The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: POV

  • NaNoWriMo #6 part one

    2013-Participant-Square-Button[Looks around.]

    Um, hi. It’s nice to be back. Been a while. How are you all doing?

    So yesterday I started my sixth NaNoWriMo story in six years. I’ve won every year I’ve played but twice I didn’t actually ‘finish’ the novels I was writing. The first one (my third novel) just kind of petered out because I was pantsing too much, had no idea where it was going to go or how it would get there. I’ve thought about it often ever since because I love the story (it’s a first contact tale) and the characters. I’ll get back to it eventually.

    The other NaNovel I didn’t finish was the one from last year. At 56,000 words I gave up. There were too many issues with it and I was focused on the book from the previous year (my fourth if you’re trying to keep track). That story was so good and the feedback that came back was excellent and I spent time editing it and polishing and revising and re-writing and everything one is supposed to do to a novel. This year it’s spent time out on submission (where it currently is) and I’m collecting rejections.

    Last year’s book was a sequel to that one. It’s also the story I’m re-writing from page one this year. I changed the POV and added some really sinister villains and figured out HOW to tell the story that I wanted to tell. It simply took me longer than I thought because I wasn’t totally finished with the first one in the series. (Well, I’m not sure it’s a series yet. As of this writing it’s a book with one sequel. We’ll see.) Anyway.

    Because of circumstances, I didn’t get to start writing until Friday evening November 1st. And it was a bit of a struggle. Normally I’m a morning writer so that probably contributed but I think it was really just nerves. Once I got past the first thousand words things seemed to go better. Today (Saturday) I knocked out 2600+ words really quickly and most of them were all right, a few were really good and some will definitely be edited out.

    But the point is that the flow came back. And it came back strong, like a Colorado river in springtime. Lots of whitewater. This year will be different for me because I’m going to have to spend more time writing in the evenings rather than the morning because of my job. I’m okay with that but I’m hoping it’s not going to be a real struggle. I suspect not because I’ve got a lot of practice writing. Once upon a time I could tell you how many words I’ve written but not any more. It’s gotta be near a million, but I don’t know.

    As I write this, I’m anxious to get back to writing on the novel (it’s called The Silent Well if I didn’t mention that earlier) and I’m hoping to get another 500 or 1,000 words down before I go to bed. So I’m going to sign off here to eat some dinner and try to dig back in.

  • A View from a Park Bench

    bw4Imagine a story as a living, breathing planet. A lot of people live on it, and each one has his or her own perception of life. Everyone sees everything differently. In theory, every story has just as many perspectives. How do you know which one is important?

    There are a lot of things to consider, but when writing a first draft considerations are meaningless. Sitting at a keyboard to write a story is a lot like sitting on a bench in Central Park. Lots of people walk by without giving you the slightest bit of attention. Depending on your methodology, you either wait for someone to sit down and start a conversation, or you scream profanities at them like a nut-job. I know people who sit down to write, and if it isn’t coming that day, they get back up and go do laundry. I am on the opposite end of the spectrum. My park scenario is chasing people down, screaming “You can’t get away from me!”

    Whoever I manage to tackle becomes my perspective. Like most predators, I tend to pick off the weak. My characters generally have a multitude of issues. They are fragile, emotionally and sometimes physically. I hold them down and make them cry. A lot of times, that means that the point-of-view of my first draft is decided for me. It belongs to whoever wanders too close to my particular park bench.

    After the first draft is finished, I have to start worrying about actual technique and theory. My story may or may not be best served by the perspective I have discovered. In “Flute of the Dead,” which will be appearing in Bete Noire Magazine’s anniversary issue this coming Halloween, I follow Len, a tribal musician, in his exodus from his home as he flees cannibalistic invaders. In the original story,  Len died about three pages in. The story revolved around his 8 year-old sister. After the first draft, I completed a major reconstruction of the story, which included the deletion of my original protagonist.

    There is no loyalty in fiction. Writing is a solitary profession. Editing is a cruel business. You write from your heart, pouring your soul onto paper. You edit with your brain. Every element has to carry its own weight. Those that don’t must be cut, no matter how beautiful or clever they seem.

    Things like POV and perspective are tools for the creation of art. It is my duty as a writer to use those tools as efficiently as possible. Sometimes, as with “Flute of the Dead,” that means drastic restructuring of story elements, eliminating characters and scenes, creating new ones in their place, and various other modifications.

    The goal is strengthen the story as much as possible. Trial and error will help me to do that. Ultimately, it fortifies both my story and my career. The important thing is to find a voice and hold it down long enough to get the story out, but still be willing to tackle the next guy if need be.

  • A Shelf of Possibility

     

    from neatorama.com
    from neatorama.com

    (Rolls d20)

    Eighteen. Damn.

    That means I have to write this post in the first person.

    What’s really important when I’m choosing which story to write is how best to tell it. Whose Point of View is most important? Is that character reliable enough or not to tell the story? Because if not, that changes everything. I usually tell tales in the past tense because I dislike present tense. Not intensely but enough that it doesn’t appeal to me.

    See, for me, it’s about telling. That means one person is relating what has happened. That’s how we generally tell stories over lunch, having drinks, in any number of situations. I think that if a character is telling his reader or viewer what’s happening as it’s happening, then she’s not focused enough on the events of the story. Maybe that’s crap, I don’t know, but it’s how I feel about it.

    I just don’t like limiting myself to one narrator or point of view in a story. I want the reader to either a) want more by switching POV or narrator or b) want more because they really like the narrator or POV. So I have to be as interested as possible in what I’m writing.

    Random rolling of multi-sided dice isn’t how I decide these things but you probably already knew that. Rather what I do is look at the overarching story and figure out which of the seven stories told and retold it is:

     

    • Boy Meets Girl (Boy Loses Girl, Boy Finds Girl Again)
    • Man v. Nature
    • Man v. Machine
    • Man v. Society
    • Rags to Riches
    • Love Conquers All
    • Portrait of the Artist

     

    (Okay, I have to ‘fess up and say that I cannot find any sort of agreement on what the Seven Basic Plots are. Everyone seems to be referring back to a particular book that I don’t agree with. For the purposes of this post, let’s say this list is it. Afterwards you can argue as much as you like about how wrong I am. This is what I remember of the talk I heard Kurt Vonnegut give in the middle ’80s. All right?)

     

    So. Where does the story fit and who among the characters I’ve devised is best suited to tell the story? I have to look at where the character fits into the story itself then decide if I like that fit. If I don’t like it how could I expect the reader to? Next, since I don’t want to use first person (usually) I will decide who are the important characters to follow. No more than three, really, and if I can keep it to one or two I like that better. It’s fun as a reader to know what else is going on in a story that the ‘main’ character might not. Build up some suspense. Also gives ‘em a break. After all, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.

    Then it’s all about beginning to write. It may be that I’ve chosen wrongly and the character I want to follow isn’t interesting enough. That’s happened quite a bit. Happened with last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. It just does, I guess. So then I reassess if the story is worth pursuing if I change point of view or which character is the main one.

    I will look at my bookshelves for a story that’s similar to the one I want to tell. I may even pull it down off the shelf and skim through it, looking for a solution to present itself.

    And the process starts all over again.

     

  • “Two” be Avoided at All Costs

    I have a policy about finishing every (fiction) book I start to read. In my life, I can only come up with a couple of instances where I just couldn’t force myself to the end.

    Perhaps I should clarify, that policy only applies to books written in first and third person.

    If I’m reading something written in second person, it is because some sadistic professor thought it was a good idea.

    Unless it is a Pick-Your-Own-Path adventure story, I see no point in second person. Maybe that makes me a bad English major. Maybe it makes me a bad person. I don’t care. Second person aggravates me. (more…)

  • My Point of View on Point of View

    As I’ve developed my writing style, I’ve played with several different points of view in order to figure out what works best for my way of storytelling.

    For a long time, first person was my poison. It was easy to write that way – it helped me relate to what happened to the character. Besides, when I first started writing, I was writing about all of the adventures I wished I could have myself, so I was the star in all of my stories.

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  • POV Corrupts

    Here’s my new saying: “POV corrupts. Omniscient POV corrupts absolutely.”

    Alright, I’m butchering the popular euphemism about power and corruption, but I think I can use my new quote to make a fair point. Bear with me.

    When writing fiction, I only have a few choices for point of view. I’m going to ignore the bizarre (e.g. second person view, or even weirder, first person plural) and focus upon the most common choices in modern fiction: third person limited, third person omniscient, and first-person.

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