Can you write half way between 3rd person omniscient and 3rd person objective without merely switching back and forth?
It would officially be omnicient, but use many of the techniques of objective, without having to resort to using the passive tense. Would a strong use of "show don't tell", be enough to keep a new writer from getting lost in 3rd person omniscient.
I have a team of 6 very strong, main characters, in a SF setting, in which they have been trained to show almost no emotion, but the subtle nuances of what they show by accident, or allow to show, are a huge part of the story. The widening of a pupil or the twitch of a major artery as a result of increased heart rate are major events. Squeezing a hand is a minor climax. Adjectives and adverbs are almost nonexistent. I can't seem to use a totally objective view without resorting to passive tense, which is all wrong for this story.
This is my first piece of fiction, in 22 years. I'm a recent divorcee who spent the last 2 decades writing about my dysfunctional family that included 2 homeschooling boys (one of them profoundly gifted, but borderline autistic, the other a hustler), a crippled, retarded dog with severe anxiety issues and a weak bladder (I'm not joking) and a violent and profoundly gifted husband who shunned education and came from a mafia type Italian family.
I lived among these larger than life people (and dog), but was never one of them. My ethnicity, gender and lower IQ did not allow me to enter their world. I was an outsider looking in. I wrote about them, but obviously didn't see into their heads. I wasn't trying to tell a story the way I am now and had no concept of POV or voice or style.
I was either letting off steam, or asking for advice, on homeschooling messageboards. Through these posts on messageboards I was continually contacted by professors and other highly educated people who kept commenting on my writing and encouraged me to look to my own education as well as that of my boys. They said I had a unique "voice" that they envied. At the time I had no clue what voice was, and no time to find out.
I'm 40, my boys are grown, I'm divorced, and finally looking to my own education. I'm reading books on writing. I'm signed up for an 8 week short story class that starts next week. I started writing my first piece of fiction in 22 years.
I'm trying to figure out what it is that caused people to take notice of my writing. I don't want to educate myself right out of something that is possibly better than what is instructed in the books. That sounds incredibly arrogant doesn't it?
Writing is an art. There is room for creativity and uniqueness. Trash can be mistaken for uniqueness by a lazy artist set in his ways, though. How do I refine my "unique" voice without losing it?
I remember once being told that it was my intimate knowledge of my family, but my distance from them that stood out. How does this apply to writing fiction?
It would officially be omnicient, but use many of the techniques of objective, without having to resort to using the passive tense. Would a strong use of "show don't tell", be enough to keep a new writer from getting lost in 3rd person omniscient.
I have a team of 6 very strong, main characters, in a SF setting, in which they have been trained to show almost no emotion, but the subtle nuances of what they show by accident, or allow to show, are a huge part of the story. The widening of a pupil or the twitch of a major artery as a result of increased heart rate are major events. Squeezing a hand is a minor climax. Adjectives and adverbs are almost nonexistent. I can't seem to use a totally objective view without resorting to passive tense, which is all wrong for this story.
This is my first piece of fiction, in 22 years. I'm a recent divorcee who spent the last 2 decades writing about my dysfunctional family that included 2 homeschooling boys (one of them profoundly gifted, but borderline autistic, the other a hustler), a crippled, retarded dog with severe anxiety issues and a weak bladder (I'm not joking) and a violent and profoundly gifted husband who shunned education and came from a mafia type Italian family.
I lived among these larger than life people (and dog), but was never one of them. My ethnicity, gender and lower IQ did not allow me to enter their world. I was an outsider looking in. I wrote about them, but obviously didn't see into their heads. I wasn't trying to tell a story the way I am now and had no concept of POV or voice or style.
I was either letting off steam, or asking for advice, on homeschooling messageboards. Through these posts on messageboards I was continually contacted by professors and other highly educated people who kept commenting on my writing and encouraged me to look to my own education as well as that of my boys. They said I had a unique "voice" that they envied. At the time I had no clue what voice was, and no time to find out.
I'm 40, my boys are grown, I'm divorced, and finally looking to my own education. I'm reading books on writing. I'm signed up for an 8 week short story class that starts next week. I started writing my first piece of fiction in 22 years.
I'm trying to figure out what it is that caused people to take notice of my writing. I don't want to educate myself right out of something that is possibly better than what is instructed in the books. That sounds incredibly arrogant doesn't it?
Writing is an art. There is room for creativity and uniqueness. Trash can be mistaken for uniqueness by a lazy artist set in his ways, though. How do I refine my "unique" voice without losing it?
I remember once being told that it was my intimate knowledge of my family, but my distance from them that stood out. How does this apply to writing fiction?
