idea to put that characters name somewhere in the first paragraph. you could describe a setting or something and include the persons names a sentence or two into the paragraph. that way you take away the mystery of who the character is without writing it in an elementary way. just my 1.413 cents
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i dont think you need to start each chapter with the persons name: John kicked the ball... sorta thing. but i do think its a good idea to put that characters name somewhere in the first paragraph. you could describe a setting or something and include the persons names a sentence or two into the paragraph. that way you take away the mystery of who the character is without writing it in an elementary way. just my 1.413 cents
Yah, but if it's a mystery who the character is after reading a paragraph inside their head, then (unless you're doing something deliberate with that mystery) you really want to look again at how distinct a voice each character has.
Describing the setting's a good way of doing this, actually. (Everything is voice, and voice is character.) Because if you've got one POV character whose instinct on entering a new room is to check for access, doors, windows, points of escape, points someone could shoot at you through and so on, and a second POV character who on entering a new room immediately notices what colour everything is and thinks how it visually fits together, and a third who does not pay much attention to his surroundings because he's fretting over this plot he's got stuck in, a sentence beginning "He walked into the room and thought... " will be unambiguous as to which character it is within a few more words without needing you to explicitly say who "he" is.
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if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.
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if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.
Read the First Law books be Joe Ambercrobie if you think third person pov can't give each character their own voice.
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if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.
Well there is Third-Person Subjective, and then there is Third-person Objective. Subjective still has a voice, and is describing internal thoughts, feelings, opinions etc of the "voice" character, it just doesnt go so far as actually saying "I did this and that." The Objective voice tends to be more neutral and dehumanized, but the Subjective one is more "over the shoulder" and still gets inside the characters' heads. Given that he was switching from 1st POV to third purely to allow for multiple POVs in different scenes, I was assuming he was intending to use the subjective form.
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wow, i didnt know there was a difference between third person perspectives. im gonna have to look into that
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if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play.
Sure there is.
Everything a third-person character notices is voice, because different characters notice different things.. Everything a third-person character thinks is in their voice. No difference between third and first in that particular respect at all.
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wow, i didnt know there was a difference between third person perspectives. im gonna have to look into that
There is a ton out there on it, here is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode)
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The Objective voice tends to be more neutral and dehumanized, but the Subjective one is more "over the shoulder" and still gets inside the characters' heads. Given that he was switching from 1st POV to third purely to allow for multiple POVs in different scenes, I was assuming he was intending to use the subjective form.
I'm not sure I believe in the precise scale of distinction you are making; if you are going with a distinct third-person omniscient voice that's not associated with any specific character, it's not going to give you that distinction between POVs but the narrative itself will have a voice made manifest in every choice of words, of which detail to focus on and where to prioritise, even if it's not explictly an omniscient in-world narrator. Doing that consciously has kind of fallen out of fashion this past while except in childrens' books, which I think is kind of a pity.
Otoh, if you're talking about a camera-eye third that follows each individual character around as they do their thing but never steps inside their heads, I still think that you would or should or can have the ability to tell the characters apart by them each behaving distinctly like themselves, even if you don't get a thought process to go with it.
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I'm not sure I believe in the precise scale of distinction you are making; if you are going with a distinct third-person omniscient voice that's not associated with any specific character, it's not going to give you that distinction between POVs but the narrative itself will have a voice made manifest in every choice of words, of which detail to focus on and where to prioritise, even if it's not explictly an omniscient in-world narrator. Doing that consciously has kind of fallen out of fashion this past while except in childrens' books, which I think is kind of a pity.
Otoh, if you're talking about a camera-eye third that follows each individual character around as they do their thing but never steps inside their heads, I still think that you would or should or can have the ability to tell the characters apart by them each behaving distinctly like themselves, even if you don't get a thought process to go with it.
You are absolutely correct. I was attempting to paraphrase the wiki entry, but by no means hit all the subtleties. The main point I was after was just to show that you can indeed do third person while still being inside a character's head.
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Sort of back on topic. (Yes, the more you use everything to reveal character you are ahead of the game!) The flexibility of 3rd POV is that you can switch from character to character within a page and many times in a chapter. Just don't do it within a single paragraph, although all rules are meant to be broken. And it would be fun to do that and figure out what type of plot you could make that work... Other than the obvious drugged out sixties rock and roller type of trip...
Seriously, I'm going to try to do this. :-)
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The flexibility of 3rd POV is that you can switch from character to character within a page and many times in a chapter. Just don't do it within a single paragraph, although all rules are meant to be broken. And it would be fun to do that and figure out what type of plot you could make that work... Other than the obvious drugged out sixties rock and roller type of trip...
Patrick O'Brian does this and makes it work really rather well.
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Unnecesary depends largely on how many characters you have. I dislike relying on voice. Astute readers can tell the difference but many people can't. Especially if you have characters that for whatever reason have similar voices.(I have a mother amd daughter pair as POV characters. Them thinking alike is important.) I've always liked how the Wheel of Time has chapter labels for the main storyline present in the chapter. Leaves me looking for the dice at every chapter. So basically, do what makes you the most comfortable and what makes it easiest to read. I change viewpoints so often I feel the need to label things. (Which is a stylistic attention span thing.)
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Unnecesary depends largely on how many characters you have. I dislike relying on voice. Astute readers can tell the difference but many people can't. Especially if you have characters that for whatever reason have similar voices.(I have a mother amd daughter pair as POV characters. Them thinking alike is important.) I've always liked how the Wheel of Time has chapter labels for the main storyline present in the chapter. Leaves me looking for the dice at every chapter. So basically, do what makes you the most comfortable and what makes it easiest to read. I change viewpoints so often I feel the need to label things. (Which is a stylistic attention span thing.)
Yes, I think Mat is more interesting than the rest as well :)
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I've always liked how the Wheel of Time has chapter labels for the main storyline present in the chapter. Leaves me looking for the dice at every chapter.
Well, yeah, but distinct voice is not a strength I would be inclined to think of WoT as having, particularly with the female characters. On the other hand, I'd be surprised if there was a chapter anywhere in Song of Ice and Fire where you couldn't determine the viewpoint character trivially easily very quickly without the names as chapter headers.
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I'm just going to say, I disagree. On a first readthrough maybe... But there are different viewpoints(It's just that all the women are angry and think men are stupid) He still characterizes them well and each of them has voice.
Voice is also something that is either innate to the writer or comes off artificially alot of the time. (Jordan had very artificial voice. I will admit to that. Siuan and her fish curses every third sentence. Nobody thinks about their job that much.) It's hard if not impossible to learn voice. Especially given that every writer has a voice as well.
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Patrick O'Brian. Wow. Yessssss.
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It's hard if not impossible to learn voice. Especially given that every writer has a voice as well.
I'm going to disagree with you there; I would say that it's essential to learn voice unless you don't care that all your characters are indistinguishable, and that it's a thing some writers get more easily than others but anyone can learn to some extent. (Though some voices are easier than others; myself, I can do a passable Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrator and a fairly solid Alexandre Dumas, for example.)
I'm inclined to think that the better a writer is, the less their own actual voice can be distinguished through their characters' and stories' individual voices.
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And how does one learn voice? There is no way to do voice via a set structure short of using an accent. You can't formulize it. (I'm not saying it isn't something that can be improved on) but it isn't a teachable or learnable skill. It's too ephemeral for that. But you can write it none the less. Basically voice isn't a concious thing, not when done right. It's all in the readers head and no matter how good you may or may not be at differentiating by sentence length and thought pattern readers will ascribe a voice to a character. In my writng I've heard every which way. According to some every character is distinct and they can immediatley tell who's section it is. For my girlfriend the mystical glowing extradimensional lady and the summoner who's been on the run since he was 16 sound exactly the same(which is actually a good thing given the fact said female character learned verbal speech via the summoner's brain.)
So you can't quantify voice and it's all in the readers mind anyway. The only parts that can be taught, the aforementioned sentence pattern/word length things. Those aren't voice. They're tricks that make characters feel fake. Nobody thinks like that. Hell, writing like people think is impossible and would be unreadable because almost nobody thinks in full sentences and their thoughts spin off all over the place. But making them even more robotic by giving them patterns... It never comes off well.(Hence disliking fish thought patterns)
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And how does one learn voice? There is no way to do voice via a set structure short of using an accent. You can't formulize it. (I'm not saying it isn't something that can be improved on) but it isn't a teachable or learnable skill.
Of course it is. You learn voice by doing pastiche of voices you have read that have really worked for you. You learn it by picking your favourite album and writing each song out as a story. (This works better if your favourite album is by Leonard Cohen than by Orbital, granted.) You learn it by telling the same story in different modes; theme and variations.
Basically voice isn't a concious thing, not when done right.
The better you get, the more you can consciously control.
The only parts that can be taught, the aforementioned sentence pattern/word length things. Those aren't voice. They're tricks that make characters feel fake. Nobody thinks like that.
I will assert in all seriousness that I do, here.
Hell, writing like people think is impossible and would be unreadable because almost nobody thinks in full sentences and their thoughts spin off all over the place.
You clearly know a very different set of human beings from the ones I do, then. Almost all the ones I do think in full sentences; many, including me, think in full paragraphs.
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Thought isn't that organized. It's sporadic and stops mid sentence to follow another track. It starts at I should go to work but and layers into three different thoughts there on what needs to get done. The mind just isn't organized or focused enough to just go on in a monologue.
Show me examples of voice then. Because all I see in what you're discussing is character(which takes too much time to build to be voice) and to an extent perspective/tense(if that's what you mean by writing style.)
If you read something a personal friend posts on a forum you hear their voice while reading it. You can hear that not because they write any differently than anybody else or follow specific patterns but because you know them. The same applies to voice, except that the reader has one sentence to get that voice. So they assign it immediatley, almost always by the first sentence you write from the characters perspective. If that thought is, "The sky was always beautiful at night" the reader will get a voice filled with wonder and appreciation for beauty. But if it's, "The plane shook, jarring Bryan out of his book with an unpleasant thump." You get a sense the person is bookish, introverted, and prone to being unhappy.
They define voice right there.
Another example. I can't read The Dresden Files unless I place a voice in that slows the pace down. At the same time I can throw a voice onto anything.
Writers talk about voice like its magic. It isn't that its magic, but that it is entirely up to the reader what voice is. I spent months trying to figure out how to put voice into things and it never read any differently for me. I tried what you've talked about, trying to emulate other writer's voices. There isn't much there. I can write from harry's perspective if I want, but if I change the voice I read it in it stops being Harry and Starts being Atticus O'Sullivan really easy.
Now the forum is bugging out for me and not showing the line I'm typing on, which is driving me nuts. So enjoy.
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Thought isn't that organized. It's sporadic and stops mid sentence to follow another track. It starts at I should go to work but and layers into three different thoughts there on what needs to get done. The mind just isn't organized or focused enough to just go on in a monologue.
I'll tell you again; most of the time, when I'm not three-quarters asleep, mine does. If you're not minded to believe me, that's fine, but it won't add much to the conversation if you're not willing to take me in good faith here.
Show me examples of voice then. Because all I see in what you're discussing is character(which takes too much time to build to be voice) and to an extent perspective/tense(if that's what you mean by writing style.)
Voice is character. Every word a character says or thinks, every word on the page, is an example of how that character says/thinks/experiences things.
If you read something a personal friend posts on a forum you hear their voice while reading it.
You do ? That seems very weird to me. Text is text. I don't "hear" it, it's written down.
You can hear that not because they write any differently than anybody else or follow specific patterns but because you know them.
Whereas for me it's quite the reverse; almost all of my personal friends I met online first, and I know them by the patterns in how they write, long before I have met them in person or have anything derived from meeting them in person to add to their written voice.
The same applies to voice, except that the reader has one sentence to get that voice. So they assign it immediatley, almost always by the first sentence you write from the characters perspective. If that thought is, "The sky was always beautiful at night" the reader will get a voice filled with wonder and appreciation for beauty. But if it's, "The plane shook, jarring Bryan out of his book with an unpleasant thump." You get a sense the person is bookish, introverted, and prone to being unhappy.
They define voice right there.
You read very differently from most of the readers I know, then. One sentence ? That's just alien to me. "The sky was the colour of a television set tuned to a dead channel" is a first line that allows a whole range of voices (from the faux-Harrison-Ford narrative in Blade Runner to William Gibson's own drawl) but it rules out a bunch of others (no way that sentence can be d'Artagnan or Sherlock Holmes) and you need a lot more to narrow the voice down further.