Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

loquax · Jun 10, 2005

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:
I typically assume that a simile in a third-person limited narration is indicative of the thought processes of that character, actually. I assume a "he thought" even when one isn't written.

Would this not impose certain characteristics when you perhaps might not want them to? For example, a hardened soldier scouting through a romantic landscape may very well be unable to have such creative ideas flowing through his head. I suppose I would rather point out his indifference to the beauty than not describe the beauty at all.

NicoleJLeBoeuf · Jun 10, 2005

loquax said:
Would this not impose certain characteristics when you perhaps might not want them to? For example, a hardened soldier scouting through a romantic landscape may very well be unable to have such creative ideas flowing through his head. I suppose I would rather point out his indifference to the beauty than not describe the beauty at all.

If I were writing from the point of view of the jaded, hardened soldier, but wanted to get across how beautiful the landscape was, I see my choices as being a) cleverly worded narration from the soldier's point of view in which he voices his indifference in such a way that the reader infers what he's ignoring (making him into a bit of an unreliable narrator), or b) dialogue with a fellow soldier who is more romantically inclined.

Maybe the soldier thinks how the babbling of the brook will hide the sounds of his movements, making it easy to pick off any romantic [ethnic slur for citizen of enemy country] wandering by in a stupid at-one-with-nature daze, if it weren't for that damn butterfly fluttering around his gun site and messing up his shot.

It's a good writing exercise. Using tight 3rd-person POV, describe a scene or event such that the reader will notice something that the POV character doesn't. No omniscient allowed. Set timers for ten minutes, and..... go!

jules · Jun 10, 2005

loquax said:
Would this not impose certain characteristics when you perhaps might not want them to? For example, a hardened soldier scouting through a romantic landscape may very well be unable to have such creative ideas flowing through his head. I suppose I would rather point out his indifference to the beauty than not describe the beauty at all.

It all depends on the POV style you're using. In tight, limited 3rd, you wouldn't describe anything that your POV character wouldn't notice. But that doesn't mean you have to miss out on such things:

Drake moved cautiously along the road, watching constantly for signs of life. The long grass on either side would be a good place for an enemy to hide, waiting to ambush him, and the sound of the flowing river would help mask any noises he might make.

The sound of a bird launching from a tree made him pause, re-assess the situation. Maybe it would be better if he didn't follow the road. He would be less visible in the grass, although his tracks would be easier for someone to follow later.

But he didn't want to be any closer to the side of the valley. Any number of people could be hiding in the jagged, rocky passes, and it would be best if he was out of range of their arrows.

The clues are there, and a reader can look between the lines and see this beautiful landscape. And they can see that the POV character is too preoccupied to notice it, too, without being told it. Of course, it would be simpler if you dipped into an omniscient style briefly, and described the landscape and said that your character didn't notice it, but I think the way I've just done it there brings you closer.

loquax · Jun 10, 2005

All good points, and although I understand how tight 3rd person makes the scene more intimate, I still think that it overly constricts the author's freedom. I think there is such a thing as a 3rd person/semi-omniscient, which enables the narrator to slip briefly out of the character's mind-set if needs be. Take Alice in Wonderland, for instance. The whole story is written from Alice's point of view, yet there is still a sense of omniscience coming from the narrator. This seems to be the style adopted by most authors - a loose 3rd preson POV.

That was some nice writing there Jules, by the way. The thing that scared me was that my main character is called Drake (though he's not a soldier).

pianoman5 · Jun 10, 2005

My unseen helper

loquax said:
I think there is such a thing as a 3rd person/semi-omniscient, which enables the narrator to slip briefly out of the character's mind-set if needs be.

I like the idea of your new POV, loquax, because I sometimes perceive the need for it in preference to other contrivances.

Being all too conscious of my duty to keep my nose out of my characters' affairs, I occasionally enlist the services of a spy to do some information gathering for me. He's an invisible leprechaun-like personage (named Sean) who sits on my POV characters' right shoulders and reports back to me the stuff that they miss on their travels because they're too preoccupied with what's happening to them at the time, or are unromantic, or congenitally unobservant, or whatever.

My characters do accept responsibility for letting the reader know what they're like and developing the story and the plot; but they largely leave the world/settings/descriptions up to me. So whenever there's something I think readers should know about but my characters fail them, I consult Sean's notes and slip appropriate snippets into the narrative. If anyone accuses me of omniscience--of playing God--I blame Sean.

reph · Jun 10, 2005

pianoman5 said:
If anyone accuses me of omniscience--of playing God--I blame Sean.

Ah. That accounts for the classic advice to writers, "Sean, don't tell."

aruna · Jun 10, 2005

I just realised, in rereading my post above, that I invented a new word:
squirmish. A cross between squirm and skirmish! Must use it sometime....

gp101 · Jun 11, 2005

.pdf question

Considering Adobe .pdf files are a astandard way to transmit documents, I have .pdf copies of my novel (also just the first 25 pages worth, if that's what is requested) should someone request it by e-mail. But I just noticed that my 455 page novel (courier new 12 pt) shrinks to 439 pages as a .pdf. All the chapter headers are at the top of their respective pages and nothing was clipped from the ending. What gives?

Has anyone else encountered this? What's the fix?

loquax · Jun 11, 2005

aruna - I'm sure I've used the word squirmish before. Or said it, at least. Making up new words is fun anyway. The word "premonitional" doesn't exist, but I used it because I needed it.

"[font=&quot]Illuminated before the blackboard, his spindly form stood out like a premonitional bolt of lightning"

[/font]gp101 - I don't use pdf. but it may be something to do with the margin width. A slightly larger margin can add twenty or so words per page, and cut a large book down quite considerably. Is that it?

jules · Jun 11, 2005

Are you using MS Word? With word, the precise number of characters you get per line depends as much on what printer driver you have selected as it does what font / paper size and margins you have set up. As far as I know, there's no easy way of avoiding this kind of thing, other than always using your PDF writer as your printer driver from word, and then printing the resulting PDF instead of printing directly...

Khilari · Jun 11, 2005

With regard to 3rd person point of view, what if your character isn't good with words? You might be reporting what they saw and thought, but in terms they wouldn't be able to put it in. Would that still count as tight 3rd person or would it be semi-omniscient?

loquax · Jun 11, 2005

That's a tough one, Khilari. But I think it would still count as tight 3rd person - otherwise all tight 1st person would also have to reflect the ability of the character (although The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon achieves this remarkably well. I would regard that as true 1st person)

Talking of 1st person, would you regard a stream of conciousness as an even lower POV (i.e., 0th person) ?

Khilari · Jun 11, 2005

Thanks for the reply, Loquax. I think stream of consciousness would still be 1st person, after all someone must be telling it even if they are not organising it into a narrative
I agree that 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' was remarkable. I have Asperger's Syndrome myself and he was extremely accurate in his portayal of it (although I'm better at interacting with people than his narrator). I just hope I can write about 'normal' people as well as he writes about an autistic one.

brinkett · Jun 11, 2005

Khilari said:
With regard to 3rd person point of view, what if your character isn't good with words? You might be reporting what they saw and thought, but in terms they wouldn't be able to put it in. Would that still count as tight 3rd person or would it be semi-omniscient?

You should try to maintain the voice of the POV character. If you step outside of that, then it's the omniscient narrator.

Jonny Ryan Mac · Jun 11, 2005

People usually think how they speak, a good book for that is "Eaters of the Dead", where the main character is an arab stuck with a bunch of Norsemen. It shows just how one person's views can be brought into dialog with another culture. I diont think that people will try to think up some elaborate view in thier minds, and then botch up thier words trying to explain it.

black winged fighter · Jun 11, 2005

Eaters of the Dead sounds like The Thirteenth Warrior (movie) In there, they just have about five minutes showing how the Arab learns the language of his new comrades over many weeks.
This would be difficult to get across in a book, but maybe there's a way? But he does struggle getting his ideas across at first. Again, difficult to show in a book...Unless you use different fonts?
And now I'm just rambling...

loquax · Jun 11, 2005

To be true 1st person wouldn't the book have to be written in Arabic?

J. Y. Moore · Jun 11, 2005

Jonny Ryan Mac said:
People usually think how they speak, a good book for that is "Eaters of the Dead", where the main character is an arab stuck with a bunch of Norsemen. It shows just how one person's views can be brought into dialog with another culture. I diont think that people will try to think up some elaborate view in thier minds, and then botch up thier words trying to explain it.

Not always true. Take the "Clan of the Cavebear" series by Jean M. Auel. The Clan characters as well as the protagonist all "speak" using sign language. However, Auel gives them each unique 1st person voices. The Clan members "speak" in halting, incomplete verbage while the heroine "speaks" in complete, full sentences. All this is done sub-vocally while they are all actually using the same hand signals ("how they speak").

You might also have a case in which someone has had a stroke and cannot verbalize even though their thought processes are intact. My point is, you have to make the character understood as an individual, consistently.

Well, enough of that rant!

J. Y. (Jean) Moore

black winged fighter · Jun 11, 2005

loquax said:
To be true 1st person wouldn't the book have to be written in Arabic?

*grins* Or a clever form of italics....?

Jonny Ryan Mac · Jun 11, 2005

black winged fighter said:
Eaters of the Dead sounds like The Thirteenth Warrior (movie) In there, they just have about five minutes showing how the Arab learns the language of his new comrades over many weeks.
This would be difficult to get across in a book

This never actually happens in the text of the book, Herger is Fadlan's translator. It was a clever scene in the film however. I do agree that it may not be the best example of what it is like to think one thing and speak another, i see now the error in using this script as an example.

However, having said that, we can look to Crichton in this example as showing us a fundamental idea; that two cultures, seemingly different in every way, have much more in common that one would think. That comes out in the dialog that Herger translates for Fadlan, thats what i meant.
Sorry for the confusion.

black winged fighter · Jun 11, 2005

Actually, this bout of confusion has given me an idea, so no worries...

James D. Macdonald · Jun 11, 2005

Nangleator said:
As I've been re-reading my favorites lately, I've come to the conclusion that successful books written only a few decades ago couldn't make it off a slush pile these days.

You keep hearing that sort of thing, but I'm not certain that I believe it.

More titles were published last year in America than were published in the first ten years of twentieth century -- in the world.

Styles go in and out of fashions -- but stories, the baseline, are eternal.

Diana Hignutt · Jun 12, 2005

Christine N. said:
Right now I'm reading our own Diana Hignutt's "Empress of Clouds." It is written from different points of view. I'm not sure how to describe it except third person omniscient. She doesn't head hop, not really, and it is VERY WELL done. So well done that I don't even notice when the POV changes.

Take a peek, it really is one of the smoothest written books I've read in a while. I can only hope to write so well.

My humble thanks, Christine. I never change POV in a chapter. Otherwise, it gets too chaotic. I think I use about six different POV's in the book in total, but mostly stick to the three main characters (Tolian, Brythia, and Kiliordes).

I also, offer my thanks to Uncle Jim and all of the posters in this thread. This is my first post here, but I have learned a great deal from my lurking.

diana

Christine N. · Jun 12, 2005

Yes, UJ, but the first ten years of the twentieth century, all the manuscripts were handwritten and manually typset. A lot of manual labor for one book. So of course there weren't as many printed. LOL

loquax · Jun 12, 2005

I don't think I would have the strength to write a book by hand. Computers make things so easy; I write everything on a Psion 5mx palmtop, and it's fantastic. The thing fits in your pocket, has a full keyboard, and can run for 24hrs on two AA batteries. I highly recommend it for writing on the move.

But then again, computers have no doubt increased the size of the slush-pile exponentially. So are they good or bad?

Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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