POV primer?

Go to the Index for the Uncle Jim thread (link below) - you'll find it in the Writing Novels Forum. Scroll down the threads in the Index thread- items 46 onwards may help a tad.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8754

Bahamutchild said:

Okay, the search function hates me. I searched the whole of AW, and the Uncle Jim thread, and couldn't find anything.

Can anyone point me to some info on POV, some guidelines for how to go about it, and shifting POV throughout the novel? (here or weblink)

Cheers,
Christina

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This one's the most detailed approach I've found so far. It explains the concepts using examples and does so step by step. They do use lots of technical terms, and they don't really use the common terms you'll be used to either, but that may be an advantage (if you're willing to start afresh).

A quote to give you a taste of their style:

Suppose somebody asked you whether narrative theory has anything of interest to offer on "How to write a novel". What you could say -- after duly pointing out that narrative theory is more interested in how narrative texts work than in how one can make them work -- is this. The history of the novel shows that there are three tried and tested recipes. Recipe no. 1 gives you what narratologists call a homodiegetic narrative: You select one of the story's characters and let her/him tell it as a tale of personal experience. Recipe no. 2 gives you an authorial narrative: You use an overt and heterodiegetic narrator who does not belong to the cast of characters, invest him/her with far-ranging knowledge privileges (up to omniscience), and let him/her tell a story of (for instance) social realism. Finally, recipe no. 3 creates a figural narrative: You use an entirely covert narrator and present the story as if seen through the eyes of an internal focalizer.

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This is a basically a summary of 1st p., 3rd omni, and 3rd limited (in the common tongue). If the unusual terminology doesn't scare you away, and if you don't mind *very* detailed analysis, this is a better resource than most I found so far.

Cripes!

Don't you love it when they go all academic on you?

"Heterodiegetic"?????

caw

Dawnstorm said:

This one's the most detailed approach I've found so far.

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Umm ... chosing a snippet from that site at random ...

Having established the foregoing difference in distinctiveness, the audibility of a narrative voice is best understood as being a matter of degrees. In fact, following Chatman (1978), narrative theorists often use the oppositional pair overtness and covertness to characterize a narrative voice, adding whichever qualification or gradation is needed

I don't have the brain cells to follow that right now. Maybe after another cup of coffee.


POV is where the reader sits, when she drives through the story. It can be behind the character's eyes, looking out. Or it can be six inches under the ceiling, floating around like a ghost, using a wide angle lense to see everything.

POV is also who the reader becomes, in her imagination. It is the thoughts and attitudes and knowledges she incorporates into herself as she rolls along.


Depending on what Person you're writing in, you have slightly different approaches.

With First Person, you insert yourself into the story.

With Third Person, you climb into the character's skull, close the door behind you, sit your butt down on the soft gray brain tissue and lean over to look out the eyes.


A writer's approach to POV begins with the writer's immersion in the character. Some exercises for doing this are -- here, here, here, here

Find the exercises themselves by going to the left strip on the page and double clicking on 'Writers Exercises' and going back to the appropriate month. Seeing what other folk have done with those exercises and the discussion of them may also be helpful.

job said:

I don't have the brain cells to follow that right now. Maybe after another cup of coffee.

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Or maybe read it in context?

Willowmound said:

Or maybe read it in context?

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I did. It was like drowning in oatmeal. Oatmeal with sharks.

I became confused and frightened and disoriented. I'm lucky I made it to the edge of the cereal bowl.

FWIW, I had the same problem in college.

More coffee it is then.

Doris Egan (who, among other things, is a writer for the tv show House) posted some good stuff on pov. There's a link at this AW thread:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60679&highlight=Doris+Egan

JD

JanDarby said:

Doris Egan (who, among other things, is a writer for the tv show House) posted some good stuff on pov. There's a link at this AW thread:JD

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Nice site.

This might help, too. It's the Writing Novels FAQ thread stickied to the top of the Writing Novels forum:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35603

There are links in there to various threads including some on POV.

*Slinks sideways into the shadows, whisteling*

Funny how few people actually read the FAQs.

In addition to POV

Check out John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" for POV info but also for POV's oft-ignored but vital sibling, Psychic Distance. The two work togther to establish the narrative structure and to control intimacy.

blacbird said:

"Heterodiegetic"?????

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Look it up. It's all you need to know to be a writer.

Here's a summary of my link above without the fancy terms:

Intro:

Two distinctions:
1. Who speaks? (Narrator)
2. Who sees? (focaliser; s/he who through which we see the story)

Narrator:

1. Inside the story
2. Outside the story

Focaliser:

1. Inside the story (PoV-character)
2. Outside the story (narrator who is outside the story)

Grid:

1. Narrator inside, Focaliser inside:

1st-person-narration. Experiencing I.
"I walked down the street, and suddenly there was a rhino."

2. Narrator inside, focaliser outside:

1st-person-narration. Narrating I.
"I walked down the street. Little did I know that I would soon encounter a rhino."

3. Narrator outside, Focaliser inside:

3rd-person-limited.
"He walked down the street, and suddenly there was a rhino."

4. Narrator outside, focaliser outside:

3rd-person-omniscient.
"He walked down the street. Little did he know that he would soon encounter a rhino."

Complications:

To what extent does the narrator call attention to him/herself?

1. Overt narrator:

Comments a lot (omniscient narrator, narrating I)

2. Covert narrator:

Doesn't comment (with focaliser: 3rd-limited; without focaliser: third-objective)

Character thought intrusion: Interior monologue (verbatim thought), Free Indirect Discourse (the focalisers thoughts presented as the narrator's speech: I --> s/he).

Ultimate Complication:

Infinite variation, because texts aren't forced to choose one mode and stick with it. Many stretches of texts are ambiguous (e.g. stretches of 1st-person-narration where the narrator is passive observer and doesn't comment might as well be third-person-narration - if taken out of context.)

Excursion: 2nd-person-narration:

"You" can refer to:

a) Experiencing self (a bit like muttering to yourself: "You had to do that, didn't you?)
b) Other character (narrator = inside in the story)
c) Any character (narrator = outside the story)

a+b = similar to 1st-person-narration
c = similar to 3rd-person-narration

(Note: "You" has to address a character. General you ("You should never drink lava!") and reader you ("You won't believe me, but...") are not indicators of second-person-narration.)