Hung up!

 I got into a muddle yesterday over which POV I was writing.

The more I thought about it, the more puzzled I got. So today I am giving myself a brief refresher -

First Person: story is told by "I"

Second Person: a narrator describes the readers' thoughts, words and actions  "You feel your heart race"

Third Person: the story is told from inside the character's head. "she remembered the day"

Third Person Multiple POV. The story is sometimes told from a secondary character's POV as well as the main character.

Omniscient Narrator: As if God tells the story, seeing into every character's deepest motives and thoughts.

Author Intrusion when the author slips personal comments into the scene. Definitely a No-No!

Mixed Viewpoint when first and third POV are both used. Useful in time slip and romance novels.

In all cases, limit information to what the POV character can know. Avoid head-hopping. Give clear signals when changing POV with a physical break or scene break. Name the POV character in the first sentence after the change.

This year so far has been very wet and the result is rampant growth of trees and shrubs. Paths are overgrown and lost, so I thought today's pic was rather appropriate.

How to handle the transition

Some time ago now I discovered Psychic Distance and mentioned it on this blog. Now I've begun a new story and I find I keep rethinking who is telling the story. Is it him? Or is it her? I still haven't truly decided, and that makes my Psychic Distance hard to evaluate. 

The heroine is proving hard to pin down, whereas the hero keeps dashing about and is really in the action. I'm also wondering if PD  can or should change with the character. I like the idea that I can go really deep with the hero/heroine but don't want to do that with every character. My initial feeling is that secondary characters can be less deep. But does the reader agree? 

I think that when the secondary character is doing or thinking something really pivotal to the character or the plot, they should be given extra prominence and then sink back to being,  well, secondary again, in the same way we don't mention all the boring detail of getting from one physical location to another - unless it is of vital importance.

The thing is, that this sometimes makes me want to change POV characters and that leads to the thought that the trick with all this is moving graciously from one character to another. I don't always want to end a chapter or have a total scene break, so how to handle the transition? Don't want to be accused of the dreaded "head-hopping!" 

If I go straight from the hero's thoughts to the heroine's,  without a scene break of any kind, I sometimes confuse myself when I read the chapter back, so it is more than likely confuse the reader. But there must be a way of doing it successfully. I wonder - if I can come out of the hero's deep thoughts and let him observe the heroine's actions and possibly guess her thoughts; would that work? If I do it with care to signpost the way, surely it is feasible?

Travelling from  the hero's thoughts and feelings to what he does takes us from him; then a comment on the heroine that might or might not be his takes us a little further. Perhaps then attention will shift to the heroine and we will learn something about her from John, but not from her. Then something the heroine knows, but the hero cannot know because we have finally stepped out of his mind. Now we are in her mind, and the next move is to give us her thoughts and feelings about what is happening. Obviously, in practice this would follow a more gentle progression from one character to the other, but basically ..... it should work, don't you think?

x

First person POV

For me, this pic captures all the colours of high summer - blue sky, dense foliage and long dry grasses blowing in the breeze. Lovely. If only people wouldn't throw empty water and juice bottles around in such pretty places. Not to mention the crisp packets, sweetie packets, cigarette packets....have these people no appreciation for their surroundings, or are they just mindless?

Had a busy fortnight, but it has come to an end, as all things do. The back lawn, wrecked by dog pee, has been replaced by artificial grass and looks terrific - so no more mowing the lawn! It took a while to do the changeover; the best part of seven working days as the lawn was a fair size and I designed it (cough cough) with curved edges which the lads followed faithfully. In fact they evened it up a bit. All we have to do now is infill with soil around the edges and put in some little plants and settle down to some pruning, weeding and getting control of the garden again. Going to France for almost two months is fine but the garden does get out of hand while we're away.

Also it is time to work on my writing and start moving along again. I've spent the last few weeks re-writing one of my books. Viking Magic never did well and it took a while to figure out why - I wanted a heroine who would be judged by her actions, but it didn't work well.  She was misjudged, I think! Now I've re-written the whole thing, tweaking the story line into something better than it was, and now the heroine reveals her feelings right from page one. She is my first, first-person POV character and was surprisingly pleasant to write even though it limits what she knows at any given time. In some cases that actually helps the plot along. The changes have made MAGICIAN'S BRIDE a much better book than the original.

A decade of paperwork

Today should be the start of getting back to normal. There's been a week of upheaval at chez Black, but now I have only a few books to move back to their original place and voila! I'm done. It was a good opportunity to weed out all the accumulated rubbish of the past decade, and I've filled the "paper" wheelie-bin ready for collection tomorrow. It is amazing to see how long I have been sending out submissions. The first was dated 8th March 2001 and in it I committed almost every sin - giving my age, mentioning a brother - I mean, what has that to do with my writing? Hopefully I've got better at it.

Not that learning to write query letters and stuff brings success. It brings the same old rejection letters, but now they all say I write very well but they don't love the work quite enough to go with it. I suspect I will have to change the format of my book and bring it into line with all the Queen-type books for sale these days. It seems from my latest dip into the market place that men write from the male POV and women write from the female. There are exceptions, but generally, that is the way it works, but I've done both in the same story. Time for a re-think.

With more snow forecast for today, plus the fact that I'm bowling off to Durham for lunch with friends, I thought I'd put up a picture of the lovely walk along the river bank at Durham on a hot, sunny day. The wooden steps down, used by the boat crews, were steaming in the heat! Those were the days....

That tricky Deep Third

Winter fields

I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in this - when a critiquer points out that my POV has slipped, my immediate reaction is, No it hasn’t! But then it gradually sinks in that the critiquer is correct, and I guiltily alter the wording to suit. Sometimes, occasionally, very occasionally, I look and think, No, it is better as it is.

It is easy to get confused about POV. All this talk of Deep Thirds and Omniscient can make one’s eyes glaze over and sleep is only an eye blink away, but today’s reader tastes must be considered. There was a time when authors could write as much Telling/Narrating as they pleased. Read any book written and published prior to the last decade and you’ll find the stuff I mean all too easily. Jane Austen and her colleagues are excused of course, because they are among the legendary Classic Writers. But try authors of the fifties and sixties – they headhop like mad and include info dumps without apology – things we wouldn’t get away with today.

 
The powers that be – whoever they are in the writing world - claim that having a narrator creates a distance between the character and the reader and that readers are put off by this. At its worse, the author gets onto the page and tells the reader what the character thinks or does. This is the dreaded Author Intrusion. Of course some very famous books have used that style because it best suits their story. 'Dear Reader, I married him' springs to mind.

The aim is to have a reader “walk in the character’s shoes”- and I know which publishing house coined that phrase! So to achieve this close connection between character and reader, we have Deep Third POV, where thoughts and actions are not given by a third party who seems to hovering above the character and telling the reader what’s going on. Oh, no. Thoughts and actions are delivered by the character, as in the examples below from my latest work Victorian Beauty due to be published very soon:-

“With a frustrated sigh, Melanie gripped her bag firmly, brushed through the low hanging branches and strode out across the lawn. If she were shot for it, she would not follow that drive an instant longer.”

“His eyes narrowed, and Melanie’s stomach clenched in response. Her tone had been a little too pert. Lord, it was so difficult to strike the right balance.”

I'm told the need to use italic font disappears when using Deep POV. Direct thoughts in the first person are usually rendered in italic font, and are really not necessary if you've really grasped Deep Third. Sometimes I’m tempted to switch from the third person into the first person, as in:-

“Melanie gripped her bag firmly, brushed through the low hanging branches and strode out across the lawn. If I am shot for it, I will not follow that drive an instant longer.” If I need to use italics,  I've learned it is a clue that something is Not Quite Right.

I look at the examples I’ve given and wonder if they are strictly Deep POV. perhaps there's an English version of Deep POV and an American version. I think I know the theory, but in practice I wobble a bit, and as I said at the beginning, POV can be utterly confusing. I think my reading history over the last xxx years inclines me to something that is almost Deep Third, but not quite.

However, one good thing that happens when writing Deep POV is that Telling virtually disappears except where you really need it. When you’re explaining something that gets your character from A to B, perhaps, or something mundane that must be mentioned but doesn’t require detail. It's Good and Useful then.

Ah well, off to practice some Deep Third POV.

To smile, or not to smile?

Usually I agree with writing tips, but I fell across this one the other day and I wondered…

"a reminiscent smile rose to his lips". No! He can't see himself smile. He can only feel the reminiscence, and if he smiles, he smiles.

I let it simmer on the back burner for a couple of days. Often time allows a different perspective, but not this time. Surely the character can feel himself smile and most of the time knows what kind of stupid, goofy or reminiscent look he exhibits to the world? He uses muscles to smile, throw a punch or shoot a filthy look at an enemy. We all put on a mask for the world, and we use it knowledgeably.

If the POV character observes another character he may assume he knows the reason for the reminiscent smile. He may be wrong, of course. We all pick up signals from another’s body language and friends who know each other well can usually tell why one of them is reacting in the way they do.

Like everything else, there are always exceptions to every rule. Perhaps it is time for writing tips to be written in a less dogmatic way, or else readers should interpret them more loosely. I can’t remember if I’ve written any that are so black and white, but I hope not. But certainly, I disagree with the paragraph in italics above. What do the rest of you think?

Pic: Durham Castle and Cathedral (World Heritage site)

DPOV 3

Writing DPOV means using words and expressions the character would habitually use. They won’t explain what they already know
It stops you writing of another character: "She was stupid," because your DPOV character can only guess that the new character is stupid. But there are ways around it. Characters have body language and facial expressions, so your DPOV character can read those as well as the reader.
Introspection or internal questioning is a temptation in DPOV and sometimes I take some of it out when I re-read, because its way too easy to go on too long and become boring. No one wants to be boring, do they!

That’s about it for DPOV from me.

As a taster for the next topic, which will be on accent and dialect, if I can manage it, here are some starters…
"There's a difference between Geordie vowels and words, and Tynedale or mid Northumberland, and north Northumberland," says Kim Bibby-Wilson from the Northumbrian Language Society.
"So you get "dinna" for "don't" up on the Scots border and "dinnit" further south. You get "divvent" in most places."

Deep Third

On Friday I got into a discussion with a couple of writer friends over Point of View, and we wondered why Deep Third had suddenly become so popular. I ventured the opinion it might have something to do with television, where sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, we are made privy with every detail of the protagonist’s life. A new series has begun with Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen and slowly, week by week, we are picking up on his past life and how he thinks. Not that he tells us; but television has many techniques at its disposal: dialogue, pictures, flashbacks, gossip and dreams to name but a few.

Is it like writing ‘I said, I ran, I thought’ all the time? asked one writer. Well, yes, it is - and no, its not. It’s a mixture of the two. Third and First Person are written in a way that requires dialogue tags and verbs such as see, notice, understand, feel, realize and think. All of these words come under the dreaded term “Telling” as opposed to “Showing.”

Compare the following passages. a) I ran across the bridge thinking I could hear footsteps behind me, and regretted wearing my wonderful new high heels. I hadn’t gone far when my heel jammed in the pavement.

b)Jane turned onto the bridge. Footsteps followed her. Imagination? Possibly, but that nasty-looking teenager at the corner might have followed her. She walked faster. Damn this tight skirt. And these heels were killing her already. If only she’d waited for David instead of flouncing off in a huff. She snatched a swift glance over her shoulder, and caught her heel in a crack in the pavement. Her heart leapt to her throat. Oh, Lord. The shoe was stuck fast.

Deep Third might take more words, but the effect should grab the readers’ attention by making them feel they are one with Jane, stuck with one expensive shoe rammed into the pavement and a possible stalker approaching. Deep Third is not unlike acting. The writer must imagine themselves into Jane’s position, become her and then describe what she sees and feels. Some might say it's vicarious pleasure, fright, adventure.

But at least in this world, it is safe!

(And the pic is the hotel at the top of the Gornergrat railway, 10,000 feet up in the mountains)

Grand days out

I would normally have done this post earlier today as I'm well aware that most bloggers and readers "go home" at weekends. But today I'm late because I have been out gallivanting around town with a long-time friend. We've been friends since we were twelve years old, and that's a long, long time ago, let me tell you! A splendid day with lunch somewhere new, a discussion on books and a promise of Wolf Hall just as soon as she finishes reading it. I really should read it soon as its about Thomas Cromwell and almost "my" period of history.

The pic is what you would see if you stood where I was standing in the last pic - ie leaning on the Beheading Stone. It will enlarge if you click on it, and then you should get a good idea of Stirling looking south with the castle probably just out of sight on the extreme right.

Work goes on in between these jolly jaunts. I'm up to chapter eight of the wip, on what is really a third draft since I went through each chapter several times on what I laughingly referred to as the first draft. It is coming along nicely, and I think it is the best thing I've done so far. Still a way to go. Almost everything I read these days is connected to the wip in some way. My latest read is partially set in Stirling - The Merchant's Mark by Pat McIntosh, an author I've never noticed before. It is set a little before my period, in 1492, but interesting for all that. And I am having great fun working in all my little bits of research - but not making them info dumps, oh no no. The trick, I think, is to look at the info through the eyes of the POV character. Would they think it was interesting, out of the ordinary in any way? Or something they see or smell every day of their lives? Then write it as they think of it. Sounds easy, doesn't it?

Heaven preserve me from info dumps!

Viewpoint woes

Mulling over viewpoint, I hauled Swain down from my high shelf.

Creating characters. I looked up viewpoint in the index and scanned all he had to say. Clear as day, here's where the rule originated, I suspect!

"Whatever your story, your readers will need some kind of orientation point, some place from which to watch the action. In other words, a point of view.

Ordinarily, that point is in a character - a viewpoint character. Or as I used to put it, "Whose skin are we in?" Through whose eyes are we seeing or experiencing the story?

In choosing this character, you limit yourself to presenting your story as he experiences it. That is to say, he can watch what other people do, but he can't see himself. (Jack watches others, but cannot see himself.)

He will, however, know anything you want your readers to know about his own state of mind." (Jack knows his own mind, though Janet might puzzle him)

Characters can only be observed from outside, by another character. (So Janet can see Jack and describe him to us) Swain goes on to say this limits emotional intensity. We need Jack's thoughts to go with Janet's observations to obtain that intensity (she may be inaccurate if she decides she knows what he is thinking)

To avoid this there are stories that jump around "like a frog on a hot griddle" as they leap into and out of the hearts and minds of assorted characters. This is known as author omniscient viewpoint. This is OK as long as it is done with skill but done badly can be confusing , irritating and lack the emotional intensity we're after.

There's also the objective approach - record the story entirly without going into anyone's head. He quotes Hammett and The Maltese Falcon as an example, but warns that it takes great skill and most of us don't have it.

Most fiction today is from the subjectively orientated central figure, ie it tells the story from inside the chief character's head. WE see what the character sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, thinks, feels - we experience the story, live through it with the viewpoint character.

It grips the reader, but it limits your presentation of other characters to external only.

It means you can't lie about your central character, since you know his every thought.

Having two or three viewpoint characters is not unusual. Swain recommends a chapter for each - time enough to get used to your character - but don't let it run on so long the others are forgotten. And be sure to establish time, place circumstance and Viewpoint every time you change.

My thought is that all rules are there to be broken.

EDITS have arrived

I have the edits for TILL THE DAY GO DOWN

We were already programmed to running errands this morning, so we made the quick trip to the coast to buy dh's beer kit and a new barrel (so he can make more beer!) and came home. I got out of the car about a mile and a half from home and walked back so I got my exercise for the day (10,000 steps a day, remember), had lunch and began work.

It is a strange exercise, going over something you wrote several months ago. Already I have found two places where I use the same word in consecutive sentences, a sort of echo effect. I wonder how many more I'll find before I get to the end?

I love playing around with Adobe photoshop and late last night when I couldn't sleep I superimposed my painting of my heroine on a pic I took of Aydon castle. The result is not displeasing, but not very professional!

I have about another 150 pages to check over before I'm done. It won't take too long if I abandon my critiquing and writing till I'm through. I'm waiting for a book on Stirling Castle to arrive (paid 1 penny for it on Amazon!) before I can progress the current wip anyway, and I've been checking my favourite published writers to see how they handle POV and description of the hero.

In case you are wondering what I mean, here's the scene: My (male) hero and male friend open the story. Following the current trend for selecting one POV and sticking with it for a scene, I find it well nigh impossible to get any description of the POV hero on the page. He can describe his friend, but he can't describe himself. Well, he wouldn't would he? There are no mirrors in the border moors for him to glance into, and he doesn't think of his own looks/clothes as a heroine might do. Short of having him fall in a brook doing a Narcissus thing, I am going to have to break all the rules and retreat into omnisicent author to get him described on the page and please my critiquers - and later, my readers. A wide overview to open a scene, narrowing down when I need it, and opening out when I need it. Rules be damned. Far too restrictive.