Odd writing choices

[ElectricBlue]

Your subject line was great. The thread just got diverted. How about "Trying again: Odd Writing Choices."

Threads always get diverted, you know that.

Changing the title could make people think it's a new thread, but that could be a waste of their time, when they discover it isn't.

 

[Britva415]

The Jack Reacher books are sometimes in first person and sometimes in third.

Same with the Harry Bosch books

 

[Britva415]

I only find a writing choice "odd" if the writer doesn't pull it off

there are a few in first where he'll switch to third to tell the audience something Reacher doesn't know yet

That's definitely odd. You'd think once he realized this problem he'd have just changed the whole story to third person.

This does sort of fall under "pulling it off," either affirmatively or failing at it. Nevertheless, this is asinine unless there's a frame which justifies why the manuscript, as an in-universe entity, should switch voices.

It's bad enough when a 100% first-person narrative doesn't frame itself as an in-universe event (a re-telling) or object (a manuscript or other written recording). But that's often easy to overlook, especially if the story is "pulled off" effectively enough to distract from that missing bit. But to switch to 3p voice just to "see around the corner," as Childs put it, is really lampshading the absence of any such frame, and it's multiplying - no, exponentiating - the problem by introducing something which is even harder to frame - and, typically, not even trying.

Michael Connelly sometimes does this too in the Harry Bosch novels. In those cases, it hasn't ever been enough to make me put the book down, but I absolutely sneer, "Fuck this noise" when it happens.

 

[SimonDoom]

I wrote a story like this where I tried also not to use the pronoun 'I', removing the narrator completely.

Is that your story "Gold in the Water?" I just read it. I wouldn't call it first person. You've eliminated the narrator by converting typical subject-verb sentences into phrases. They're not complete sentences (that's not a criticism--just a comment on your method). It's no more first person than it is third person partial limited. If you attached subjects to your phrases to make them sentences you could just as well do so by adding "he" or "she" as "I." There are times when it becomes multiple limited, almost, because you come close to telling things from the perspective of the woman being observed as well. I'd call it third person rather than first person. You need the "I" pronoun for it to be first person.

It's creative. I think it definitely fits within the heading of "odd (but not wrong) writing choices."

 

[YmaOHyd]

It's creative. I think it definitely fits within the heading of "odd (but not wrong) writing choices."

Odd but not wrong is pretty much how I feel about it. It's not a particularly good piece of work.

 

[SimonDoom]

Same with the Harry Bosch books

I've noticed this about both the Bosch books and Reacher books. I'm not sure why the authors chose to try both POVs. They may have just gotten bored sticking with one and decided to try both.

It doesn't make a big difference, because in the case of both authors when they adopt third person they do so in a third person POV that limits the POV to the main character, so either way we're always seeing the story from the POV of that character. We follow them as they solve crimes and generally (or maybe always, I don't remember) don't know what other characters are thinking or are even doing when they're out of sight.

 

[Britva415]

I've considered a story where the first-person narrator is nameless, and their sex or gender identification, or sexual preference, won't be revealed.

As long as it's deliberate and serves the story, and there is an early signal that that's what's happening.

People are probably tired of me pointing out how much I hate when an author does this out of pure negligence. This is something I absolutely will quit a read over. Especially if I muster through some of it believing that I know what gender the MC is, only to then find out I was wrong when the author unintentionally reveals it after many hundreds of words.

I don't mean "they unintentionally revealed it" in the sense that they were trying not to and made a mistake. I mean they revealed it with no plan, no deliberate thought, they just spend the whole story assuming the reader just knows, and don't do anything to actually narrate the gender until it happens accidentally.

Readers read words, not minds.

 

[Djmac1031]

Your subject line was great. The thread just got diverted. How about "Trying again: Odd Writing Choices."

Being honest, I cant really think of a different way to ask the same question, and I feel the thread is more or less covering the topic.

if there's a question you feel isn't being addressed here I suppose you can feel free to start your own thread to address more specifically what you're looking for?

My intention in starting this wasn't to debate "right" or "wrong" writing decisions, although that of course will be a natural byproduct of asking these types of questions.

I've always loved War Of The Worlds and the audio version I'm listening to has a quite captivating voice actor so it totally works for me. Just the no name thing stands out to me more now that I actually write my own stories.

 

[Britva415]

I tried mixing 1P and 3P in a story. The FMC is a dominatrix as a side gig. In session, it's all 3P, but out of session, it's all 1P (her POV). I was trying to emphasize the difference between the two sides of her. It did well rating wise, but got little engagement and none of the comments even mentioned the shifting.

Did you/how did you "frame" the POV shift(s)? That is to say, what is in the story which indicates why the reader has access to the two POVs?

A 3p voice almost never requires that to be explained or justified. In my own opinion, a 1p voice basically always does. A mixture of voices requires it even more (in my opinion).

 

[Britva415]

I've always loved War Of The Worlds and the audio version I'm listening to has a quite captivating voice actor so it totally works for me

Not Orson Welles?

 

[Britva415]

I wrote a story like this where I tried also not to use the pronoun 'I', removing the narrator completely.

Sounds like third-person, when you put it that way.

Would you say that it was?

 

[Djmac1031]

Not Orson Welles?

No. Found a free version and the gentleman has a nice animated delivery that kinda reminds me of David Tennant when he's doing an English accent.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Sounds like third-person, when you put it that way.

Would you say that it was?

I don't think it matters. You can plug any pronoun in and the meaning and tone remains the same, whether it's I or he/she (or appropriate gender-neutral pronoun).

 

[ColtonWrites]

Did you/how did you "frame" the POV shift(s)? That is to say, what is in the story which indicates why the reader has access to the two POVs?

A 3p voice almost never requires that to be explained or justified. In my own opinion, a 1p voice basically always does. A mixture of voices requires it even more (in my opinion).

Does it work for you when its a flashback? I did some flashbacks in a novel-length piece that were 3rd-person limited to show how a non-POV character got to where she was and why. But I made it clear via section/chapter titles that it was an interlude and a flashback.

 

[Britva415]

Does it work for you when its a flashback? I did some flashbacks in a novel-length piece that were 3rd-person limited to show how a non-POV character got to where she was and why. But I made it clear via section/chapter titles that it was an interlude and a flashback.

It depends.

What you're describing sounds like it would be somewhat clear that the 1p narrator is providing the flashback in 3p voice, at some later time when they're composing the manuscript or transcript or whatever medium it is in which they're recording or telling the story. But it doesn't say anything at all about the occasion for recording the narrative itself.

What I'm sensitive to is the telling or the recording being necessarily an in-universe event or object. I object to the idea of a 1p narrative just somehow being a supernatural record of someone's own internal monolog or experience. (If that's what an author wants it to be, then, IMO, what they're really after is 3p omniscient.) And even without this particular objection, the 3p interlude isn't compatible with that, even if that is the out-of-universe justification for an in-universe 1p-voiced narrative.

 

[LegendInMyOwnMind]

I'm confronting this a little in something I'm writing. I have a very specific POV character. But sometimes I want the reader to have background that she doesn't need to have and can't really know. It's very tempting to jump out into the third person for a section to get that background down, but I'm trying to resist.

I write in the first person from my MMC's perspective. If your readers need to know something before MMC knows it, introductory phases work pretty well:


"I knew she couldn't possibly love me." Three months later, she would tell me that she did, then fuck my brains out to prove it.

 

[crookedletter]

I write in the first person from my MMC's perspective. If your readers need to know something before MMC knows it, introductory phases work pretty well:


"I knew she couldn't possibly love me." Three months later, she would tell me that she did, then fuck my brains out to prove it.

I agree, this can be a useful device. Later I would learn, etc. etc., but at the time...

But if that feels awkward or you find yourself doing things like that a lot, or bending over backwards with As you know, Bobisms to get characters to reveal needed context, then I would begin to question if a more omniscient narrator isn't a better fit.

 

[Britva415]

I would begin to question if a more omniscient narrator isn't a better fit.

I find most 1p voiced stories to really be bastardized versions of 3p omniscience, already.

A 1p voiced story purports to be, what, a verbal re-telling or a written record? A deliberate activity which the narrator is performing.

So when the story tells of events/experiences which are incompatible with the protag communicating about them, but the story conceit is that it's happening anyway, that's omniscience from a different POV.

It's like this weird "limited omniscience" where there's a narrator who can know the unknowable, but that narrator is for some reason limiting their own retelling to the POV they're pretending to be limited to while also being supernaturally capable of recounting it.

I can overlook when most 1p voiced narratives lack any kind of a frame which justifies the narrator's ability and occasion to retell/communicate the story later, after the events. But there are those stories which defy - no, which give the finger to - credulity because (A) they don't lift a finger to justify that, and (B) they narrate events which would be impossible for that person in that situation to ever narrate.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I think structure matters here. I don't like the idea of going 1P -> 3P in a story. But I can live with a 1P story with a 3P intro and/or outro, establishing the status quo before the story or after it. In third-person, Jedd Clampett goes shootin' at a rabbit and becomes an unimaginably wealthy oil baron, so he packs up his family and moves to Beverly Hills. In first person, I, Miss Jane Hathaway, navigate the Jane/Jethro/Janet love triangle until I fall in love with someone else who turns out to be a fraud or whatever. I never actually watched Beverly Hillbillies.

In that case, they're separate stories stapled together so the audience can understand the world in which the second story takes place.

 

[MillieDynamite]

There is no one else for Miss Jane Hathaway. After all, she and Jethro did raise Anne, but obviously never got married, or Jethro took Miss Jane's last name.

I think structure matters here. I don't like the idea of going 1P -> 3P in a story. But I can live with a 1P story with a 3P intro and/or outro, establishing the status quo before the story or after it. In third-person, Jedd Clampett goes shootin' at a rabbit and becomes an unimaginably wealthy oil baron, so he packs up his family and moves to Beverly Hills. In first person, I, Miss Jane Hathaway, navigate the Jane/Jethro/Janet love triangle until I fall in love with someone else who turns out to be a fraud or whatever. I never actually watched Beverly Hillbillies.

In that case, they're separate stories stapled together so the audience can understand the world in which the second story takes place.

 

[crookedletter]

(A) they don't lift a finger to justify that, and (B) they narrate events which would be impossible for that person in that situation to ever narrate.

I agree (B) can be a problem. (A), if I'm understanding it correctly, not so much. I don't need a framework for why and in what form a narrator is relating a story, whatever the perspective or relative omniscience of the narrator. I think it's part of the natural convention of a story being told -- we accept the teller is telling the story, without needing to establish what's behind their decision to do so. Or, at least, I do, and I think most readers do.

 

[LegendInMyOwnMind]

I agree, this can be a useful device. Later I would learn, etc. etc., but at the time...

But if that feels awkward or you find yourself doing things like that a lot, or bending over backwards with As you know, Bobisms to get characters to reveal needed context, then I would begin to question if a more omniscient narrator isn't a better fit.

I agree. I don't do it often; I try to structure my stories so it isn't needed so often. The third-person omniscient narrator works when you need to do a lot of context building. Personally, writing in the third person is just not as emotionally satisfying. My MMCs are mostly self-inserts anyway.

 

[Britva415]

we accept the teller is telling the story, without needing to establish what's behind their decision to do so

To me, it isn't about the decision/motivation. I can do without that. To me, it's about the means/occasion/circumstance. Who am I to this narrator? How/when/where is this being retold or recorded? How do I have access to this narrative, either as an in-universe audience or as an out-of-universe audience?

Most of the time it isn't essentially needed and doesn't detract too much from my perception of story quality. Sometimes it is and does - usually, when there are also other flaws present. And the (B) situation is one which wouldn't happen at all if the (A) situation were considered - or if the author would simply recognize that 1p is the wrong voice for the story.

 

[iwatchus]

Did you/how did you "frame" the POV shift(s)?

Could you explain framing?