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Just when you think it’s going smoothly and all will sail happily along a flowing tide into the sunset (can you tell it’s late and I’m punchy? I thought so) ….you find the Scylla and Charybdis of revision in your path.
These problems take various forms, but always present as the writer’s need to show something from various angles/viewpoints/political or social stances…and the reader’s strong desire not to be caught in a whirlpool where the same situation is recounted over and over and over.
When writing first draft, the dangerous sisters are obscured by the fascination of the characters who are doing whatever it is, and talking about it afterwards to others. Of course the writer must show A talking to B, and then B giving his/her version to someone else, and then R (who saw it only at a distance or came on the scene later) talling another version to S, and so on, because (as we all know in real life) every one of those versions will evoke a unique reaction in each hearer and each reaction can be a plot driver. Some of them absolutely will be plot drivers.
But…readers do not like being told the same thing over and over (even in slightly different versions) …they become restive and even fretful (“What, you think I can’t read? I know, I know, Gisela and Paolo are arguing in the library and there’s three walls of books and one wall with big windows and some decorative weaponry between them. I know that already!”) A bored or annoyed reader is not only coming unglued from the story, but pays less attention to the details that the writer carefully provided as clues to the plotworthiness of that conversation. And so will wake up some chapters downstream and say “Wait! That’s not fair! You didn’t say there was a dagger on that wall!” when Gisela grabs the dagger and stabs not Paolo but Anhelm. “Who’s Anhelm? And I thought she was mad at Paolo!”
Never mind that forty pages back you showed Angelina telling Anhelm what Gavin told her about the argument, and thirty pages before that you showed Gisela telling Luis about it and why she blamed Anhelm. Readers turned off their alertness whenever that library and Gisela and Paolo showed up yet again (yawn, grump) in various versions, so they missed it (along with the version that mentioned the dagger.) If they had read and caught all that, they’d know that the moment Anhelm walked in on Gisela three days later, and said something snide about Paolo, he was a dead man.
My job as writer is to give you readers everything you need, exactly when you need it, to provide the best possible experience. Boring or annoying you is a failure of craft. And I’ve been staring for several hours at a lovely big pointy-jaggedy Scylla of Really Important Stuff on the one hand and a busily churning Charybdis of Really Boring Repetition on the other.
Lots of other stuff has been accomplished, allowing me an ever clearer view of this dangerous pair and the very narrow passage between them. I have noted every chapter in which the same incident is retold. Now to figure out how to show that a) it is being retold without b) retelling it while c) imparting all the information that is new to the reader (whether or not it’s new to the person hearing it in the book.)
Ideally the reader will be eager to find out how every new hearer receives the information, rather than bored by hearing it again. That will happen only if readers can trust that I’m not going to make them sit through the umpteenth recitation…if they can expect something worthwhile. Easy in concept, yes? Yes. But it’s a narrow and tumultuous channel between not giving enough information and giving too much.
Comment by Chuck — December 29, 2010 @ 5:26 am
This is a good example of the principle that evolution brings new problems as well as benefits. In this case, the art of the novel has evolved from an earlier stage when there were basically two approaches to viewpoint, first person and omniscient author, to today’s use of a range of viewpoint options.
In the first person approach, if the author wanted to communicate information of which the narrator was unaware, there various subterfuges that mostly relied on playing up the narrator’s ignorance or naivete. In the omniscient author approach, of course, whatever information needed to be presented was presented, with some comment on how much the characters knew or understood of the true events.
So the benefits to the reader of the multiple 3rd person viewpoint technique (such as more direct engagement with the characters and story) are balanced by the requirement for the author to work harder in successively presenting the same “something from various angles/viewpoints/political or social stances.”
From the reader’s viewpoint, this is a win. I guess from the writer’s viewpoint, it’s . . . well, what’s necessary. Thanks for the peek into the process.
Comment by elizabeth — December 29, 2010 @ 7:50 am
Much depends on what kind of story the writer wants to tell and what kind the reader wants to read–and both are influenced by what’s in fashion, fictionally. The Deed was written almost entirely from Paks’s viewpoint; one person deep interior 3rd person has been used at least since Jane Austen (yes, she slid into omniscient, but predominantly she stayed in 3rd.) That choice allows the writer to show others’ reactions only through one lens, and gives readers the deepest possible view of one character.
If the story requires a great deal of data unknown to one character but needed by the reader…and if there’s no handy way for another character to tell that POV character, as in a story where there’s a lot of space between them and a communications gap…then multi-POV is ideal. It’s also familiar in daily life, with international news feeds, different talking heads on multiple stations available to most of my readership. Sticking to one POV can still work, but it can’t tell the same story as multiples, and it exposes the writer to suspicion that the POV character is just the writer’s mouthpiece, sharing the writer’s attitudes, opinions, beliefs. (Something sometimes, but not always, true.) Really big story arcs benefit from multiple viewpoints. These provide more sources of motivation, and thus more ways to connect plot to character, and more ways to introduce variation (which makes the long arc more interesting and fun to read.)
Drama, of course, has had multiple POV for a long time…every character on stage can be directly seen/heard by the audience, and can express an individual attitude, even without addressing the audience as if it’s in the play.
Comment by Jim DeWitt — December 29, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
Warning to other readers and commenters: this may contain spoilers…
Following up on your last comment:
One of the interesting aspects of your evolution as a writer is how much more self-aware and reflective your characters have become. Paks, in the first two-thirds of “Deed,” may have been the sole POV character, but the reader doesn’t get much insight into what she is thinking (other than that she doesn’t think about things and consequences at all). After Paks’ experience with Master Oakhallow, she starts to develop some awareness and self-awareness. I know you were illustrating Paks’ growth, but even at the end she was content to place herself and what she did in the hands of the gods.
In sharp contrast, the female protagonist of “Fealty” is intensely aware of who she is, what she does and the impact of her actions on her world. Dorrin, with one or two exceptions, thinks things through. Not so much in the case of the scene at the village well, but most of the time. But as a result, for me Dorrin is a much more interesting character than Paks.
But how much of the difference is intentional, and how much is the result of your growth and development as a writer?
Comment by elizabeth — December 29, 2010 @ 2:45 pm
Jim, that’s one I can answer, and it ties into the books in the Serrano/Suiza group as well. Though some of the skill in depiction may come from my maturation as a writer, the difference in self-awareness and ability to think flexibly in different contexts is intentional: it’s about the characters’ maturity & experience.
True, not all young are heedless–some are forced into early maturity. Not all older people are really mature, in having a bigger toolkit for dealing with life, more thoughtful, consequence-based strategies. But on the whole, overall, there’s an age-related difference in response and the more able adults continue to develop varied skills right into old age.
Paks is the quintessential romantic (other definition of romantic, not sex) young person–and in addition comes from a background that gave her not even second-hand knowledge of the real world. The DEED gave her time for only about five years of chronological growth…enough to have some effect, but not much. But even a naive romantic can do amazing things.
Dorrin is in her late forties at the start of OATH. She has over twenty years on Paks–besides a very different background. Falk’s Hall provides its students an excellent education (for that time and place, at least) and her life after that–traveling abroad, commanding troops, etc.–has given her more overall experience and developed many additional skills.
If you consider the depiction of very young, young, middle-aged, and old characters in the Gird & Luap books, you’ll find the same thing–to someone of middle-age and older, the older characters may very likely seem more interesting because they have that additional experience and the larger skillset. (Although not all do. Luap did not ever completely grow up, and that determination to stay immature cost him and his followers dearly.)
The Heris Serrano books were conceived (and the series continued) with the generational differences in coping skills in mind. The 20-somethings, the 40-somethings, and the over-60-somethings, when they met similar problems, handled them in different ways.
Comment by Gretchen — December 30, 2010 @ 11:39 am
Is there a general framework, when you write, of where you want the book to go? Or do you discover it as you write? It seems to me that I need some kind of ability to see an overall structure, or I will be forever mired in writing vignettes. They are interesting, full of flavor and vividly painted upon the mind… but they don’t go anywhere, really.
I’d like to write either a novel or a short story (of respectable length), but I don’t really seem to think in the way that says, “This is a story about x, and how they got to y.”
Ideas?
~Gretchen in MN
Comment by elizabeth — December 30, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
Gretchen, I’ll try to deal with this early in the new year. Right now…it would take a very long answer, probably several posts, and I’m too crunched. (But I’m over 500 pages of the finish-level revision…so a hope of getting it all done by Sunday night.)
Short-answer: some writers are discovery writers and some are front-end plotting writers. The only way to find out which you are is to write and see what works and what doesn’t. You can’t tell by the finished story. But I need to get back to it, sorry. Later.
Comment by Sara — December 30, 2010 @ 4:50 pm
I find your postings fascinating! Besides writer block (is that the word? doesn’t really sound right…) I just couldn’t imagine the daily problems a writer faces. Thank you for sharing! And Happy New Years!