That's third person omniscient. It is describing things from an impersonal point of view, including the characters' thoughts. Note that "He felt tired."If the point of view were changing, then it would be: "I felt tired."
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must all novels have a plot
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That's third person omniscient. It is describing things from an impersonal point of view, including the characters' thoughts. Note that "He felt tired."If the point of view were changing, then it would be: "I felt tired."
dondomat
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Only direct internal dialogue signifies POV? All else is external narration? This would shrink every novel ever to twenty pages of "actual POV", everything else being "the narrator". I find this rather difficult to agree with. I thought whole scenes and chapters and novels were in specific types of POV, not just certain sentences.
And what about the example with actual internal dialogues on both sides? I'm sure I can provide a hundred more of those from Dune alone, they do exist.
...This is fascinating, thank you for taking the time to think and reply, your Neptune highness, it really helps me to talk these things out.
EDIT: Now it seems to me that in the Neptune example, a 1st person POV signifies a POV shift. Even more confused now
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The entire novel has point of view. Look at how the narration is written. I suggest that you find a few articles on point of view and read them carefully.
So what? There can be internal dialogue in first person or in third person omniscient.
EDIT: Now it seems to me that in the Neptune example, a 1st person POV signifies a POV shift. Even more confused now
First person point of view means that the narrator is addressing the reader; that's all.
POV seldom shifts in novels; although there have been a few writer who thought it was fine to have many narators. Most novels have the same point of view and point of view character from beginning to end.
Omni technically has only one POV, that of the narrator, but if the narrator dips into the thoughts of every character in the scene or even some of them, and moves back and forth between them, then I think that usage of omniscient POV can fairly be called head-hopping. It can also be called "badly written."
Just because the narrator knows them doesn't mean they all have to be shared. This is one reaon why omniscient is hard to do well.
No, then it would be first-person POV.
You have some statistics to back that up? Because I don't think it's all true, particularly among modern novels.
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dondomat
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I was beginning to think that omni is to an extent some sort of shared superstition. Because at times it's very easy to detect, but at other times, especially without the explicit tell-tale hovering narrator it becomes simply a collection of third limiteds, where you have to imagine the missing tell-tale signs, and keep maintaining that what's happening is omni, because otherwise it would be the dreaded head-hopping, and that would be automatically bad, so therefore it just has to be omni, and here is where the imaginary signs of this omni would be...
And, as you say, even if the tell-tale signs are present in the book (unlike Dune, say some random King/McCammon or Tolstoyevsky type), there are still whole scenes where it's all a carousel of limited 3rd person POV's, which, if there is any point at all in having the term head-hopping--are then this exact head-hopping.
In the end, any discussion I've had about this either culminates in the head-hopping-phobe grimly sticking to his writing theory and snapping that yes, these bits of Dune and Cujo and Karenina and Hunchback of what have you are bad, bad, bad, and the books works in spite of those bits, or, it's all reduced to "it's head-hopping when people do it badly"--which I can live with, but I would prefer it to be explicitly stated from the beginning, instead of all the labyrinthine attempts to show that it:
1) either doesn't happen in good books and I'm imagining things when I clearly see it happening
2) happens but undermines the good books, and without it those books would be totally better, or
3) is super old-fashioned, but since half an hour ago is totally unreadable and unsellable.
(In a sense, the third could also be a valid argument, if based on imagined or real market situation, instead of imagined or very imagined 'universal criteria of quality')
...I think this is one of those many corners of fiction/publishing theory that basically throb in the corners of the Id and it's super difficult to talk about it openly and logically without defensive mechanisms erupting all over the place. But I've started getting used to this, and will continue trying those hit-and-run symposiums on absolute write, until stuff starts making sense.
And if we are to believe in the living, ever-changing approach to fiction/publishing, then part of what we do here also helps define things in real time. All depends on what levels of posts combine into what.
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Everything in this post is my subjective opinion
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Ha. I know exactly what you mean.
It's been a long time since I read Dune (like, somewhere between 30 and 35 years), but I certainly don't recall it being overtly omniscient. I'd need to look at it again to be sure. My impression at the time was that it would have been a whole lot more engaging had it been better written. I found the world-building fascinating and the story was good at times, but the writing left a lot to be desired. And that was primarily because of the handling of POV.
I believe the quoted passage demonstrated head-hopping rather than omniscient, since I detected no narrator as an external POV to the characters in the scene - it seemed it was in close third from each character's POV. I think TRUE omni is more obviously a distinct perspective than the characters, with knowledge and insight outside of theirs. Hence the statements like 'little did he know' etc, as you said before.
I also think that head-hopping is far more prevalent in published novels than the current anti-head-hopping stance of agents and editors would suggest. Perhaps it's something that has only recently become 'bad writing'.
You don't have to change from third to first person in order to switch from omni to limited. You can have a first or third person narrative in both omni and limited. The difference is in the scope of the narrator's knowledge, not the form of address they use.
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That is very much a misunderstanding of grammatical person. First person simply means that the one narrating is the subject of the sentence. It does not address the audience directly - that's second person you're thinking of.
I've read plenty of first-person novels where the narrator does not address the reader, or appear to be narrating a memoir, or anything like that.
Blank statements like this are not very conducive to persuading someone of your argument. Could you explain how you believe I am mistaken?
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That doesn't however mean omni itself is head-hopping, just that bad writing where the writer attempts omni tends to include it. You can also head hope in something that is obviously meant as limited third, and it would still be what it is. In that case, badly written limited third.
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My disagreement is subjective and temperamental. In the visual arts we have say primitivists, expressionists, impressionists, and cubists, and one can call their technique "bad", when compared to the realist schools, but it becomes badass, when judged by its own standards. In a sense, technically speaking, much of Picasso or Monet can be called "bad art", and one can point fingers at relevant bits of ancient art textbooks as proof, but... Come on. Likewise one can't say that punk rock techniques are "bad" while prog rock techniques are "good", and vice versa; jazz drumming is not "better" than blues drumming, and so on.
I've ran across many a head-hopping bits in great books (head-hopping as in vortex of limited thirds with no hovering narrator), and would have to make a conscious effort to force myself to see those bits as "bad". Seen naturally, by me, they are a) head-hopping, and b) awesome.
Just like, in a way, Lovecraft's "bad writing". Oh no, he has no dialogues, oh the horror, his prose is baroque. I love reading his prose. I read him not so much for the story, as for the way it is written. I'm far from the only one. He's great at what he does and should be judged by the criteria one uses to judge this vintage vibe subgenre, not by the criteria used to evaluate a Stephen King novella, less still a Hemingway or Elmore Leonard one.
To wrap up--I can see how people may need, as a psychological crutch, for one reason or other, a conviction that certain techniques are "bad", in spite of them actually working for millions of readers/listeners/viewers, but my psychological crutch is to foam at the ears whilst doing my damn best to point out that fashion in writing or any other art/craft is one thing, while treating this fashion as objective rules of good and bad as per proof discovered in underground volcano prose-collider secret labs, just because twitter diva editors and writers use the topic as visibility and prof cred props, is quite another, vastly sillier thing.
Warning beginner authors that head-hopping, unless done in the context of amazingly brilliant texts, can close doors because of current fashion and prejudice, is, IMO, being realist and objective, and doing said beginner authors a favor, not least of all because it trains them to see another aspect of technique. Saying it's bad and shouldn't be done because it's bad and shouldn't be done, is a shared mild psychosis which will last another decade or two at most. Or shared mild neurosis. Something like that. Harmless in itself, but stifling for certain people, who, without these socially imposed restrictions, may have actually created vastly superior works.
EDIT: Having said that, the things we discussed in this thread have helped me enormously in understanding certain nuances, for which a big thanks to everyone. I hope my babbling will also spark something off with someone; possibly something quite unrelated, but we take what we can, in the sparking off business.
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dondomat
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It has an insanely complex multi-layered underlying structure, which disciplines the apparent chaos. Sometimes I try out modest experiments in this, but only that. Too difficult, and definitely not for my genres.
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Good example. I think it's about theme and style taking the place of plot.
Lovely post. Can anyone please direct me to query letter examples for plotless, character-driven works of fiction? I realise that most readers expect plots, especially US readers, but some queries can survive on strange and surreal themes, can they not?
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Try reading 'Breakfast of Champions' by Kurt Vonnegut -- NO PLOT... other than just two guys meeting. It was a highly acclaimed novel (required reading in my college courses) that was basically a core dump the author wrote on his 50th birthday.