Do Your Characters Speak For You?

A commenter mentioned being annoyed that in a post about scenes, I spoke about my characters "male-bashing" (with words, not bludgeons :).  Wasn't that sexist? If it were reversed, and these were male characters trashing women as a group, would I be more sensitive?

That brought up an interesting issue! At what point does our portrayal of characters being offensive become offensive "from us"? If I have a character who insults a group or is otherwise objectionable, does that mean I am espousing those sentiments? What if there are several characters like that? (I don't mean just politically incorrect offensiveness, but maybe also violence or discrimination.) When does it stop being just offensive characters and become an offensive book by an offensive author?

But... it gets so complicated when we're working with fictional characters. Every character we create is within us, they say, so perhaps a reflection of us. Yet if we create only characters that reflect what is best about us, well, there won't be much conflict in our books! Not to mention, you can't always know ahead of time what will offend someone somewhere.

 

Recently I was teaching character point of view to college students, and this issue came up. Most of their "novels" are really sort of fictionalized memoirs, with (probably idealized) selves as narrators. There was some bafflement when we read "A Cask of Amontillado" where the first-person narrator is truly an evil guy. (One of the worst ever-- walls up a friend for committing "an insult" and leaves him to die). They weren't sure how Poe might write a bad narrator without being bad himself, and who knows? Can we create a character who is not within us? Or should we even try? (And Poe of all writers has probably suffered the most slings and arrows because his first-person narrators are so nasty... many readers and his first biographer succumbed to the belief that they were him.)

I often wonder if mystery writers or thriller writers are associated with the bad behavior of their characters. We think, oh, yes, it's just fiction, but deep within, we might wonder... well, if she created this plausible serial murderer, does she have a serial murderer within??? 

I bet we've all read books where the entire tone and plot seem to push some offensive button-- it's not just one character who hates Italians, it's all of them, and there are three scenes where someone gets food poisoning at an Italian restaurant, and then there are all those metaphors referring to the Mafia, and the only joke in the book has a punchline about the dirtiness of Venice canals, and.... Yeah, it's not just "subtext" that's screaming out there.

 

In my own writing, sometimes I'll notice I have a character will reflect some silly prejudice of my own, usually something like "only children" or  "people who bring potato chips to a potluck dinner" or "those annoying sorts who are cheerful at 6 am." And I do sense sometimes I just give it a bit too much emphasis to this Thing I Don't Like, you know, sliding into rant-territory.

 

There's probably a point where this stops being a story with a character or two who is offensive, and becomes an offensive story overall. But I don't know where that point is. What do you all think? Is it safer to avoid characters being offensive, or instead just impart all the potential offense to a villain character so it's clear I Disapprove Of Male-Bashing and Only Bad Guys Hate Spaghetti? Is it worth examining our own subtexts and tone to see if we're conveying some offense we don't want to convey? What do you do? Have you ever changed a story or character because you thought you'd gone too far?

My example:

One of my characters was "authentic" in a lot of ways, bristly and angry and sardonic, but at some point, it just went too far, and readers didn't like her or sympathize with her. Worst of all, they didn't want to spend time with her. I don't think we need to make characters "likeable" to keep readers interested, but there is a point where the character just gets tiresome. I didn't want to make her a wimp or trivialize her justifiable anger about the past. But I found several "offense-ticklers" and phased them out. Like she had a habit of endowing people with slightly mean nicknames. And she was always thinking if not saying defensive responses to other characters' conversations. Once I could isolate the "too much", I was able (I hope) to make her both herself and reader-involving.

I notice I keep saying, "There's a point where...." That indicates, I guess, that this is a matter of degree, that what's acceptable at 48% can become annoying at 55%.

 

Alicia

Mixed POV approaches-- Agatha Christie

From Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie: 1939


Luke was just restoring some final order, replacing things in their place, when he suddenly stiffened and switched off his torch. He had heard the key inserted in the lock of a side door. He stepped across to the door of the room he was in and applied an eye to the crack. He hoped Ellsworthy-- if it was he-- would go straight upstairs.


This shows the continual shift Christie uses from a 19th C sort of omniscient (where we the reader are outside the character, seeing what he does but not "doing it with him"):
Luke was just restoring some final order, replacing things in their place, when he suddenly stiffened and switched off his torch. 

To a 20th C deeper third, where we are inside the character, perceiving what he perceives ("heard") and feeling what he feels ("hoped"):
 He had heard the key inserted in the lock of a side door. He stepped across to the door of the room he was in and applied an eye to the crack. He hoped Ellsworthy-- if it was he-- would go straight upstairs.
This is an effective technique and still used in mystery novels. It subliminally puts the reader into the viewpoint of the sleuth (or villain, sometimes) while reasserting the distance (outside, omniscient point-of-view) needed to evaluate and analyze all the evidence in the book (including what the sleuth doesn't know or misinterprets).

In Murder Is Easy (originally titled "Easy to Kill," btw), Christie uses a "pro-am" sleuth. He's a retired police inspector (from "the Mayang Straits"-- it's an area in Manipur, a peninsula in Eastern India), but out of his depth with the sophistication of British villains, who are, I'm sure we can agree, the most elegant of all. So we can see the pro at work from the omniscient angle, but the uncertain amateur (who is also falling in love, about which more later) through the single-third-person interior viewpoint. We feel both his certainty and his uncertainty, and have much better sense of how just plain difficult it is to figure out the

This book apparently came after several books featuring her impeccably correct sleuth, Hercule Poirot, who is never uncertain and seems to have no inner issues beyond a distaste for British weather. We don't really need an internal view into Poirot as he's not hiding much of himself. (In fact, several of the Poirot short stories are narrated, Dr. Watson-like, by a friend of his.) Luke, however, isn't just a "detecting machine" (you can tell I'm not a big fan of Poirot as a character, though I like the mysteries in those books). He's a young man, long exiled from his homeland and now returning, rootless, almost friendless, and most important, falling in love-- and all this shapes how and why he bothers to detect, especially as all the murders could plausibly be regarded as accidents.

What the more interior "single-third" viewpoint gives us is Luke that man, ruled by this new emotion-- falling for a woman he's unsure of and might not even like (I'm doing this in my Regency CSI series, and I can attest it's a difficult dynamic to describe). What we see is not Poirot's almost ruthless efficiency, but an amateur's repeated mistakes. (He's always fingering the wrong people!) Christie's use of omniscient (usually when he's sleuthing and gathering clues) allows us to judge whether or not he's right. And we have to notice that several times he's wrong. What the single-third deep viewpoint gives us is the reason he's so often wrong: From inside Luke, we participate in his biases and his impulses.

His first real suspect is Mr. Ellsworthy, the local antiques dealer. While the shopkeeper has been in the village for years, he's very much an urban character, and out of place here. He is (probably-- Christie is always a bit muddled when it comes to sexuality in general) homosexual, and Luke's instinctive distaste leads him to suspect the innocent Ellsworthy. From inside Luke (the single-third passages), we get a good sense of the first-half-century straight man's horror of the alternative. (We also get that muddled mid-century view from Christie-- Ellsworthy is not gay so much as generally "abnormal, perverted, depraved" (she uses all those terms, along with stage villain-type hysterical giggles, a "prancing and mincing" gait, and -- no joke-- slightly green hands... just plain devilish... inhuman). He practices witchcraft and Satanic rituals, of course. And it's assumed that he also abuses women sexually-- that is, he's portrayed as all that is perverse. This isn't, of course, a sympathetic or accurate rendition of any alternative sexual identity, but rather an expression of the horror Luke is feeling towards "the other".

So it's not a stretch to see Luke pretty soon fastening on Ellsworthy as the killer. Ellsworthy's supposed perversity would account for the seeming randomness of the murders (nothing seems to unite them except proximity)-- after all, an abnormal inhuman satanist wouldn't need any real motivation for murder!

Luke doesn't really discard this suspicion until he turns his attention onto another suspect. Again, this choice is influenced by his inner reality. He has fallen in love with Bridget, and naturally hates the rich, powerful, and unpleasant man she is going to marry (Lord Whitfield). It's no stretch for him to start suspecting Whitfield, who does have the suspicious trait of having employed most of those who died (and most of the village, it must be said-- he's very rich). While of course Luke's view of the man is colored by jealousy, it's also psychologically apt-- Whitfield is indeed a very large and destructive toddler who wants attention and demands immediate gratification, and can't stand opposition.

When we are sequentially inside and outside of Luke, we can understand his interpretation of something Whitfield confides (that he was once engaged to a lady in the village, but it was broken off because a pet bird he loathed "had its neck wrung"). Luke assumes-- because of his resentment of Whitfield, who gets whatever he wants, including Bridget-- that Whitfield was careless confessing to killing the bird. In fact, if Luke hadn't been so ready to think the worst about his rival, he might have noticed how careful Whitfield was to put that in the passive voice ("the bird was killed," not "I killed the bird"). From the outside, we notice that he jumps to this conclusion that Whitfield is a killer, and thus THE killer. From the inside, we understand why Luke makes this mistake (Whitfield is his rival for Bridget). We are able then to both judge him from the outside and empathize with him from the inside. (He does eventually figure it out, just in time to rescue Bridget from the real murderer.)

I'm going to try to be more analytical as I re-read the other books, and watch for this omniscient/single mix, or one or the other. My hypothesis is:

• The "professional" books (the Poirot and Miss Marple ones) will have mostly omniscient, mostly outside the "sleuth" character and presenting action also from the perspective of the other characters (like "Sanctuary" gives the POV of the vicar's wife who discovers the body as much as that of Miss Marple solving the crime). The omniscient here recognizes the irrelevance of the interior lives of these professional sleuths (I know Miss Marple isn't paid for it, but she's professional in her skills).
• The "pro/am" stories (where the sleuths are as much amateur investigators as professional, like Luke and Tuppence and Tommy) will have more back-and-forth between the exterior analysis level and the interior emotional level. In fact, this will provide a lot of the conflict and complications to the mystery-- solved not by the objective application of observation and logic, but through making emotion-based mistakes which lead the sleuths deeper into the mystery.
• And in the books with the true amateurs, like Bobby and Frankie in Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, we see mostly from inside, from their own limited and emotionally charged perspectives.  Their ability to solve the murder will come more from their intuition as much as their observation, and they will rely much more on empathy and instinct ("I knew he was a liar!") than on logic.

Thoughts about this? Examples that support or don't? (Also I should look at The Man in the Brown Suit, with its somewhat clumsy use of "objective" or camera-eye perspective in the first scene, where the victim "stars".)
Alicia

List of Christie's books, dated. From

Agatha Christie - The official information and community site

 

http://www.agathachristie.com/ac-external-content/pdfs/Christie%20Reading%20List.pdf

First Person uncertainty

Recently a writer said that the good thing about first person was that you get to tell the truth. And I-- never one to let a categorical statement stand categorically-- riposted that it all depends, as it's the character's understanding of the truth, which might or might not be true.

I came across an example of this in Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth, which is in first-person. The issue here isn't whether the POV character is deliberately or subconsciously distorting the truth, but one of certainty-- she doesn't know to a certainty:
My sight lines weren't good, but I thought his hands were shaking.

That is, she's confessing that she doesn't really know because of "the sight lines", but she's reporting what she thinks she sees. Of course, two considerations here:
First, the narrator WANTS his hands to be shaking, that is, that he's evincing nervousness at being close to her. (She wants to think he's attracted to her.) So her perception might be less than accurate, just because she wants it to be so.
Second, one step removed-- the author put this in there. If there was no relevance, if it didn't matter, then the author wouldn't have bothered. We as readers generally assume that whatever is narrated has some importance, whether or not that's the fact. And the author knows we'll think this is important, and so decides whether or not to include this based on whether or not  he/she thinks it's worth getting the reader excited about these shaking hands.

So let's assume McEwan chose to put this in there because it had some (albeit perhaps slight) meaning. What are we to make of it? Is it actually true (the character's hands really are shaking)? Or is what he wants us to get is that the young lady watching wants him to be nervous, thereby showing us that she really does like him (despite her recent rejection of him)?
That is, is the "importance" the event (hands shaking) or the POV's perception (her thinking that his hands are shaking)?  The fun of this is, of course, that we don't need to determine that at this point in the narrative. We can wait to find out if he's really that affected by being near her, or if she's just hoping that he is.

Third-Person
Now think about how differently that simple observation would be rendered in the more common form of third-person. There would be no doubt, because ordinary third-person narrates what's happening.
His hands were shaking.

We wouldn't need the line about the sight lines, because this would be a narration of the action of the scene, not the narration from her perspective about what she's thinking as the scene plays out. In ordinary third-person, we are given no reason to doubt the truth of the narration. Clearly this is the POV of choice if you just want the reader focusing on what's happening, if you don't want them wasting time doubting or speculating. His hands were shaking. Nuff said.

But what about Deep Third POV, which is cognitively much more akin to first-person, in that narration is completely through the perspective of a character (though with third person pronouns -- he/she)?
In that case, the perspective-limiting observation (sight lines) and the doubt would probably be preserved.
Serena's sight lines weren't good, but she thought his hands were shaking.

A deep third narration is no more certain than a first-person narration-- both are colored and perhaps distorted by the limitations, desires, and biases of the POV character.

So, short work of it:
If you don't want the reader speculating, common third is your best choice. This would be more useful in plot-driven books, where the characters' inner workings and doubts aren't that important.
If you want the reader speculating and doubting if the character POV is transparent and accurate, use first-person or deep third. That is more appropriate for character-driven books.

Examples? I'd love to start collecting some examples.
Alicia

Point of View interview

How-to Author Series – by Margie Lawson

How to Author Series Features Alicia Rasley
THE INTERVIEW:
Hello Alicia!  I’m glad you could join us today.


1.  ML:   Here’s a powerful quote from page 13 that speaks to what POV can do for your story. Could you elaborate?

POV can create tension between what the character says and what she means; between her vision and reality; between what is said and what is interpreted.

AR:  To effectively use POV, authors have to believe in the inner life, that we are not transparent beings, that our inside can be different from (and affect) our outside.  If you believe that, then you can have the POV character (for example) say something and then mentally translate it:
"Of course I'd love to babysit little Sadie!" she said, smiling so hard her teeth ached.  She had to get this account, and if it took installing little Sadie in front of a Little Mermaid marathon, she'd do it.
Or she can see something and believe it to be something the reader knows isn't real, like:
It was a lovely lunch, Shirley thought, leaving her customary 10% tip on the table. She rose, then hesitated.  The waitress was so efficient, taking back that cold gazpacho soup and returning with it steaming the way it ought to be.  Just this once, Shirley decided to leave a huge tip. She added a quarter to the pile of dimes by her coffee cup, just hoping that her generosity didn't make the waitress too conceited.
(I used to be a waitress, and 1) gazpacho is supposed to be cold, and 2) a quarter added to 10% isn't going to corrupt the waitress. )
Going into a character's point of view offers readers a terrific experience of being someone else for a little while--- but they never stop being themselves, with their own values and knowledge.  Writers can have fun with that separation between the character and the reader, and that sometimes results in unexpected character development.
2.  ML:  What are some examples of unintentional POV shifts that make you cringe?
AR:  Here's one that is kind of subtle:
Women! Wives, cops, didn't matter. All they did was complain. The lieutenant nodded at the patrolwoman and said, "Thank you for bringing that to my attention, Officer Reilly. You may go."
Judy charged out of his office, slammed the door closed, and stormed down the hall.
This is supposed to be in the lieutenant's POV, but there's a switch, probably inadvertent.  But the reader starts out in the lieutenant's head—we get his thoughts (Women!), so we know we're in his head. Notice that he calls her "the patrolwoman," and "Officer Reilly." We can assume that this is a rather formal relationship.  But then in the next line, we have "Judy" (her name for herself, not his) leaving the office and slamming the door.  Then she goes on down the hall. The lieutenant couldn't see that (she closed the door).
If you were sitting in the lieutenant behind the desk, what would your perspective be?
The officer muttered something under her breath, and turned on her heel. She stormed out, and the door slammed behind her.  He sighed and went back to his paperwork.
That's clearly still in his point of view, right? He sees her leave. He sees the door slam "behind her". He sighs.  That's what you have to do to stay in the character POV—stay in the character!
The kind of inadvertent shifts are the ones that make me cringe, because I can tell the writer didn't mean for that to happen.
3.  ML:  In your chapter on levels of POV, you address how adding some narrative distance can make characters and their emotions more appealing. Could you share an example?
AR:  I wrote a scene where the heroine was humiliated and ostracized because of something she'd done. When I read it over, I realized that her POV made her sound self-pitying—not because she was, just because the reader might interpret it that way because it's just too intimate, too raw, to be in the head of someone suffering like that. So I rewrote the scene from the hero's POV, as he saw this happening.  From his perspective, she was brave and forbearing. We got her pain—he could see she was hurting. But we also got his—he was suffering vicariously for her. 
So that taught me that the reader doesn't need to be inside the character to identify. The cues of body language, vocal expression, and speech patterns can give the reader a sense of the emotion—and bypass that "automatic shutdown" that is our common defense mechanism against too much emotion.
4.  ML: Given that your entire book is about POV and you’re limited to a short answer here, what gems would you like to share about the advantages and disadvantages of the different levels of POV?
AR:  I would just say that different spots in the scene might benefit from dfferent levels of penetration.  It's all about getting that part of the passage in the right level. For example, readers shake their heads when they read a passage where the character is in intense danger, running from the bad guy, and as she pelters down the ramp in the parking garage, hearing him behind her, she's thinking about her father and how aloof he always was and how she never knew if he really loved her—that is, action scenes are usually best done in the action level!  We can't really believe she's in great danger and running hard if she has time and mental space to relive her childhood miseries.
Always consider the reader. The whole point of point of view is to give the reader a particular experience of the story… and that rests on your ability to create a believable experience in the character's viewpoint.
5.  ML:  You recommend the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. What can writers learn about POV from reading her forensic procedurals?
AR:  The clinical, almost objective description makes truly horrific material (autopsies) bearable, even interesting.  Whenever you're dealing with stuff that might make the reader shut down or close her eyes, whether it's because it's so emotional or so gross, consider that distance imparts tolerance. We can read almost anything if it's presented right.  
6.  ML:  Last question!  How do you recommend writers handle secrets when they are in the POV character’s head?
AR: It all depends on whether you want the reader to know, and how certainly you want her to know. That is, if Mike has a secret and you want the reader to know what the secret is, go ahead and have him think it in some plausible way at an appropriate time. But if all you want is for the reader to suspect that Mike has a secret, but not what it is, think about ways you can hint.  For example, Mike can start to think about The Secret, but then cut himself off and force himself to think about something else. Then the reader will know there's something he's refusing to think about.  Again, it's all about giving the reader the right experience.
I think writers should always be readers first and foremost. We should read a lot and notice things like, oh, "He's got a secret! I just know it! I wonder what it is!" And we should stop them and analyze what the author did to create that impression. We have 3000 years of story in the Western tradition, and all the lessons we need are there. :)

POV guiding

I'm grading lit exams, and came across this part of a selection from Middlemarch. Caveats: Eliot was writing in the 19th Century, where deep POV was done in first person, and third person POV was usually used for omniscience (or "omnivorous," as one writer called it :)

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively. "It is too late to do that. The inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it will make no difference: it is a temporary affair. I insist upon it that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady disobedience. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps it was not possible for Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly to her taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as he could, and her tears cut him to the heart. He could not speak again immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her at the mantel-piece.


Now my question is (and it makes a lot of difference, to judge by the essays I got about this)-- that second paragraph: Whose POV?  This is the 19th century, and omniscient and first-person were sort of the only options, and this isn't first. (This is a much more fun novel than I remember from college, btw.) So it's probably omniscient, dipping into each of the spouses' minds as needed.

Well, this is the 21st century, and POV tends to be more tight.  (I still like omniscient. But I write deep in one character's POV.)  So look at those two highlighted sentences.  They're the problematic ones, so aware they seem to be in the characters, but not solely in either. My students, trained in 21st century reading patterns, tried to ascribe the POV to one or the other, and I thought that whether they thought Rosamond was a princess-bitch or Lydgate was a smarmy scoundrel kind of depended on which they thought was in POV.

Anyway, how would you rewrite that if you wanted:
1. Omniscient
2. Hers
3. His
?

That is, if you were modernizing this paragraph to make it in one POV, how would you change the wording to reflect that? Anyone want to try?

Alicia

Wisdom From Our Theater Friends

Sometimes I read books in fields tangential to publishing to see if I can find a new way to look at a writing issue. Currently I'm re-reading Sonia Moore's "The Stanislavski System" about acting technique because I find acting books contain useful tidbits about character. (And also because I was tearing my house apart looking for my Billy Mernit book, "Writing the Romantic Comedy," with the side effect that I now have a huge pile of rediscovered books I want to re-read.) (And yes, I found the Mernit, mis-shelved in baffling fashion with a stack of old chick lit novels. Go figure.) (Though, now that I think about it, that kind of makes sense.)

Anyway. Re-reading Moore, and ran across this paragraph which I thought I'd share. Not about character craft, but about audience relationship with the performance. From the chapter Elements of an Action, section Communion--

To make the meaning and logic of his actions understandable to the spectators, an actor must communicate with them indirectly, through his communion with other actors. ...[W]hen an actor has direct contact with spectators he becomes merely a reporter instead of a live character. This relationship disrupts the truth of the performance and distracts the audience from the play itself. An honest, unbroken communion between actors, on the other hand, holds the spectators' attention and makes them part of what takes place on stage.

This reminds me of a drawing we used in one of my dramatic writing classes in college. Character One and Character Two interact with each other, and the audience witnesses the interaction:













Please forgive my insanely crappy drawing skills. But despite my inARTiculateness *har*har* this drawing might make clear what we're talking about. It's about how a scene is perceived and how to control the attention of the viewer.

When we translate this concept to fiction, we're basically talking about point of view and the old "show, don't tell" rule. In other words, whether in theater or on the page, when characters interact directly with each other, the action is more interesting. When the characters interpret the action directly TO the reader-- whether through omniscient narration, exposition, or other methods -- it's less compelling.

Why is this? Dunno. Maybe we're just hardwired for it. I mean, what's more likely to capture your attention -- film footage of a train colliding into a car, or a guy with a mic talking about it? Direct experience just feels more compelling, even if we're merely witnessing that direct experience from a safe distance. I mean, nobody actually wants to be driving that car. But the film footage of the wreck itself might go viral.

So, how do we work this to our advantage in fiction? Use some of the things we've spent over three years exploring on this blog.

• Pay attention to how your narrative is weighted. Check the proportions of your narrative elements. You do this by looking at how much space they take on the page. In most ordinary commercial fiction scenes, there should be lots of action and dialogue, with the next biggest chunk coming from interior monologue, and then description. Exposition should be minimal, regardless of the form of the exposition. (NOTE: I'm not telling you to totally eliminate your exposition. Just keep it lighter than the other elements.)
  
• Make sure your interior monologue is true interior monologue, that is, not summary that tries to pretend to be interior monologue. Example: She wondered if he would like an apple pie for their picnic is not true IM. Would he like an apple pie for their picnic? is IM. She wondered is a thought tag that interprets the nature of the thought for the reader, so it removes us from the direct experience of her interior monologue. (NOTE: I'm not telling you that all thought tags are per se evil. But use them deliberately and sparingly for effect. Okay, Alicia? lol)
  
• Use gestures in place of mood words to make the experience more vivid. (Show, don't tell.) Example: She felt angry at him is less effective than She threw her napkin at him.
  

Do you see how these things sort of interrelate? They all have to do, more or less, with narrative distance between the reader and the characters. The default should be something closer, rather than farther, but the main thing is to become conscious of the ways you can push the reader back just by simple word choices and narrative choices.

Theresa

Your Comments About Aggregate Action

A few days ago, I introduced the topic of aggregate action -- my term for when groups of individuals are presented as behaving in identical ways, much like a chorus line on the page. Sometimes this can be a useful shorthand, but it also contains many traps. Today I thought we might take a closer look at some of your comments to that post and see if we might come up with a list of rules or guidelines for aggregate action. But first, let's review the example we worked from:

The girls huddled together along one side of the gym and pretended not to watch the boys along the other wall. The boys were bolder. Their shoulders squared up to the girls in a forthright manner, though most of them also slouched enough to prevent direct eye contact. Feet shuffled. A shower of giggles erupted from one cluster of girls, followed by a squeal, a high-pitched protest, and more giggling. The boys seemed to take courage from this and bumped each other as they milled about in the casual manner of athletes in a huddle. Any moment now, they would begin pairing off.

So let's begin with this comment from Jordan:

IMO, at least the shoulder squaring needs to be individualized. I found it confusing to read that they squared their shoulders—oh, no, wait, they slouched. Then I'm off wondering whether you can do both.

Yes, this is one of the classic problems associated with aggregate action. Sometimes, the group does not function like a perfect chorus line. Sometimes, one guy high-kicks while the others are shuffling off to Buffalo. So from this, we can derive our first rule.


Rule The First
Action can only be presented as aggregate when all members are performing the same moves at the same time.


Green Knight suggests one possible fix for this imperfect dance routine:

I would alter 'also slouching' to 'alternatively squaring and slouching' - they try to pretend they're bold whenever they are watched, but they're really not certain.

By changing the way the action is described, Green Knight has resynchronized the group. This is a good trick. Describe the actions as sequential rather than simultaneous, and you're much less likely to drive the characters into mass contortions.

On a related note, Jewel Tones said,

High pitched protest (that one lost me, so I say it needs an identifier)

Good eye, JT. The protest is uttered by a single person, not by the group. Thus it really can't be presented as an aggregate action, and here it's attached to a group of girls rather than to a single protester. (Ditto for the squeal which precedes it.)

The flipside to this is that we have probably all encountered this sort of group behavior from teenagers. The girls huddle, and any one of them could be responsible for the ear-shattering noises emitting from the group. I think this kind of aggregation might work better if viewed through the prism of a pov character's perspective -- a harried mom trying to dash through the mall, perhaps, whose progress is arrested by Those Girls. She wouldn't care, necessarily, which of Those Girls makes which noise. She views the pack as an obstacle, a collective barrier to her progress.

But I think the reason it works, then, is that the pov is clear. Which brings us to this comment from Patty Jansen,

It depends on how deep your POV is. This example reads to me as almost-omniscient, shallow POV. Alternatively, it reads as an observation by a third person who is watching while all this happens.

Yes. Exactly. This type of writing is necessarily omniscient because it's a form of narrative summary -- the mechanics of this are a bit complicated, but just trust me when I tell you that narrative summary veers sharply to objective, rather than subjective, on the pov sliding scale. Even when we're in a narrator-character's subjective pov, when we shift into NS, that pov will shallow out.


Rule The Second
Aggregate actions are almost always presented as narrative summary, which can change the pov.


This means you lose a degree of intimacy between the reader and the character whenever you rely on aggregate actions. There are times this works without a hitch. When are those times? The answer lies in comments from PatriciaW and Alicia.

PatriciaW: The entire thing read fine to me, as a setup for individualized action to come.

Alicia: I was okay until the giggle from the "cluster". I felt like by this time, we should be narrowing in on the main character.

Both of these comments seem to rely on the same assumption, that this passage would lead us from the omni into the specific pov of a particular character. This is a good assumption, actually, and not just because of the way the example was framed. It's also because of a nifty pov trick that Alicia discusses in her pov book. (You've all read this book, yes? You should. It's really the only book that tackles pov from the writer's perspective rather than from the scholar's or analyst's.)

In the beginning of a new scene, we have some leeway to play with depth of perspective in pov. We can start more objectively and, as Alicia puts it, drop the reader down gradually into a deeper subjective pov. This means that aggregate action, which is naturally more objective anyway, will fit better into the start of a scene.


Rule The Third
Aggregate action, if used at all, is probably best used in the first lines of a scene.


Which, of course, is because we can occasionally fool the reader into not noticing that we're wandering out of limited pov at that particular point in a scene. It's best not to do this too often as it will begin to take on the appearance of an affectation, unless you're writing highly stylized, mannered prose, in which case, rock on.

But even then, keep in mind one of the pitfalls of aggregate action, hinted at in the comment from Cathy in AK,

If we're in Kendra's POV, and she is neither the squealer nor the protester, I'd say attribute those to single characters.

This type of writing doesn't really specify the relationship of the individual to the group, right? IOW, we don't know if Kendra is the squealer or the protestor or even if she's inside the huddle. And we won't know until the pov deepens again. And even then, the reader will have already made some assumptions about where Kendra is, which means that the eventual clarification of this point might break the fictive reality the reader established independently. This is not good.

Yes, there are ways to write around this orientation/reorientation problem, but why bother? Why not just avoid the problem in the first place? How do we do that? By keeping the introductory aggregate action short, and by getting into character pov before the reader can draw too detailed a scene.


Rule the Fourth
Keep it tight, and get into subjective character viewpoint quickly thereafter.


When you do that, you can start getting into the details recommended by Dominique,

Since you mentioned that the main character is worried about her position in the pack order, I think you'd want to point out the two leaders.... we might want to individualize an action related to the guy she'd like to pick her. Something to highlight characters of importance in her life.

Beautiful. Yes. The essence of drama is in the relationships between the characters. If all the characters are mashed together in an aggregate, then the relationships between them are blurred or abandoned altogether. But by separating the characters and showing their relationship with and their importance to the pov character, now we have hints of tension and drama. Kendra doesn't watch that boy because he's in that group. She watches him because he's the one she likes. That. Specific. Boy. But he's not looking at her ... or is he? (See how easily the tension loads into that precise moment now?)

Anyway. All of this is can be boiled down to a paired principle: Stick with the specific, which is where the drama lies, and if you use aggregate action, hit it light and fast and then get on with the scene.

Theresa

Setting as tone reinforcement

I'm reading an older thriller, Heartsick by Chelsea Cain, and came across this example of how you can use a precisely chosen setting detail to reinforce or punctuate or underline the action of the scene or the emotion-- and yet subtly (not the thunder crashing just when she hears bad news, though with the storms we've been having daily in the Midwest, that's actually perfectly plausible).

Susan is a reporter who thinks she's been handed the assignment of a lifetime, to "shadow" a homicide detective as he investigates a serial murder. But he has a dark past-- he himself was the victim of a serial murderer, who took him captive, kept him alive, and tortured him for days. Susan makes the mistake of asking why Gretchen (the murderer) had shown him "mercy":

"If Gretchen had been feeling charitable, she would have let me die," he said matter-of-factly. "I wanted to die, I was ready to die. If she had put a scalpel in my hand, I would have stabbed myself in the neck and happily bled to death right there in her basement. She didn't do me any favors by not killing me. Gretchen enjoys people's pain. And she just found a way to prolong my pain and her pleasure. Believe me, it was the cruellest thing she could have done to me. If she could have thought of something crueler, she would have done it. Gretchen doesn't show people mercy."

The heat kicked in. There was a rumble, then the slow blow of hot air from a vent that Susan couldn't see. Her mouth felt dry. The kid upstairs was still running. If Susan had lived there, she would have killed that kid by now.


Notice how the setting, which had been presented as boring earlier (nondescript apartment in the city, March in the Northwest, so cool and rainy), is made a little threatening here by the juxtaposition with his "matter-of-fact" assessment of what happened to him, and by the violent connotations of the words describing the action of the furnace -- "kicked in," "rumble," "slow blow." There's also the reporter's sensory reaction-- she can't see the vent (unseen threat) and her mouth goes dry, plausible because of the "heat" but also because of what he has said. And then the kicker, that his talking about this unrepentant sadist makes her thoughts become violent too, that (though she doesn't mean it) she would "kill" this running child in the apartment above. That is, the setting detail isn't just applied onto the emotion/action of the passage, but becomes part of it, manifesting within her a change because of what she's experiencing.

Too often I read passages where the setting is just shoved in there. I get the sense that the writer has ticked off something on a checklist: "Mention the setting. Check." And the result is a kind of interruption of the narrative, really just a moment of exposition, instead of being part of the narrative. And it feels like that. Check. Setting applied.

But if you think of the scene as a unit of conflict and action and emotion, then everything in the scene should be integrated to create at every moment precisely the right experience for the reader. And that's not going to happen with a pro forma "setting application" every few paragraphs. And it's not going to happen with a slapdash and generic description, a "he ran his hand through his hair" sort of cliche. The POV is all-important. What is happening in the scene is affecting how the POV character feels, and that affects what the character perceives and --this is key-- how she presents and describes what she perceives. So Susan above feels the terror and horror of realizing what he went through, and she thinks of the ordinary (the furnace coming on) as startling and threatening, and she uses "punchy" words to describe that threatening feeling.

But most important, the confluence of the action of the scene and the setting leads to a moment of reaction, of change, where she herself is influenced by the violence she's been hearing about, and her thoughts become grim and vengeful, and this is even more striking, because she isn't thinking, "I'd like to kill that evil Gretchen," but rather, "I'd like to kill that innocent child whose crime is running around."

That's good writing, and good scene design. Just another example of how we should always challenge ourselves to go beyond the generic, to get inside the scene and do our best to give the reader the authentic experience of being part of it.

Another in our long-running series on: "Why Details Matter." :)

Alicia

POV= Viewpoint

A student of mine just emailed and said, to wit, "I get it now! Point of view is viewpoint!"

She didn't meant this as a tautology. She meant that the narration (point of view) should reflect the viewpoint (the character's understanding and perception).

Yes!

That is, POV is not just about voice and word choice and proximity (Sam is there to participate in the action of the scene, so Sam's the POV character). POV is about viewpoint, about how this particular person views the world and responds to it and other people. That is, POV means that Sam's narration of this scene (even if not in DEEP POV) is going to be different than anyone else's.

I'd like to take this a step further. You can tell FROM THE NARRATION more about the POV character's character.

There are many aspects of character that affect how this person will narrate POV passages. And if you get to know your character through and through, you probably just FEEL that he would not trust fate and that he likes to find problems to solve. But let me deal with one pretty universal aspect that I think profoundly affects the way a person will experience the world, and especially how he experiences new places and new situations.

That's social class, or more narrowly, outsider status. Now I know this is not something we deal with a lot in the United States, but I think that even now, when just about anyone can go to college and move from the laboring class to the professional class in a few years, class affects just about all of us. And it most specifically affects how we view the world: viewpoint. We aren't anywhere near as class-ridden as the Brits, I know. (I once had breakfast with a lovely couple from Bristol, and I asked how they determined someone's class, and she said matter-of-factly, "Well, I'm lower-middle, not working class, because my father worked in an office, but my husband is from a much posher family. His stepfather is a bishop's son!" I mean, that is gradation the likes of which we don't have... his stepfather is a bishop's son. I guess there's a specific rank for that. :) But it still matters, as anyone who has married out of class can attest. (I once had a workshop attendee say that this was a major source or marital conflict: "I think if you're in a family, you lend money when a relative has lost his job, and don't expect to get paid back. But my husband is straight from the middle class, and he thinks that we should all be self-reliant no matter what.")

Anyway, recently I came across how class might affect POV in a couple non-fiction books about the recent economic crisis. (I'm still trying to understand what happened, and it's really hard, because I can't even balance my checkbook... which I guess makes me one with Merrill-Lynch, huh?) One was a first-person account of a financial "quant" who figured out early that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. The other was a third-person (reportorial) account of the analysts who shorted the subprime mortgage mess, thereby setting themselves in opposition to the "establishment".

Actually, there's a third. Another book is a theoretically objective narration but it's almost entirely told from the perspective of the bankers (which tends to make it difficult to understand, as they seem to have no insight into the problems, which is telling, isn't it?). So to oversimplify:

Book 1: POV of outsider (quants) = skeptical, suspicious, defiant
Book 2: POV of opponents (short-sellers) = triumphant, opportunistic
Book 3: POV of insiders (bankers) = patronizing, cliquish

Now the "status" of the narrators dictates a lot, like the subject they choose and the approach. For example, the "quant" who broke the Madoff scheme presents this as a detective story with himself as the hero, and he plays up his heroism, his military service, the presumed threat to his life and the gun ownership that resulted. Very macho attitude.

But underlying this is the defensiveness that comes from his immigrant family's sense of being an outsider in their own land. I think also that he had that working-class suspicion of management coupled with the small business-owner's suspicion of labor. That is, he suspected just about everyone. He had no illusions about the loyalty or trustworthiness of anyone around him.

This informed his narration-- there was a lot of defensiveness, and one rather sad passage where he mentions proudly that he got to hobnob with the aristos (including, apparently, though he's cagey about this, Prince Charles)-- "But they would have lunch with me, but they never invited me to dinner." The class resentment was clear on every page. But understand, that wasn't just reflected in his attitude and what he chose to select and highlight, but also in the very story and his placement as the detective. Only an outsider could have suspected the man who was above suspicion. So his "viewpoint" of skepticism is as important as his "point of view" as the detective. He took an outsider's viewpoint, one informed not just with skepticism but with downright suspicion.

The short-sellers are also outsiders, but the two of them are really more pranksters. They are suburban guys, comfortable but bored with their middle-class situation. So they don't have any need to prove themselves (Gramps already did that part) or be a moral force. They're just having fun tweaking the system. This is all a game, one which results in amassing a huge fortune for them, but what really counts is they got to exploit the arcane rules and rituals to do it. There's a lot of rather adolescent chortling about how "two guys with an office in Mom's garage" beat the system. In fact, they resemble no one so much as the merry tricksters named Steve (Wozniak and Jobs) who started Apple in a garage. You get the idea that if they hadn't made a few hundred million shorting subprime CDOS, they'd be starting a video-game cheat website, or selling hacked DVDs on eBay-- anything to avoid getting a real job. :)

The insiders' (bankers') point of view is focused on a sort of "who's who, who's up/who's down" narration of events, about upper-class connections (these two went to Yale together, this banker bought that banker's flat, both of these two own Mercedes) and what will seem to most of us pretty trivial, like their titles and their hobbies. But that's viewpoint too, isn't it? I spent the whole book annoyed because I kept thinking, "They have no clue about context! They are clueless about the cause and effect of their actions!" But the bankers aren't really interested in explaining what went wrong (indeed, there's no indication they have any idea), or what it all means. They are, however, really interested in establishing who is superior to whom, and proving that they didn't do anything that everyone else didn't do. That is, while the quant and the shorts are always stressing their non-conformity, the bankers always stress their conformity. It's okay to make a mistake as long as everyone else makes it too.

So when I think of "markers of viewpoint"-- some signal event that shows this person's viewpoint-- here's what I remember:
The quant wants to prove that he's right and the only one in the world who's right, but he wants the world to eventually acknowledge this. So instead of taking the information he's acquired (as the shorts do) and using it to make money, he keeps sending reports to the Feds and the regulators and the media (and getting ignored, but still trying). He wants to be acknowledged as smarter than anyone else. So one event that shows this is his meticulous preparation of a report and presentation of this to the SEC, and his fury and despair when it's ignored.

The shorts, however, have no defensiveness, and they don't have a lot of fear either. So a signal event that shows their viewpoint is when they crash a convention of bankers even though (of course) they haven't paid for admission. They go undercover, eavesdropping to learn more about the business they hope to short. Their approach is lighthearted, almost playful. They don't have a big moral quandary about deceiving people, or a sense (as the quant has) that there's an ethical responsibility to bring the crooks to justice. And they don't care about being recognized as the smartest guys in the room. It's enough to win the game-- they don't need the laurel crowns and gold medals of victory.

This is not a moral situation for the bankers either-- unless the moral of the story is "them that has sure expects to get". These bankers have no shame, shall we say. Maybe you or I would, if we'd screwed up enough to bring the world's economy to its knees, if our mistakes showed that we are really bad at our jobs, if the problems we caused show our ideology to be flawed, well, we might shrink away and decide to work in a homeless shelter as expiation of our guilt. But that's because we can feel guilt. :) These bankers just feel... entitled, to all they have and more. So a signal event that shows that viewpoint is when one bank CEO pretty much runs a century-old bank into the ground, and is forced to merge his company with a more solvent bank. So the CEO of the acquiring bank can't bring himself to fire the guy, appointing him co-president of the new company with another executive. The banker isn't grateful to have a job and avoid jailtime-- he's offended at the idea that he should share "his" title. That sort of unremitting arrogance is infuriating, of course, but it's what makes him successful-- well, rich, anyway. He feels entitled.

So... the viewpoints here lead to very different narrations though the events are similar. The quant's narration has a defensive, meticulous assemblage of evidence, as if he's anticipating resistance and argument. The shorts' narration is quirky, focusing on the humorous aspects of this set of events. The bankers' narration is plodding, without the context that would result from self-reflection, but with lots and lots of name-dropping as if to prove that who you know is more important than what you know.

Whenever you're wondering what point of view means for your story, imagine that this set of events was being narrated by different parties involved-- the antagonist, the outsider, the insider, the trickster. What events would each select? What tone would each take? How much and what sort of detail would each provide? And especially how would each's viewpoint-- the point from which he/she views the events-- affect the point of view?

Have you ever read "same event/different POV" stories? I'm thinking of that clever children's story, the Three Little Pigs told from the wolf's POV.

Alicia

POV Glitch

I had not noticed it when she first arrived: the way she leaned too far toward him as he kissed her hand, the hint of surprised recognition in his eyes.
~ A Fatal Waltz, Tasha Alexander

That's the first line of the third book in the Lady Emily Ashton series. I've already read the first two, so I already know we're dealing with a competent, controlled author. Even the best can run into these small pov snags, though.

What's the problem with this sentence? We're dealing with a first-person narrative. This means the narrative should be confined to what is within the scope of the viewpoint of the narrator. So, if the narrator didn't notice these things, how can she report them? She can't, not without breaking the pov. Or, if she did notice them, why does she say she didn't?

Can anyone see a way to read this sentence so that it doesn't break pov? There is a way, but you would need to spell it out for the reader in the next sentence or sentences, I think. In the alternative, there might be a way to tweak that sentence so that the meaning is slightly different but the pov remains pure. Anyone care to take a stab at this as an exercise?

Theresa

Okay, Green Knight, if you want to talk about emotion.... Do we have to? I'm scared of emotion! It might destroy me!

Just kidding. We can talk about emotion. I mean, I'm a romance writer. Emotion is my raisin detra. :)

The problem was--
I posted a paragraph, last time, which had a first-person narrator. The purpose of the paragraph (which wasn't a good paragraph, I must say) was to provide single clauses that I wanted to show in combination and transition. Usually, when we provide examples, to keep from copying the writer's paragraph that inspired this thought, we make something up pointed to whatever we want to explore. In this case, the paragraph was meant to show how sentence combination and transition can make the passage more meaningful. Here 'tis, all halfway fixed up:
As Helena sailed into the ballroom, she looked around the crowd. She came to me and bestowed (notice we lose one of those many "she" words, good) an air kiss on me. I started to say something seductive and witty, but she (just? had already? was already moving?) moved on to another party-goer. When she kissed him the same way, I felt rejected and cheated. (Or I might say, Then she kissed him the same way, and I felt rejected and cheated. Not sure.)


However, it never did, even combined and transitioned, achieve meaningfulness, as Green Knight pointed out! It wasn't a very good paragraph, and no one need worry that I was planning on putting that in a book. :)

But every moment is a learnable moment, so let's get into what GK was talking about, that the paragraph did more telling than showing in regards to the narrator's emotion. GK:
I would, for instance, _show_ him starting a phrase, and the telling phrase I felt rejected and cheated. also needs to be replaced IMHO - what, *exactly* is his reaction.


So let's discuss this. This passage is in first-person narration, so the character is narrating himself what's going on. I think what's going on inside him can also be narrated, and that different people have different level of skill at interpreting and naming their own emotions. So I have no problem with him saying he felt resentful and cheated. (In fact, I think "feeling cheated" is an emotion even the least adept can recognize. Entire political movements have been founded on that one. :)

But let's say this is NOT someone who is good at naming his emotions, or recognizing what he's feeling maybe. Let's say you're going to write this event (Helena coming into the room, kissing him, moving on to someone else) from his first-person POV.

What would you do? Some thoughts-- please join in, and GK, maybe an example of what you'd do?

1. I'm writing this to mean that, hmm, he feels that he's special to Helena, and the equal-opportunity smooch there shows he's not. But... does HE interpret it that way? You could have a line that shows he's clueless or blithe instead of "resentful and cheated"-- "She was the nicest person, giving up her own pleasure at being with me to welcome the others." That is, if he doesn't get it, how would you show that this happened, but he didn't understand what it meant?

2. GK, were you suggesting some action or expression that the reader could interpret even if the character just narrates it? Well, how could we do that? How can we have the narrator narrate his own action or expression or something that tells the reader he's feeling resentful and cheated without actually saying the emotion words? "I punched my fist into my other hand and muttered to myself?" Well, you can do better. But it would be an outside representation of the emotion you want?

3. I'm writing him to be pretty skilled at naming his own feelings. But what if he's not? What if he feels something but doesn't (or doesn't want to) know what it is? How would you show that in his POV? Maybe something like, "My stomach lurched. Must be the oyster appetizer I just ate." How would you show that he feels something but misinterprets it? And how would you show that the feeling is in response to Helena's diss, or would you want to? Is proximity enough-- Helena does this, and immediately his stomach lurches? Is the sequence there enough to show that the two are related, even (especially) if he doesn't realize it?

4. What if he's naming this as resentment, but that's not what it is? What if deep down he realizes that she's going to leave him, or that she knows that he's the murderer, or something secret? And he doesn't want to know that, or he doesn't want to narrate that (first-person narrators are generally aware of their audience, and might "play" to them, or play them for a fool, I guess). So how can you show him identifying and naming emotion A (fear, dread) as emotion B (resentment)-- how will that differ from his straightforward naming of resentment? He says, "I felt resentful and cheated." What would he say if he were consciously or unconsciously covering up another emotion?

Examples, and you don't actually have to stick to Helena's sad-sack fella, as I know it doesn't have the actual meaningfulness it might have if we really wanted to explore POV and emotion. :)

Alicia

This was posted on J's site, but I need to record it

Let me start by saying that there are no absolutes in fiction-writing. Deep POV is now trendy, and it’s appropriate for many types of stories, and also for our highly interactive culture. However, it’s only one of several POV approaches, and it’s not right for every genre, every book, and every author.

First, I should quickly define deep point of view. (I go into this in much greater depth in my book, The Power of Point of View.) Deep POV is a variety of single POV, where an entire scene (or chapter, or book) is told through the perspective (or point of view) of one of the characters in the scene. Deep POV takes this further—the narration is done not just in the perspective but in the voice of the POV character. It’s meant to establish almost no distance between the narrator and the reader—rather like a first-person feel with third-person pronouns. Here’s an example:

Allie thought Saturday was never going to come. All day Friday she kept waiting for school to be over, but it was taking forever. Every time Allie looked at the watch her daddy had bought her for Christmas, the numbers had barely changed at all. She thought maybe the battery wasn’t so good anymore, but if it wasn’t, then the clocks at school weren’t working either, ’cause when her teacher dismissed them for lunch, it was the exact time on Allie’s watch that it was s’posed to be. (Tara Taylor Quinn, Jacob’s Girls.)

The character is a child, and so the deep-POV narration uses the diction and sentence construction of a child. This lets the reader get an intense experience of who this person is and how she thinks.

Very useful. However, there are two points I want to make:

1. Most writers who think they’re doing deep POV aren’t. They are doing single POV and confining the narration to one character’s thoughts and perceptions (and that’s FINE). But they are writing more in their own voice. There’s nothing wrong with that (single POV is by far the most common and accepted POV approach). What’s wrong is the writers who say they’re doing deep POV because they’re following a list of rules they got from somewhere, like “In deep POV, you never use the character’s name, and you never use ’she thought’.” Deep POV is not about rules. It’s about being so into the character that you feel with her body, think with her mind, and write with her voice. It’s writing from inside the character, and those rules imposed from the outside? Worse than useless.
2. Deep POV is not right for every story.

And since (2) is what I’m supposed to address in this blog post, let me get going on that.

A) Deep POV is not right for every author.

I’ve concluded that most of us have a natural POV approach, one that feels comfortable and right for us. And we can learn to write in other POVs, but when we’re writing most naturally, we’re probably going to write in our natural POV, and that’s going to sound most authentic. I’m not saying you should only write in your natural POV (my natural is single-third POV, but I’ve been writing a lot of first-person and enjoying it). But you shouldn’t feel you have to force yourself to write deep POV if every word feels wrong.

Why might it feel wrong? Well, if you’ve spent a lot of time working on your own voice, making it beautiful and evocative, you might not want to cede control of your prose style to a character. I’m an English teacher, and I spend way too much time every semester helping students distinguish sentences from fragments and comma splices. Every time I write in deep POV, I find myself echoing the character (as I should in deep POV), who is invariably uncaring of grammar, not to mention easily distracted. So half his sentences are actually fragments, and half of hers are run-ons. That might be quite effective. But what if one of my students would brandish a highlighted page of Tony’s POV and yell, “Fragments all over the place!” (Well, actually, if one of my students could so effectively identify fragments, I’d give him an A right away. )

Many writers are proud of their voice, and rightly so. You can be poetic and evocative in deep POV—even an illiterate character can think in lovely if broken prose—but it’s not, at base, YOUR voice (if it is your voice, you’re not really doing deep POV). It’s not supposed to be. And if you want to write in your own voice, if you think the reader will get more from “hearing” you, well, why not? The whole point of writing is to create an experience for the reader, and creating an interesting or lovely experience is a valid aim.

POV approach also connects to your worldview. Now no one else agrees with me on this, so take it with a grain of salt. But I think your natural POV might reflect your understanding of reality. Hey, give me a chance! Let’s say that you think that there is an absolute reality, but it’s not necessarily knowable by most of us. That worldview is the one expressed by omniscient POV—the “godlike narrator” knows everything, within and without the characters, and knows more than all the characters together.

But maybe you think there’s no absolute reality, and that the only way to get close to knowing reality is to juxtapose the accounts of several people, a collage-like effect that is very similar to multiple POV. Now we single-POV types, we don’t know if there’s an absolute reality, and in fact, we don’t much care. We’re mostly concerned with the inner reality of characters, what they think and notice and value.

Well, you know, if you have one of those worldviews, your story choice and your POV choice will probably reflect that. And that’s good. It takes all kinds. That’s why we have several POV approaches, several genres, and many writers. There isn’t just one worldview out there, so there shouldn’t be only one POV approach. And you should at least start with the one that lets you express your worldview and voice, and—you didn’t really think I was going to say, “Anything goes,” did you?—refine it and reinvent it and revise it so that your writing is the best possible proof that your POV approach is right.

No, you won’t get it right the first time. Yes, you still must revise to make sure that your reader will experience what you want her to experience. But making your story and voice work well is plenty hard enough without adding in the pain of trying to write in a way that doesn’t feel right to you.

B) Deep POV is not right for every genre.

Most genres and sub-genres have their own preferred POV approach. Private-eye stories are usually in first-person. Mysteries are usually in some form of omniscient. Romances are usually in single-third POV. General (mainstream) fiction is often in either multiple or first person. The preferred POV reflects something about how the genre works—the mystery is about the mystery, not particularly about the character of the sleuth, so omniscient works well (as it does in many plot-driven stories).

Private-eye novels, on the other hand, are indeed about the character of the detective (and the detective’s voice), so that snarky first-person narration allows that. The genres evolved a preferred POV approach because that approach usually (never say always ) allows writers to create the experience for the reader which is desired in that genre (chills and fear in the thriller, thoughtfulness in the mystery, etc.).

You are likely to be drawn to the POV approach and/or the genre which feel right to you, which explore the themes and issues that are most important to you. So trust tradition. You can innovate if you understand WHY the horror novel is usually in single POV or sf/f is often in omniscient. The preferred POV approach usually helps create the desired experiences of that genre. So that’s a good place to start. And for most genres, deep POV is not the default (third person, at least—first-person can be pretty deep too).

C) Deep POV is not right for many stories.

Many stories would be pretty much unwriteable in deep POV. Plot-driven books, where information must be conveyed which the main character doesn’t have and action must be shown that the main character doesn’t witness, are usually told in a form of omniscient POV. Sweeping epics where worldbuilding or setting description are essential are better from omniscient too. Books where you are using an unreliable narrator are better from first-person.

Even tightly-focused character books can often be better-handled in a single-third person where your voice dominates. Dialogue-heavy books often benefit from the contrast of the conversational quality of the dialogue and the more formal quality of an omniscient or third-person narration. Stories with several major characters and a fast pace will often sound more coherent with multiple point of view. Comedy, which relies so much on the author voice, is usually in an omniscient ironic viewpoint.

That is, never feel pressured to write deep POV. It is not the only or best viewpoint approach. It’s only best if it’s right for you, the genre, and the story. Otherwise, try out the more traditional approaches and find the one that fits best.

Writing book reviews

Theresa found this site of book reviews of writing craft books from Vision magazine. Yes, there's a review of my POV book there, but that's not why I'm sharing it with you. Well, not entirely. :) I think the reviews are really helpful in choosing among different grammar books and character books and such. Check it out!
Alicia

A+ for Jami in the Comments

In our comment discussion about this morning's post (opening with dialogue), Jami writes,

Isn't the goal of the first page to invest the reader in the story so that they turn to the second page? And without a character to feel invested in, the reader won't feel a connection? So, dialogue can work, but only if it pulls the reader in and helps to form that connection? And authors should consciously consider if it's the best method for connecting the reader to the story? And not just do it because of some trend, or because it feels "immediate", or because it shows you're starting in scene and not in backstory, etc.

And I responded,

Jami, that's it exactly.

I know this is a roundabout, somewhat tortured way to make the point, but I thought if I led everyone to think it through, it might resolve the question in a more thorough way.

Your goal at the outset is to cement the reader to the characters as quickly as possible.

Starting with dialogue can slow down that process. CAN. Not MUST.

So some authors use dialogue to start because it helps them reach the goal of snatching reader interest right away. Depends on the dialogue -- how long, content, what follows it.

Another problem, from my perspective, is that we see bad dialogue openings over and over and over. Until we want to cry. Until we become convinced that they must be impossible to pull off. That belief lasts just until we see a manuscript do it right.

I bought a manuscript that starts with this line of dialogue:

"Make me a door, Four."

Grabbed me right away. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I wanted to find out. Will everyone be hooked by that line? Maybe not, but it has turned out that lots of readers have been satisfied with this line and this story.

Compare that to,

"Honey, where are my keys?"
(not all that unusual a question)

"Hi, Mom."
(ditto, and then some)

You can add a speaker attribution without furthering the basic goal.

"This city is the capital of Argentina," Alex Trebek said.

The bottom line: There are rules, and there are tools. The rule for the first page is, "Grab my attention." The tools to help you get there are conflict, character, specific detail, and so on.

I thought it was important to move this to the front page for those of you who don't get to read the comments. It's the answer to our earlier question about opening with dialogue. Yes, you can do it, but only if you do it right!

Theresa

From the Mailbag: On Starting With Dialogue

A shy reader who prefers to remain anonymous asked this question.

I don't get it. I know I've read books that start with dialogue. So why does everyone keep saying that it's bad to start with dialogue?

I'm going to answer with an example.

----

"But I like dialogue." John pushed his manuscript across the kitchen table toward Mary, almost knocking over his mug of cold coffee.

Mary shrugged and uncapped her red pen. She drew a big circle around the first line on the first page. "So do I. But I guess this is a rule. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but lots of rules don't make sense. I mean, they tell you they want your word count, but then they say it doesn't matter whether you go off the computer count or the number of pages multiplied by an average. That doesn't make sense, either."

"Word count, shmerd count. I write stories with lots of dialogue, so it's natural to start with dialogue, too." John removed the red pen from Mary's hand and recapped it. "Let's keep the dialogue."

----

Here's what we have:
* A notch over 100 words, so roughly half a page.
* Two named characters
* Clearly attributed dialogue
* A few small setting details
* A hint of conflict

Now, I have a question for you. Whose point of view are we in?

Theresa

Marks of the amateur-- starting a list

By popular demand--

This is something I'd never really contemplated before becoming an editor, but every editor I've spoken to since knew immediately what I meant. That is, "What tips you off about a submission that this isn't an experienced writer? What are the marks of the amateur?"

Now I don't mean to be insulting here. These marks don't actually mean that the writer is an amateur, rather that we see these mostly in submissions by newer or inexperienced authors, and so we sort of automatically assume.... well. What's important is to make sure you don't inadvertently trigger our "oh, amateur" assessment.

So anyway, when I was in England (very nice-- I want to live there, seriously, and I've narrowed my future home choice down to Somerset, Wiltshire, or the Yorkshire Dales), I asked my friends who had edited what they would put on this list.

Just to get started, and please add on or ask questions as we go:

1) Improper dialogue formatting. That's first for me, because, uh, if you've been reading for decades and never noticed there's a comma after the quote tag and before the quote mark, and a capital letter starting the quote, and the punctuation INSIDE the quote mark, and a new paragraph with a change in speakers, well, you are apparently not really absorbing writing conventions as you read. That will make the work of editing this rather onerous.

2) A whole lot of introductory participial phrases. One or two or three, sure. Sometimes the meaning of the sentence calls for that. But for whatever reason, whenever there are many intro participles on a first page, the submission proves to be a little amateurish in several ways. Hey, I don't make the rules. I'm just reporting.

3) Lynn said semicolons, but really, I'm okay with the occasional semicolon, even in fiction. (Theresa is sighing-- another round in the Great Semicolon Battle.) But more than one or two semicolons on the first couple pages? Trying too hard to sound mature, are you? And improperly used semicolons? Even worse. It looks like a 10-year-old wearing mascara.

4) Clumsy quote-tagging. Everyone agreed on this. I am the most lenient (yes, really-- I am a positive libertine compared with Some Sticklers Recently in Yorkshire), as I don't mind the infrequent "hissed" or "grumbled" if that's in fact what the speaker sounded like. But the default for tagging your dialogue should be "he/she said" or an action.
He adjusted the rearview mirror. "I think we're being followed."
A bunch of "creative" quote tags-- He intoned, she simpered, he ejaculated (I couldn't help it, sorry!), she expostulated, she exclaimed, he temporized-- indicates to me that the writer is more obsessed with the tags than with the actual thing being said by the speaker.

5) More than a couple homophone mistakes (then/than, here/hear, etc.). This suggests the writer is making too extensive use of spell-check rather than actually READING the sentences.

6) Starting the passage with whatever the latest trend is-- an unattributed line of dialogue, a "cute meet" and (this is important, because a good writer might do this and I'd like it) doing it badly. Yeah, those are so old they should be interred with Milton Berle, but I'm still seeing them, and what they say is, "I don't care about what makes my story unique. I want to sound like all the others."

7) Starting with odd stuff that we might put in the published edition, if we got that far, but shouldn't be in a submission (acknowledgments, dedications, a history lesson). But you know, I do like maps. Go figure.

8) Too many names in the first couple paragraphs. Who is the POV character? That's the name we need.

9) POV shifts on the first page. This presages a book full of headhopping that I really don't want to have to fix. Not to mention this must be a submitter who has not read my many posts and articles (and book!) about POV. :) (I am NOT against multiple POV-- but keep it controlled, and open in one POV and stick with it awhile, okay? So I know you know how to do that? (Again, a good writer might have a good reason for doing this, but I'll know the difference when I see it.)

What else? We'll make a list.

Alicia

Relevant Details and Viewpoint

If you have a fairly small amount of information about a secondary character, it's fairly easy to extrapolate that and build a "solid enough" presentation. We know, for example, that Dr. Cannon is a doctor. From that, we were able to extrapolate:

Money is no contraint for her, because she makes several hundred thousand a year, and she is the daughter of another prominent surgeon.
~ Wes

And from that, Wes built a character wearing an expensively tailored, elegant suit and expensive but understated jewelry, all of which are appropriate to her socioeconomic status.

Gwen took her in a different direction:

She wears no jewelry, and her shoes are flat and suitable for walking. Her hair is dirty blonde and curly, pulled back in a quick bun. Tendrils are escaping from the front. She has blue eyes with slight darkening beneath them.

Where Wes was thinking about the status benefits of the job, Gwen was thinking about its demands. Flat shoes, efficient hair, and dark shadows under the eyes are some of the things a very busy doctor might be expected to have. This is also appropriate for the character, though the result is a different character.

Green Knight started by rejecting the request to describe the character's clothing, and ended up with a character who herself rejects fashion:

I can't describe Dr. Cannon's clothing - I don't have an idea of her character yet, and I don't know what I want to invoke.... Hm. I guess she took the easy way out and went to whereever women buy upmarket fashion and allowed a personal shopper to dress her. She liked the effect and bought the ensemble - her own wardrobe being out of date, and after six months in a dusty camp without running hot and cold water, she can't be bothered to invest the time it takes to keep up with fashion talk.

Again, by focusing on a slightly different aspect of the few known character details -- Dr. Cannon is not just any doctor, but one who donates her time to MSF -- we end up with a value system for this character that has tangible evidence in the way she dresses.

I also want to point out that Dave noticed a physical attribute unique to surgeons:

Her fingers are quick and clever, fitting for a surgeon.

When we started this series of exercises, I mentioned that there are no wrong answers to any of these questions. Now we start to see why. Each writer has a unique perspective -- voice -- which will lead you to create characters in different ways. Does this character play the same role in all version of the Johnny and Drago lunch meeting? Yes. Is the character identical across the board? No. Nor would we want her to be, because your unique voice (and the unique way that voice creates characters and other story elements) is part of what makes your story special and, ultimately, marketable.

So, your viewpoint -- your voice -- will influence your natural tendencies while building a character.

But here's where things get interesting.

Your other characters' viewpoints can also influence interpretation and extrapolation of secondary characters.

You're creating the secondary character, but that secondary character will be viewed through the prism of point of view. How that prism works depends in part on your pov choices. Who is the pov character in this scene? Johnny or Drago? How intimate is the pov -- do you choose a subjective, deep, intimate form of third person, or do you prefer an objective, external, narratorless omniscient?

During the "Paging Dr. Cannon" part of this exercise, some of you touched on how Dr. Cannon would view the students.

She's easy with Johnny, understands him. She can't help responding to his charm, which he turns on full blast; but she notices that he doesn't reveal much about himself.
~ Green Knight

Johnny seems eager, perhaps over eager, but he's charming enough. Drago seems nervous, which she can sympathize with, but he's also too pushy.
~ Jami G.

They looked worried and that’s exactly how she wanted them to feel.
~ Murphy

So you're already primed to deal with the ways these characters see each other. Which leads us to our next exercise.

Take out a blank sheet of paper and divide it in half horizontally and vertically so that it is separated into four quarters. The left half side of the page is for Johnny, and the right is for Drago. The top half is for subjective (deep) pov, and the bottom is for objective (ominiscient) pov.

Like this:











Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it. First, think about your version of Dr. Cannon, the character as you want her to be. Now, in the upper left quadrant, jot down the aspects of her character that Johnny would notice. These are things that are relevant to Johnny, things that he looks for when evaluating a person. Consider also the unique way he will react to these details, and jot that down too.

Now repeat this for Drago in the upper right quadrant. Are there details which both Johnny and Drago would notice, but would interpret differently?

Now we move to the lower part of the page. In the lower left quadrant, note the things that Johnny would NOT notice because they are NOT relevant to his personal worldview. Are any of these details important for the reader's understanding of the action?

Now repeat this for Drago, lower right quadrant. He'll ignore certain things, too, and these things might be different from the things Johnny ignores.

Sometimes it's difficult to choose the viewpoint character for a particular scene. By understanding how the unique character perspective can shade the interpretation of the scene -- or ways you would be limited by a given perspective -- the choice can be clearer.

Theresa

Interpreting body language, etc.

Jami said about Theresa's great post:
Thank you for this post. My question is - how can a writer tell when they've put the "right amount" of information in? Since I know the whole story, it's hard for me to know if I'm including enough information for the reader to draw conclusions. I want my story to have to make the reader think things through and not just spoon-feed it to them, but how do you find that happy medium?

I feel like I've been going back and forth on a teeter-totter with this issue in my WIP. Take for, example, facial expressions. In real life, you can't know why someone makes the facial expressions that they do, so I often try not to include an explanation. I'll state that the POV character notices someone's eyes narrowing, but I don't say "in anger" or "in confusion", etc. But feedback readers have told me to add more to that to explain why the other character is doing something. To me, that seems out-of-POV and spells things out too much. Is my approach right, wrong, or just confusing? :)

I know you're going to tell me that to have that deft balance of revealing/concealing, it takes a skill or talent or experience or something that I just don't have yet, but any pointers would be helpful. :)

Jami, I'd suggest thinking about how the narrator/POV character interprets this... esp. if the interpretation is wrong. Let's say she sees that he's turned away from the sight of the body, and she jumps to the conclusion that he's grossed out by the blood (a perfectly sensible interpretation). But in fact, though the POV character can't know it now, it's guilt that is making him turn away.

That is, she can interpret the body language or expression, but HOW she interprets it should tell more about her (she's always giving people the benefit of the doubt, or she's really proud that she's tough and doesn't have to turn away from the gore, maybe) than it tells about the "target" character.

The point of POV is to reveal what this viewpoint character sees, but more important, how this POV character feels and thinks about what she perceives. This way you get both-- the narration of the world around her, which the reader can make use of, and also the thought/feeling that reveals more about the narrator.

What do you think? It's a pretty subtle way of adding another layer of characterization... but also I think draws the reader in and makes the reader work a bit-- "Okay, that's one interpretation of what he's doing, but..."
Alicia