Tag Archives: narration

Technique

When your character’s observing

Having a character act instead of react is generally better in fiction, especially when it comes to our POV characters. So, in general, it’s better to choose a POV character who’s participating in the action of a scene. But sometimes the discoveries that come from a character observing are worth the “reactive” POV character.

Binocular Bonanza

Constructing these scenes with POV characters that are more like narrators is a challenge. It’s easy to let our POV character disappear and simply focus on the action. However, readers can quickly forget about a narrator who never says anything—and when the narrator speaks up again, it can be a bit of a jolt. The action playing out needs to take center stage, but we also need to balance the narrator with that action, especially since the narrator’s reactions are the whole reason we’re in this POV.

Here are three steps to keep your narrator-POV character present in the scene!

Anchor the scene in the character

Have the scene start with the narrator-POV character doing something, some physical action—even something small. Opening with this anchor is a great way to establish the POV.

If we can establish the narrator-POV character well enough by showing them as an acting character, readers are that much closer to the character, and that much more sympathetic to his/her actions and reactions.

Ground the scene in the setting

The narrator-POV character must regularly observe his surroundings. This is more difficult to remember in scenes where the narrator-POV character’s observations are mostly heard, whether they’re hearing something they can’t see, listening to a transmission, or simply watching an argument.

By grounding the scene in the narrator-POV character’s observations of the setting (or the people he’s watching), we not only keep the narrator-POV character on the scene (and present in our readers’ minds), but we also keep the scene the narrator-POV character is observing grounded. Instead of showing talking heads floating in a vacuum, we can present a full scene through our narrator-POV character’s eyes.

However, stating, “Jimmy observed the large crates behind Peter,” is actually counterproductive here. Instead of being in Jimmy’s head, seeing things with him, it’s more like we’ve been kicked outside of Jimmy’s head, watching him watch the scene. Instead, we want to carefully construct the grounding to show instead tell:

A stack of large crates loomed behind Peter. Worry wore at Jimmy’s gut. This wasn’t going to end well.

Which brings us to the most important step to keeping our narrator-POV character present in the scene:

Show the character’s reactions

The point of showing a scene through a narrator-POV character is to show that character’s reactions to the scene as it happens—but sometimes it’s easy to forget to include those reactions! We need to have our narrator-POV character react with thoughts and, if necessary, even visceral reactions.

Once again, this is a balancing act. Unless the scene is very slow paced, we don’t need a reaction from our narrator-POV character every sentence, so save the wry commentary for the best moments, when it carries the most impact. At the other end of the scale, we can’t go too long without the reactions, or we give our readers that kick-me-out-of-the-story jolt when we suddenly remind them of our narrator-POV character.

I’ve found the sweet spot is every few lines of dialogue or every few paragraphs. This is one of those your-mileage-may-vary guidelines, but I like to make sure I have a reaction at least every 3-5 paragraphs (including lines of dialogue). (Some of my other personal guidelines include action/speech tags every three lines and using names every half-page or every third time I use a pronoun for the same character. That’s gold, right there, folks!)

Caveat: make sure it’s necessary

If you’re struggling to come up with reactions from your narrator-POV character, maybe it’s time to reconsider whether it’s truly necessary to show the scene through his/her eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is the action of the scene, consider showing it through one of the actors’ eyes. If the most important thing about this scene is your narrator-POV character’s reaction, then use the narrator-POV character.

Read more about choosing a POV character

An example in my work

1983-JULY-Yosemite2-Fuji-RD100_A_0035For one of my books, the climax of the book revolved around revealing two major secrets: the hero unmasking the murderer, and the hero unwitting revealing that he’s undercover and not who he’s been pretending to be, in front of the observer, the heroine.

Originally, I planned to show this sequence from the hero’s eyes. I planned to have him unmask the murderer, then reveal his true identity to the murderer—and then turn and see the heartbroken heroine there, who’d fallen in love with his false pretenses. Can’t you just imagine the guilt the hero would feel? And the surprise for him (and the readers)!

But as I approached this scene, I realized I wanted to show it from the heroine’s POV, because not only would that convey all the information we’d get in the scene from the hero’s POV, but it would also show her immediate reaction—the shock and the hurt, before we get to the anger that she’d probably be at by the time we got to her POV in the next scene.

So to do this, I made sure to anchor the scene very carefully. It starts off with the heroine arriving at the scene, interacting with people, then settling down, trying to sort through her feelings on the last big event. Then the murderer and the hero arrive, not seeing her, and have their confrontation. In my first draft, I didn’t have enough of the heroine’s reactions, and it created that “oh yeah, we were in her head” jolt I’ve mentioned.

Through a couple drafts and some editorial guidance, focused on her reactions, grounded her in the scene (she was sitting, so I had her turn in the chair, grip the armrests, etc.) and strengthened her visceral reactions to keep her reaction the star of the show.

What do you think? Do you have the occasional scene where the POV character is only observing? How do you handle it?

Photo credits: Binocular bonanza—Laura Gilchrist; photographing the photographer—David Prasad

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Technique

Getting close to your characters

One of my many (many) pet peeves in writing is being pushed out of a character’s head while I’m reading. We read to experience life from others’ eyes, and I’m very sensitive to being “ejected” from the story. Here are some of the main offenders that pull me out of the story.

Emotional reportage
Does it suddenly sound like the character is summarizing her feelings, like she would in talking about the experience later in a journal or letter or conversation? We’re reading to live vicariously through the characters, to experience these events alongside the characters. When a character starts telling us what she was feeling instead of describing her emotional reaction as she experienced it, it’s that much harder for us to live through her.

Think about it: which gives us a better experience: “I felt sad,” “I was devastated,” or “My heart felt like it had gone hollow, then caved in”? Writing emotions isn’t easy, but it can really bring your story and characters to life instead of leaving them flat.

Jumping to conclusions
When we’re in someone’s point of view, seeing their thoughts right alongside them, obviously we don’t need to see every piece of mental input they receive. But skipping too many logical steps, necessary processing information or even just observations and facts makes it harder for readers to follow.

“He’s great. I like him a lot,” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. But enumerating a love interest’s good qualities—including little details, and unique interpretations/spin on actions—shows us not only that a character is enamored, but how and why. Jumping to conclusions doesn’t let us follow along—it just tells us what to think.

Head words/ “scaffolding”: done all wrong
“Head words” are the narration verbs that remind us that the narration we’re reading is the character’s thoughts. But while using these words might look like a great way to “ground” us in the character’s POV, it can often have the opposite effect by constantly reminding the reader that we are reading about a character instead of being fully immersed in them, putting up a scaffolding around the story instead of letting the story shine through.

Sometimes, however, these head words are absolutely necessary: they can add important shades of meaning. “She realized he was wrong” is different from “she knew he was wrong,” “she thought he was wrong” and “he was wrong.” Use head words when they add necessary shades of meaning, and take them out when they don’t. (One of my biggest pet peeves: “wonder.” I will almost always recommend writing “How would he survive?” instead of “She wondered how he would survive.”)

Not using deep POV
It’s been years, but once upon a time, I did a series on deep POV, focusing on some easy-to-apply tips including using the kind of language your character would use, seeing the world as he’d see it, and anchoring in a character’s POV and head early on in a scene and more.

Slavish adherence to “rules” without regard for readability
One example here: we’re told again and again to avoid the past progressive tense (which is NOT the same as the passive voice!!). In general, it’s a good idea: past progressive is wordier and does carry some aspects of passivity. However, those reasons aren’t enough to eliminate it entirely: sometimes past progressive is absolutely necessary for a sentence to make sense.

Reading is a linear kind of thing. We read one past tense verb, then another, and we think they’re sequential when they’re supposed to be overlapping. Compare “He walked in and she leaned against the wall” and “He walked in and she was leaning against the wall.” To me, the first sentence sounds like two sequential actions: he walks in and then she leans on the wall. The second is clear: she was already leaning when he walked in.

When I come across a sentence in a book where one of the actions may or may not be intended to be ongoing, I have to stop and think about the words, instead of continuing to enjoy the characters.

Response, stimulus
In our world, we drop something, and then it falls. Someone surprises us and then we jump. We see a picture of yummy food, we feel hungry, and then we go get something to eat. We have stimuli, and then responses.

The fictional world acts the same way. We have to see the stimulus first, not the response. When I read that someone ducks without seeing a low-hanging branch or something hurtling through the air first, it pulls me out of the story. (Unless, I guess, they have psychic powers.)

Authorial intrusion
There are also lots of ways more subtle ways we can unwittingly popup in our own stories. Roni Loren has a great list of 12 common authorial intrusion pitfalls. Several of them involve putting words in the character’s mouth (or head) that they wouldn’t say or think—“as you know, Bob,” dialogue, things they couldn’t or wouldn’t see, notice or know (yet),

Okay, I admit that as a writer, I’m a sensitive reader. How about you? What pulls you out of a story?

Photo credits: frown—Jacob Earl; scaffolding—James F. Clay

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Technique

How to write a foreign language character

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I love languages. I have a Bachelor’s in Linguistics, which entailed a minor in Spanish. For my last MS, I’ve taken Irish lessons online. In my current WIP, I have a Russian Soviet trilingual heroine who doesn’t want our American monolingual hero to know she speaks English. Oh, and it’s set in Paris. Hooray! (For some reason, it’s always my heroines that are the polyglots.)

It’s only natural that I run into language issues. (And/or give myself language issues.) So when Theresa Stevens posted about using foreign languages in English works today, I started to comment. . . . Halfway through my novella comment, I decided it might be better just to blog about it myself.

I think Theresa has some great guidelines for foreign language usage:

  • Length. Shorter bits are easier to absorb than longer ones.
  • Frequency. A once-in-a-while [words] will go down easier than long dialogue exchanges.
  • Familiarity. Some foreign words are just better known that others. If an Italian guy says, “Salut,” we probably all know what that means. But how many of you can parse a Polish guy saying, “Dziekuje”?
  • Common roots. Some words appear similar to their English counterparts because of shared linguistic roots. . . . So when Edith Piaf belts out, “Je ne regrette rien,” a mindful reader will see “regrette” and recognize it as a fancified version of “regret.”

I tend to think that dialogue and narration use slightly different solutions for the same issue. Here’s what I think is working for me (but I’m sure my CPs will have their own opinions when I let them read my WIP!).

Dialogue
In my WIP when I’m in his POV, I figure the foreign language is pretty much incomprehensible to him (and my readers), I don’t write out the full Russian or French. I have been making exceptions like the above: if it’s very, very short (Eto Lissa), common (oui), or homophonic (téléphone). I figure anything longer/less common is just a wall-o-sound to him—he can’t distinguish the words or even phonemes. (Think about what it’s like to tune in to a Spanish channel. I speak Spanish and it still takes me a minute to “code switch,” as we call it in linguistics.)

I tend to summarize the foreign language dialogue in his POV. It’s a bit harder in her POV, since she’d understand any of the three languages. Here, I do another thing Theresa mentions: trying to make it obvious from the context. For example:

[They’ve just gotten out of a car.]

“Mademoiselle?” the driver called. I turned back. He stood by the still-open car door, holding my father’/s brown leather briefcase aloft. “Votre mallette?”

Of course, if both characters are speaking Russian (and no one else is around), I just write it in English. I do take a look at the syntax and vocabulary of Russian, but I wouldn’t change either of those aspects to make the English weird or unintelligible.

Narration
In internal monologue, I use English as well, of course, and again, wouldn’t change the syntax or vocabulary too drastically. I actually think this can actually be more loyal to the character’s voice, and I’ve commented on why before (but I’ll repeat it here).

I think it’s entirely possible to stay true to a character’s voice without actually phrasing things the exact way their thoughts might translate. A “character’s voice” is already an artificial construct. Most people actually think in pictures, not words. And if my character is a native-born Russian, she probably thinks in Russian. Russian pictures != marketable English-language novel. Translating thoughts into words and Russian words into English ones is, I think, a bigger change than rephrasing said thoughts in English.

For example, in Russian, the stressed element of a sentence is at the beginning (“To the store I went” isn’t odd, just emphatic), but that wouldn’t convey the meaning well in English. Or, for example, if the Russian character thought “nose has not grown,” a Russian idiom, the English reader would be just as confused as we all are now. (No idea what it means.)

It’s more loyal to the character’s voice to make sure that their thoughts are as eloquently expressed (or not) in English as they would have been in their native language—and that’s pretty much always going to require some rephrasing.

What do you think? How would you convey a foreign language in narration and dialogue?

Photo by Eric Andresen

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Technique

Dialogue and what goes outside the quotes

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This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series Dialogue

Okay, I’m still firmly of the belief that a class on dialogue should focus mainly on what goes inside the quotation marks. But that doesn’t mean that what goes outside the quotation marks doesn’t matter. It still does—especially since what goes outside the quotation marks can (and will) impact the dialogue’s effect on the reader.

For example:

“So, how are you doing?”

Jenna weighed the question. Did Brian really care? Sure, he leaned forward and lowered his tone, but with a question like that, it was a bit of a stretch to assume that it was sincere.

Then again, maybe he did care. He couldn’t have known how she felt, especially after the stresses of these last few weeks. Her grandmother’s beloved poodle had passed away at the beginning of the month and it had been a steady downward spiral since then: paying for the funeral, moving with Grandma to a new pet-free apartment, selling her old house, changing her address at the bank, transferring the utilities, and so on and so forth.

It was too much of a strain to put on a 17-year-old, or a 70-year-old, for that matter. Grandma’s memory had grown dimmer every day since her move. What if she couldn’t take convince a court she was a fit guardian at the end of the month?

“Been better,” Jenna finally said.

Okay, did you give up before we got to Jenna’s answer? When she finally got out of her head and back into the real world, did you even remember what the question was? At that point, Brian was probably thinking she wasn’t going to answer at all. (In fact, I envision him wandering off somewhere around the time the poodle comes in.)

This is a case of narration undermining dialogue. The dialogue isn’t actually important here (boooring), but the narration makes a bad situation even worse. Even the characters aren’t interested enough to keep up the conversation.

Contrast:

“How have you been?” Brian leaned forward. Was that a glimmer of concern she saw in his eyes?

He couldn’t know—and she wasn’t about to let him. Jenna gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Been better.”

We have to work to balance narration—be it description, internal monologue or action—and dialogue. That’s not to say they have to be equal—most of the time they won’t be. One element is going to be more important: the interaction between the characters or what’s going on outside the quotation marks.

And yes, sometimes the narrative is more important 😉 . In an action scene, for example, we don’t need a full conversation between punches. Here, extensive dialogue slows the scene down. In a verbal argument, however, excessive focus on the character’s thoughts or actions can have the same effect. On the other hand, we’ll probably need at least a little insight into the POV character’s thoughts as s/he argues, or the character will look like a psychopath, incapable of emotional connections and reaction. We also need to ground the characters in the setting and in general, so we don’t devolve into talking heads. And of course, gesture can be an important way to convey subtext (which we’ll talk about later this week!).

What do you think? How do you manage what goes outside the quotation marks?

Photo by buhreee

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Technique

Language and narration

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I heart languages. I majored in Linguistics in college, and as part of that I studied two foreign languages. I’m super excited that my library offers free online language courses (and am frustrated that they don’t use more technical terminology. I want to conjugate, darn it!). I transcribe things into the International Phonetic Alphabet. For fun.

But it wasn’t on a conscious level that I began using characters who spoke other languages in my works. I started with a native English speaker—but a native Irish English speaker.

This might actually be trickier than using a foreign language, because it’s easy to forget all the subtle differences between American and Commonwealth English. I mean, I speak English, how hard could it be, right? (Not as easy as you think.)

I think my next project will feature a character who speaks Russian as her native language. This will have more challenges for me because I want to learn all I can about the language to make her voice (in English) more authentic.

For example, in Russian, you can reorder the phrases of a sentence without changing the meaning. “To the store I went” and “I went to the store” are both perfectly acceptable. Moving a phrase to the beginning of the sentence adds emphasis. (So “To the store I went” is like saying “[No,] I went to the store.”)

Which brings me to a dilemma: in English (or just in “good writing”), we tend place emphasis on things at the end of sentences. So what do you think? Should I use the Russian emphasis pattern to stay truer to the way my character would think, or should I conform to the writing standards of English?

And if you have any questions about any of your foreign (or not-so-foreign) characters’ use of language, feel free to ask me!

More fun facts about language and meaning this week from Livia Blackburne

Photo by Eric Andresen

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Technique

Backstory through narration

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This entry is part 7 of 20 in the series Backstory

For the most part, the primary way we see backstory is in narration—and this can be the trickiest mode of exposition of all. One of the biggest dangers here is getting into info dump territory: supplying all the information and context and life stories of everyone involved. Hopefully, when we’re using only “shards of backstory,” and only what’s absolutely necessary, that’s less of a problem—but sometimes it’s still tough to make sure that backstory remains interesting.

Being quick about it is especially important. Even if backstory is informing the current story, it still slows the current reader. As Theresa Stevens, editor, says (emphasis added):

Give the reader just enough to allow them to comprehend how the past event is linked to the current event. Use a minimal number of words, and return to the story timeline as quickly as possible. The story, after all, is what keeps the reader turning pages.

The story—the real story, the present action—is a great way to give any important backstory significance and relevance. Back in our series on tension and suspense, I pointed out a Mystery Man column at the Story Department about this kind of necessary exposition. Mystery Man says (emphasis added):

Great exposition is always in the context of something else. A scene should never be about exposition only. You should feed the exposition in the context of some other scenario that’s going on in the scene whether its poisoned food that’s eaten by a bad secret agent monkey or whether it’s something else interesting going on between the characters, such as a contest of wills, a budding love story, or perhaps exposition that’s being told to a secretly bad character who will use that information against the protagonists.

Backstory is best dispersed not just in small bursts, but in small bursts at the moment you need it—”in the context of some other scenario that’s going on in the scene.”

The theory I’ve heard is generally to wait as long as you can, and then reveal to the reader (or the characters) the rest of the story (RIP, Paul Harvey). The right moment is, of course, the one where the revelation will have the greatest impact.

Say, for example, the hero and heroine are arguing. The content of the argument seems silly to the reader—where to put an orange chair, let’s say. She votes for a.) the dump, or b.) the corner, under this lovely slipcover. He votes for a.) what’s the matter with my chair?, and b.) how dare you move it?, even though he’s already said how much he hates that orange chair. The reader and the heroine are mystified. The hero says mean and nasty things; the heroine runs away.

Then—the moment of greatest impact—we get one sentence of his thoughts—that heroine just wants to control him, like his mother did. Not two pages of sequel where he explains exactly how his mother always made him feel and how she treated him and on and on. Here, the information is revealed in the context of conflict, quickly, and at the moment when the reader needs it.

Naturally, my example is terrible, and there are lots of other ways to handle that particular scenario, but the point here is the timing.

What do you think? How do you determine when to reveal backstory? How do you do it in narration?

Photo by Phil Ladouceur

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Technique

Why some great books just don’t make good movies: powerful POV

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This entry is part 7 of 14 in the series Deep POV

For some strange reason, The Jacksons: An American Dream was on TV a couple weeks ago (gee, I wonder why). My dad and I got sucked in near the beginning, expecting to understand Michael’s descent into . . . well, madness.

It started off promising. The beginning showed the Jackson 5 practicing their music and dancing, and the rigors of their lives. It showed the psychological relationships of the characters. But instead of delving deeper and deeper into Michael’s psyche over time, the movie seemed to pull back. As Michael seems to push his family away to pursue a solo career, we see less and less of him—and it feels like we’re being pushed away, too. We go from seeing his insecurities and fears to looking in at Neverland from the outside, just like we always have.

Part of the problem was that this movie was made in 1992, after Michael established a successful solo career, but before he began the descent into . . . well, you know. But as my dad and I discussed how disappointed we were with the movie’s lack of depth or resolution, I realized that sometimes our attempts at deep POV do the same thing to our readers. We leave them watching from the outside when what they really want is to be inside the characters, living and understanding them.

I think part of the challenge with writing deep POV, as Alicia Rasley points out in The Power Of Point Of View, is that many of us see the action of a story in a very cinematic way—as if we were watching a movie (185). In a movie, the camera follows a character, but jumps around between perspectives easily. You can be in the front of the courtroom watching Jack McCoy as he questions the witness, then quick-as-a-flash, you’re in the gallery, watching the witness crack.

While this is a powerful technique, point of view has always been a limitation of film. There has never been and may never be a satisfactory adaptation of Jane Eyre or The Great Gatsby, because in those works and in works like them, the experience isn’t just about what we can see happening—it’s about what happens inside the narrators.

Without narration, we can’t see that Gatsby’s smile assumes the best of us, as if he had faith in us. When Robert Redford smiles, it’s attractive, of course, but it’s just a smile—because that assertion, that his smile assumes the best of us, isn’t rooted in empirical fact. It doesn’t come from just what Nick Carraway sees. It’s rooted in Nick’s perception and interpretation of what he sees.

As writers, we can give our readers the connection they want with our characters’ thoughts and feelings. We don’t have to just watch what has played out on the screens of our mind. We are not camera men! We can get into our characters’ heads, show their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, and truly transport our readers so they feel like they’re living the experience with us. This is a strength of the medium—so use it!

But that’s not to say deep POV is always best or even right for our story. Soon we’ll have a guest post on when not to use deep POV!

Photo credits: movie—G & A Scholiers; cameraman: Jannes Glas

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