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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Sir Huron Stone on June 27, 2012, 01:45:11 AM
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I'm having trouble deciding how to write my story. It's easier for me to write in first person, but I like being able to bounce around in 3rd person. Any way to combine the two?
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I'm having trouble deciding how to write my story. It's easier for me to write in first person, but I like being able to bounce around in 3rd person. Any way to combine the two?
I think only if you change POVs every so often. Some writers have done that. Usually it's 3rd but every so often they throw in a 1st POV for a certain character.
But stretching yourself is suppose to be good.
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Mh. True.
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I have read some that were mostly first person but would use third person to talk about things that were happening away from the first person narrator. One way that this could work is that the first person narrator is writing the story far enough in the future that they are now aware of some of the things that happened in other places even though they did not know about them at the time they were happening.
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I have read some that were mostly first person but would use third person to talk about things that were happening away from the first person narrator.
Doing that pretty much always feels sloppy to me, fwiw. Far better to get the information in around the first-person narrator somehow, as indeed the novels of the DF do well, and better as they go along.
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Ive seen Multiple 1st POV work well. You just need to make the POV shifts as clear as possible (only on chapter breaks can work well). Ive also seen it where they do a Part 1 from one POV, and then at some milestone point switch and do a Part Two from another POV that overlaps the timeline quite a bit. Like telling the story of how two different Heroes fought their way to teh Mountain of Doom, and the eruption is the common anchor point that brings them together in the Reader's mind. Then you can jump a little more during the climax, since its multiple POVs on the same scene. It gives you the flexibility of 3rd, but the intuitive ease of 1st. But it complicates the pacing and transitions, making them more jarring if you are not careful.
Also, keep it to a small, set number of POV's. You are effectively creating multiple MCs at that point, so it does add complication.
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I'm always a fan of first person over third when it's written well. Sure, you have limitations due to the fact that you know only what the character knows, but you also have a more intimate connection with the book IMO.
If I were to write a book in third person, I would most likely take the route of George RR Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire series. Each chapter, while in third POV, is still dedicated to one characters viewpoint.
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If I were to write a book in third person, I would most likely take the route of George RR Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire series. Each chapter, while in third POV, is still dedicated to one characters viewpoint.
Wheel of Time went so far as to have an identifying Icon at the beginning of each chapter that indicated which Character was the focus. The Icons themselves would change over time and where nicely indicative of the character's state and role at the time.
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Doing that pretty much always feels sloppy to me, fwiw. Far better to get the information in around the first-person narrator somehow, as indeed the novels of the DF do well, and better as they go along.
I would not disagree with this. I have in mind that I have somewhere read stories that have been successful using this style but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
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Wheel of Time went so far as to have an identifying Icon at the beginning of each chapter that indicated which Character was the focus. The Icons themselves would change over time and where nicely indicative of the character's state and role at the time.
It's hard for me to see an icon like that, or a POV name given at the start of a chapter, and not think "this writer has given up on being good enough to make character voices distinct by themselves".
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It's hard for me to see an icon like that, or a POV name given at the start of a chapter, and not think "this writer has given up on being good enough to make character voices distinct by themselves".
Judging by the fact that his whole world had 2.5 female characters, just with different names and ages, Id say yes, probably so.
Honestly it most helpful because it made skipping through the books to the story-lines I cared about much easier :P
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I'm having trouble deciding how to write my story. It's easier for me to write in first person, but I like being able to bounce around in 3rd person. Any way to combine the two?
In Admiral Who? The MC was 1st person. The limited number of main secondary character were 3rd person close. Kind of like how C.J. Cherryh did with Bren Cameron, about half a step back 1st person. We were totally inside the MC's head, slightly less so in the 2nd Characters and they gave some interesting perspective. Thing was I didn't force overarching views and over analysis of the MC from the secondaries perspective. They were the hero's of their own little piece of the pie and only as the MC impacted them or in some cases was confronted by them, did perspective on the MC from them flow.
It really all depends. Whatever you do you need to do well. My advice just do it, and start honing your craft. I stared out my book jumping around from 1st to 3rd on the MC. Settled on 3rd most of the way through the book, but when I sat down to edit, decided 1st person was the only way to go. Had to nuke some cool discriptors of the MC when I converted from 'the battle scared young Admiral said' to 'I said' but on the whole, being that extra half step inside his head came out much cooler IMO.
I'm sure others have much better advice for you. But you can see what I did, and decide if it has any bearing on what you're planning.
have a blast,
The Deposed King
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People have been telling stories for a long time, and more importantly, people have been listening/reading/watching stories for a long time. Audiences tend toward specific structures/devices/methods for a reason, and while the "why" of such tendencies are certainly open to interpretation and debate, "what" they are is a bit more concrete. You can try to "mix things up" by switching tenses, point of view, etc. Lots of authors have done so, with varying degrees of success. Thing is, if you play with conventions, it's going to be jarring to audience immersion. Shaking things up can be a good thing, but it must be handled delicately for it to have its intended effect.
It's your book, and you can do anything you want with it. The stories most often touted as "brilliant" often flout convention, but the reason there's so few of them is because it's very difficult to flout convention and still keep your audience at the same time.
I personally dislike books that switch between first and third PoV's, and I've yet to find an example where the same effect couldn't be achieved, and better, without resorting to that particular conceit, but that's only one person's opinion.
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its a very personal thing
but for me i hate writing 3rd person
so always now do 1st person
i can still do POV changes
actualy it can be easia
it depends on your style and your story
good luck
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If you haven't you probably should read Jim's live journal post on first vs 3rd person
http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/1262.html
The other thing I wanted to say is that I remember recently reading about an important literary workwhere the author split the book up into 3 or 4 sections that were each had a different perspective.
Dangit, I'm trying really hard to remember what the book was, but the best I can do is that one of the perspectives was from a mentaly defficient character. It might have been set in the great depression but I'm not sure. I hadn't read it, just the wikipedia article. The point is there is an important literary book from the 20th centry that switched, but only as seperate sections of the book.
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If you haven't you probably should read Jim's live journal post on first vs 3rd person
http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/1262.html
The other thing I wanted to say is that I remember recently reading about an important literary workwhere the author split the book up into 3 or 4 sections that were each had a different perspective.
Dangit, I'm trying really hard to remember what the book was, but the best I can do is that one of the perspectives was from a mentaly defficient character. It might have been set in the great depression but I'm not sure. I hadn't read it, just the wikipedia article. The point is there is an important literary book from the 20th centry that switched, but only as seperate sections of the book.
Has he added anything new there lately? Last half a dozen times I checked the last post was from months ago. But the last time I checked was about three months ago.
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I checked a week ago nope
npothing new there since december
from what i can see
but might have mist omething
it dose happen
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Perspective is always a challenge, particularly for first time authors. I believe this is why many first time authors also have issues mastering compelling characterization: a lack of definitive perspective. Multiple POVs, while a driving force in their own right, can many times indicate a novice author's inability to determine the proper POV to begin with. Ironically, I detest first person POVs as far as my own writing goes, and little of anything I've written has ever had first person POV. I say it's ironic, because I absolutely love the Dresden Files; which, of course, is written all in first person. And written that way well, I might add. For me, third person offers way too much freedom to be denied (as far as my own writing goes, that is). I can't stand the idea of trying to craft a world where all happenings and information in that world must be obtained directly by association with the MC. Whereas with TP perspective, you can not only elaborate on happenings across galaxies and universes, you can switch to internal monologuing to obtain a sort of FP perspective from your MCs. I wrote one book, however, where I switched between first and third person perspective. I used the technique very sparingly in the book, and only when I absolutely had to show information happening outside of the MCs awareness. Which is why I guess Dresden has Bob, LOL
Ironically, though I meant to get to this discussion earlier, I have chosen today, and coming off of a critique I performed for another member on a forum that's sort of a writing group (as once I decided to e-publish my novel, I decided I needed all the help I could get, LOL). The work I critiqued has a POV shift I've never seen before and have never heard of anyone trying (which doesn't mean it hasn't been tried before, LOL). The author set up the story to shift from one FP MC to another. I gave her the best advice I could to deal with such a scenario (since all she had at this point was an introductory name simply preceding a section of text, which can really confuse the reader). The advice I gave her was when a new character was introduced as the FP to transition with the first sentence in TP, then do the next sentence in TP internal monolgue, then start the next sentence in FP. The point being that whenever you have a multiple TP story, the most critical thing to remember is transition, and to master it so that it's smooth and renders as little confusion to your audience as possible.
And by the way, I once read in a Writer's Digest book/mag (whatever it was, LOL) that even advanced authors have issues with the multiple POV technique, but that several have pulled it off skillfully. It's all part of honing your craft, as was mentioned by a previous poster. You live, you learn, you get Luv's. No... wait... that's not right. XD Srsly though, if anyone ever masters this art so there's nothing more left to learn, let me know. And start a seminar. Because I guarantee you, well established New York Times Bestselling authors are gunning for shotgun. Writing is like Life; you don't stop learning until you die. (LOL I made a list of said authors, but it's rude to put words in people's mouths, so I generalized it.) XD
Edit: Reading Mr. Butcher's article on this subject (the one linked earlier) and realized that I erroneously merged TP and VOG POVs. Apologies to all. Thanks goes to Jim Butcher for educating me on this. (Y)
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only when I absolutely had to show information happening outside of the MCs awareness.
I think part of my issue here is that I am having great difficulty coming up with a reason why, in a principally first-person story, such a piece of information could exist. Would anyone care to offer me an example ?
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The only reason that I can think of to do this is to build tension. If you know something is happening that the main character doesn't, it can heighten the tension as you wait to see how he/she is going to deal with it when it surprises them. Maybe there are other reasons but I can't think what they would be.
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The only reason that I can think of to do this is to build tension. If you know something is happening that the main character doesn't, it can heighten the tension as you wait to see how he/she is going to deal with it when it surprises them. Maybe there are other reasons but I can't think what they would be.
*Points up.* Yeah, mainly that, LOL That was the only reason I did the dual POV in one book.
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I personally dislike this technique. I'm perfectly fine with multiple perspectives, but if it's done as a one off, or just to provide a bit of dramatic tension (where the audience knows something but the protagonist doesn't), it always lessens my immersion, and frankly strikes me as lazy writing. It's perfectly possible that someone has used this technique to great effect, or that I'm unjustly discounting it because I'm stubbornly set in my own preferences. I'm not any kind of literary buff, and have no formal training. I'm just a guy who reads 5-6 novels a month, and would like to write stories for a living someday. Still, the stories I find most engaging tend to either stick with one perspective to maximize empathy, or weave together a braid (or in some cases, a tapestry) of perspectives together to allow for more complexity and broader scope.
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I personally dislike this technique. I'm perfectly fine with multiple perspectives, but if it's done as a one off, or just to provide a bit of dramatic tension (where the audience knows something but the protagonist doesn't), it always lessens my immersion, and frankly strikes me as lazy writing. It's perfectly possible that someone has used this technique to great effect, or that I'm unjustly discounting it because I'm stubbornly set in my own preferences. I'm not any kind of literary buff, and have no formal training. I'm just a guy who reads 5-6 novels a month, and would like to write stories for a living someday. Still, the stories I find most engaging tend to either stick with one perspective to maximize empathy, or weave together a braid (or in some cases, a tapestry) of perspectives together to allow for more complexity and broader scope.
No, actually, you're right IMHTGO. I used it in that one book because it seemed to fit the work. Doesn't mean it was right or WASN'T lazy, LOL
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I was with you for the I, M, H, and even the O, but you lost me on the T and G.
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I was with you for the I, M, H, and even the O, but you lost me on the T and G.
LOL In My Honest To God Opinion. XD
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I think part of my issue here is that I am having great difficulty coming up with a reason why, in a principally first-person story, such a piece of information could exist. Would anyone care to offer me an example ?
It would be a rare occurrence to be sure, and very situational. I can think of examples in certain contexts, but for most of them I can think of some other ways to inform the reader after the fact if necessary. Like if you have an MC that really needs to go unconscious, and thus events must happen in the interim; but in that case it would make sense for another character to catch him up after the fact. The only really binding situation I can think of is when you are specifically wanting the Reader to see things coming before the MC does. But clever foreshadowing should be able to pull that off, without the need for a perspective shift.
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It would be a rare occurrence to be sure, and very situational. I can think of examples in certain contexts, but for most of them I can think of some other ways to inform the reader after the fact if necessary. Like if you have an MC that really needs to go unconscious, and thus events must happen in the interim; but in that case it would make sense for another character to catch him up after the fact. The only really binding situation I can think of is when you are specifically wanting the Reader to see things coming before the MC does. But clever foreshadowing should be able to pull that off, without the need for a perspective shift.
True. In my case, however, I wanted a supernatural event to take place on the MC's television just after he left the house. It was meant to occur without anyone being present. So I switched to TP for that scene alone, if I recall correctly.
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Although this is something that may rarely done well that doesn't mean that it can't be done or that it is always bad. It just means that it is difficult and that most people can't pull it off. It also may mean that some writers have tried it unsuccessfully. I wouldn't do it unless you have to but if you feel it's essential to the story then give it your best shot. In a first person POV there are always techniques to giving the reader whatever information you want them to have but they may not always let you give it to them at the most dramatic moment. I would much rather read a well handled shift of view point than the very common technique used by writers of first person POV that I call driving the plot by stupidity. In this the author , inorder to give the reader the information, allows the MC to see it but to always be too stupid to know what it means even though it's obvious to the reader.
Of course the usual way to handle this is, as mentioned before, to write the story in close 3rd person perspective so that the shifts are less jarring but there are sometimes that this just may not work.
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I would much rather read a well handled shift of view point than the very common technique used by writers of first person POV that I call driving the plot by stupidity. In this the author , inorder to give the reader the information, allows the MC to see it but to always be too stupid to know what it means even though it's obvious to the reader.
Obvious to the reader is not really predictable across readers, though. Some people will pick things up from subtle implications whereas others will get a wrong implication and go haring off on all manner of tangents unless stuff is spelled out in whatever works for them as "clearly". Plus, you know, if the central puzzle of your mystery depends on some bit of genetics, I may well find it unduly obvious to me as a professional in that field (or else subtly wrong in ways that will irk me a lot) while still being unduly cryptic to people who aren't specialists, and the same would seem to apply to any other area of specialised knowledge.
Idiot plotting is a bad idea, but if you as author are writing something where protagonists and antagonists are trying to outsmart each other at some levels, you're likely going to have to spend a fair bit of time on scenes where a viewpoint character has to not immediately figure out something that's obvious to you, and that's a difficult thing to get right. One of my favourite examples of that actually working well is how long it takes Harry to figure out about GPS co-ordinates in DB; it's the kind of thing where it makes sense to me as a reader that that's what that set of numbers are, but with Harry set up from the beginning as having the effect he does on technology, and as ensuingly not being closely familiar with some forms of technology, it's perfectly plausible that he doesn't get it.
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I probably should have explained better. I am not saying that the MC should know everything that the reader knows. There are sometimes that it works very well to let the MC see something that he/she does not understand but that the reader grasps instantly. Other times, as you mentioned, you as a reader may have specialized knowledge that the MC lacks that allows you to figure out what's going on even while it is perfectly reasonable that the MC does not. I am talking about the character not knowing things that they should. An example of this would be a murder mystery. If the main character is a waiter at a restaurant in Chicago who is on vacation to the Grand Canyon and finds a dead body, I would expect him to overlook a few things. If the main character is an experienced, brilliant homicide detective working a serial murder case and the same bystander is at three of the murder scenes with blood on his shoes, I expect her to notice,and do something about it. especially since in the first person POV she had to notice or we the reader wouldn't know about it. I am using a bit of hyperbole to make my point but I have read a surprising amount of first person POV (or even close 3rd) that is about that bad.
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Although this is something that may rarely done well that doesn't mean that it can't be done or that it is always bad. It just means that it is difficult and that most people can't pull it off. It also may mean that some writers have tried it unsuccessfully. I wouldn't do it unless you have to but if you feel it's essential to the story then give it your best shot. In a first person POV there are always techniques to giving the reader whatever information you want them to have but they may not always let you give it to them at the most dramatic moment. I would much rather read a well handled shift of view point than the very common technique used by writers of first person POV that I call driving the plot by stupidity. In this the author , inorder to give the reader the information, allows the MC to see it but to always be too stupid to know what it means even though it's obvious to the reader.
Of course the usual way to handle this is, as mentioned before, to write the story in close 3rd person perspective so that the shifts are less jarring but there are sometimes that this just may not work.
If your primary concern is the jarring aspect of the perspective shift, there could be ways differentiate it as part of the chapter formatting, so that it is clearly differentiated from the main body of the text. The easiest example usually site is Ender's Game, where each chapter started with a bit of floating dialogue (no names or context, just the spoken conversation between two characters, and you are only later are able to guess at the identities. It seemed to be to be a clean way to present information/insight from the antagonists' POV, when the rest was tied to the MC's POV.
If its early enough in the story, Prologues can do this well, since the reader expects it to be somewhat separate from the main body of the text anyway. In one WIP I have the POV is tied close to the MC, but the prologue covers the famously unusual circumstances of his Birth, while I intend to use Chapter blurbs to show peaks into the POV of the people secretly hunting him during his pilgrimage.