talking about writing

[truepenny]

katallen and matociquala are thinking about point of view and characterization.

I'm going to repeat here a comment I made on Kat's post, which is that the habit of having every major character be a PoV character is one that I particularly loathe in modern high fantasy (George R. R. Martin, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, to name three perpetrators). I get very crabby if there are too many viewpoint characters, because I feel like I'm being jerked around on some sort of weird head-hopping carnival ride--you know, the ones where you have the whole thing going in a circle, and then you have little sets of cars going in their own circles. Which is great for a ride, but lousy for a read.

But, at the same time, you know, I completely sympathize with the urge. The fantasy novel I worked on and worked on and worked on in high school and college, and never completed, had six or seven viewpoint characters, and in fact it foundered under their weight. I couldn't keep my own interest in that many people's minds. Multiple PoV looks like a relatively simple way to get panoramic scope and close characterization, and it looks like it must be the easiest way to tell the story. But neither of these things is true. What it is, is an easy way to diffuse the energy and drive of the narrative so completely that the story turns into a stagnant bog.

I'm sure there are writers who can pull it off (and I'm sure there are many people who would tell me indignantly that Martin, or Williams, or Jordan, does pull it off). But it's not easy, and I think, nine times out of ten, it's not the right way to tell the story. Because, nine times out of ten, it's a choice made out of laziness rather than craft, or out of an anxious desire to make everything perfectly clear. Sections from the villain's PoV tend to have that motive behind them, and the story would generally be leaner and more interesting without them. I think it's good for readers not to know everything, and especially not to find out everything too easily or too quickly. And forcing the protagonist to find out these same things, rather than just bouncing over into the villain's head to let the reader in on them, is better for the narrative.

Comments

[libskrat]

Maybe that's why I can't get into the George RR Martin bricks that everyone tells me I'll love.

I do like a lot of his short stuff (for a value of "like" roughly equating to "am pleasantly and sometimes not-so-pleasantly creeped out by").

The other thing that occurs to me is that in a lot of these books all you get from head-hopping is the extra bits of information, because the character voices all sound alike. And that's just sad and wrong. (I want to cite Guy Gavriel Kay as a perp here, but I may be doing so in ignorance; it's been a while.)

[reannon.livejournal.com]

The one who pulls it off best - and I know this is sometimes an unpopular opinion - is Stephen King. If you look at an epic like "The Stand," he must have hundreds of viewpoint characters. There's probably a dozen or more main characters, but we see through the eyes of literally hundreds over the course of the book.

The trick, I think, isn't to keep from head-jumping. The trick is fully realized characters. King may bring us inside the head of Joe-Bob the county deputy for only a page and a half, but in that brief time, Joe-Bob is a real, three-dimensional person with thoughts, feelings and a sense of humor. We care about him, and the things we see through his eyes are things we understand better through him than we would have as a disinterested observer, or through the eyes of a "main" character who wouldn't necessarily know the things Joe-Bob does to put them in context.

But then, that's why King's King and I'm not. :)

[libskrat]

Interesting. Makes me think of the "POV vignette" technique which I get a serious kick out of when it's done right. For example, there's a bluejay bit in Beagle's Last Unicorn that absolutely sends me to the floor howling with laughter every time I read it.

And then there's Tony Makarios's story in The Golden Compass; finding him near Bolvangar simply would not work if the earlier vignette weren't what it is. Though that isn't actually from Tony's POV -- it's omni, focused on Tony.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. Around the time I quit reading most fantasy, I was also getting really sick of chapters from the villains' POV. Usually I would up skipping 'em.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

I would say that Williams pulls it off in the one multiple PoV series of his that I've read - namely, Otherland. I do find some of the PoV characters a little irritating, but I would call that personal perspective rather than a fault of the character and he manages to hold my interest in them for most of four books when really I could easily have lost interest after one. And I find the majority of the PoVs fascinating.

Martin, however, and more especially Jordan...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I agree, in Otherland it works much better, although I'd still rather spend less time in the villains' heads. But that's because I find Dread incredibly boring.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

I think the reason it mostly works in Otherland is that juggling character perspective is actually needed, because everybody has a slightly different set of information from everybody else and it would be a little awkward to juggle that in omni without it coming off as awkward or confusing. Not that it couldn't be done, either.

Yeah, Dread was annoying. It did help to explain what was actually going on at the other end, though.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I mean the other thing is a strong desire to bang one's head on the wall because one can't figure out a way to get the villain's motivation across via one's rather dim POV character. When I was last having this problem, daedala thought of a fiendishly subtle way to do it, which I implemented, and subsequently one of the other characters just sat down and explained it all, which just goes to show that my subconscious had it under control all the time.

Actually, all the examples I can think of where I was tearing my hair trying to get something conveyed through the POV of my rather dim protagonist (the Sulien stuff is 300 kwords and she is one of the three least perceptive people on the island) wound up with clever and effective solutions, and I learned a lot from doing that.

(Why am I writing in omni again?)

zorinth won't read anything with too many POVs. He claims that the tendency to cut from "The sword slashed down towards Harry, he dodged, but not enough!" to "Sandy was worried that she hadn't bought enough tea bags for the party" (his example) is too irritating to be enjoyable.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Counterpoint here; I really like abrupt transitions such as that if done well enough; they're the narrative equivalent of a roller-coaster changing direction, I like them if you can give me a solid enough roller-coaster and a decent seatbelt.

There are story-shapes that require lots of POVs; I for one am very taken with how Martin is doing that in Song of Ice and Fire.

[kate_nepveu]

the Sulien stuff is 300 kwords and she is one of the three least perceptive people on the island

Goodness. Who are the other two?

(And happy birthday!)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Goodness knows. I'm certainly not keeping a list.

It's a saying, where I come from.

The Celts appeared to be very fond of making lists in threes, the Three Thinnest People on the island of Britain, the Three Most Generous People on the island of Ireland, the Three Dumbest Jokes on the island of Britain, the Three False Imprisonments,
that kind of thing. There are books collecting them, for Ireland and Wales. The Welsh one is called the Triads of Ynys Prydain, edited by Rachel Bromwich, and there's a copy in Lancaster University library that misses me terribly. They keep saying they're going to release a new edition, and oh how I wish they would.

Angas at one point remarks to Sulien that she is one of the three least tactful people on the island of Tir Tanagiri, and also that some particular tactlessness (mixing up Elenn and Atha) would be one of the Three Most Tactless Blunders of Sulien ap Gwien, and then changes it to "on the island of..."

But it's just a saying, not a declaration one is about to make a list. I sometimes accuse Zorinth of being one of the three most talkative kids on the island of Montreal.

[kate_nepveu]

Okay, then. I think my equivalent would be "one of the most, if not the most", which is much less specific. And hey, you know lots of stuff about her universe already, so it seemed perfectly reasonable you'd know that too. =>

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When there are too many POVs and the reader is being kept in the dark about what some characters are up to, I find myself conscious of being kept in the dark. If there are one or two or up to four-ish, there's a perfectly good reason for not telling me right away what Character X is up to: because it's not in the scope of what the 1-4 POV characters know. But with the shifting POVs, it's authorial manipulation, and I can't help but be conscious of that.

Martin is one of the worst examples. He'll have a "cliffhanger" chapter ending from one character's POV and then not go back to it, but by now, it doesn't shock me in the slightest when people are dead or are not. It just doesn't matter any more, because it feels like it's all POV manipulation.

I don't mind when authors use Author Tricks. I do it myself. I do mind seeing the strings pulled, watching them set up the mirrors and waft the smoke.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

But that's not exclusively a function of multiple limited third; I think it's even more annoying in omniscient, in fact, which is why I keep wanting to slam Guy Gavriel Kay's latest books into the wall.

Why do good writers hamstring themselves with Stupid Writing Tricks?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think because it's easy to mistake the complicatedness of Stupid Writing Tricks for actual cleverness.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For some reason, it annoys me less in omniscient, because the author *can't* tell me *everything* and isn't pretending to tell me all about so-and-so's perspective for entire chapters. Hmm. That doesn't make much sense rationally, now that I look at it, because the large-numbers-of-limited-third narrators are also not infinite.

Even first person can fall into this pitfall if it's overtly retrospective: _Kushiel's Dart_ drove me absolutely batty with all of the "I didn't know then what I know now"s, drawing attention to the fact that she knows more than she's telling us and is just not telling as an Author Trick.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Yes, but, but, but...

I'm a bit disconcerted by this chorus of disapproval for multiple tight-third, not least because I am currently working on something with nine major POVs. Which each have their reasons for being there, and which pair off and interact in ways that are integral to the structure and conception of the whole thing. [ Short version; most of the POVs are experienced as dreams by other characters, and who connects to whom this way and why is central to what the book is doing at several levels. Am not using the villain's POV any more, which as the villain's motivations and objectives change completely several times over the course of the story, and the villain is of the value of not-sane that goes into complete denial about ever having been anything different to what they are at the moment, getting the motivations in at any given point is being hard.]

Like anything else, I think it's a technique that lends itself to being done badly or well, and I'm not yet willing to abandon the possibility of doing it well.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Couple clarifications on my own stance.

1. I, personally, dislike multiple PoV in the abstract. This isn't to say it isn't a perfectly valid way to go about writing or anything like that, just that I, in my own head, don't particularly like it. I have to be won over to it.

Which can and has happened, goodness knows.

2. It seems like I've read a lot of bad multiple PoV recently. (I include Martin in this, because I found all the switching boring and hard to follow ... although this is possibly because I disliked so many of the characters, rather than a problem with the technique. It's a little hard to separate oh god not ANOTHER PoV switch from oh god not THIS guy again. But, again, this complaint is me, personally, on the inside of my own head.)

I'm not arguing that multiple PoV shouldn't be used. Like any other technique, it's fantastic if used well, terrible if used badly. I think what I was trying to articulate in this post was the number and range of wrong reasons people can have for trying to write it. And objecting to its current trendiness.

[libskrat]

Well, okay, I'll jump the fence here. I just finished Kij Johnson's The Fox Woman, which is multiple-POV (it's written as diary entries from three different people), and I loved loved loved it. (Though she got a weeeeee bit heavyhanded with The Point toward the end.)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it may be the nature of livejournal, which tends to attract support more than dispute. Or at least it's so in my circles.

Also, I disagree with at least one of Truepenny's examples -- I think Martin is doing marvelous and sophisticated things with the juxtaposition of various POVs -- but as I didn't have anything more interesting to say than "I disagree," I didn't see any point in posting it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's a YMMV thing. Some people love Martin; some people don't. All of them are smart people with good taste. I was feeling particularly grumpy about the issue when I posted. That's all.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the Martin per se, although I wish they would head each page with the viewpoint character and not just the chapter opener. I think Melissa Scott's The Kindly Ones is an interesting use of multiple POV -- mostly different limited thirds, with one first person narrator taking scattered chapters.

The only thing I really don't like is jumping around POVs within a scene -- if you want to tell an interwoven story with different POVS, I'm okay with that, so long as they're a) different enough not to be confusing, b) it's a part of the story your existing POV character really *couldn't* have told, and c) you remember to close off a subthread for every new one you open.

My issue with Jordan is that he's now spinning so *many* plates that each one can only rotate a quarter turn in each mammoth volume. Between that and the "he remembered" exposition and the repetition that verges on self-parody, bleah.

I think you're right about the explanations, though. They're very unwilling to let the reader guess about what led to anything, which is unfortunate, since to me that sense of coming in in medias res re: stories you *don't* get the full history of gives a world a rich depth that nothing can quite replace.

Mer

"you look like a fretful porpentine"

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

this is off-topic (though i'm really enjoying the POV discussion), but late last night I was rereading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, when i read the above sentence (on the first page of ch 23) and gasped. though it's possible this is merely a funny-as-hell coincidence, I need to ask: did you choose the name for your icon from that book? or encounter the phrase elsewhere? - kate

Re: "you look like a fretful porpentine"

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's from Hamlet. I, v, 13-20. The Ghost tells Hamlet:
                          But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

P. G. Wodehouse has a riff on this passage, too, although since I can never tell one Jeeves & Wooster book from another, I don't remember where it is.

Re: "you look like a fretful porpentine"

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

since I can never tell one Jeeves & Wooster book from another, I don't remember where it is.

I have this problem, too. thanks for the explanation!

[glyneth.livejournal.com]

Found this via matociquala...

I've been poking at a book for over a year now, and I have just come to the realization that I need 6 main characters, with one of them dying off mid-book. I had 5 originally.

Would you say that this many characters aren't needed, or that they can be there, but we don't need their POV? Or just that it has to be written well, and carefully, to make it work for you?

I know each novel is different, but I'm just curious.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Which is to say, you have to do what the book needs you to do. Whatever that turns out to be.

I, personally, dislike multiple PoV as a trend in modern fantasy fiction. But that doesn't mean it's not a useful technique, and that doesn't mean it can't be well done, or that I never like it. Stephen King is an example, as someone pointed up-thread somewhere, of someone who can handle it brilliantly when he's on his game. People disagree with me about Martin. My pontifical tone in the original post was a self-indulgence.

In other words, I'm not an authority here. Just opinionated. *g*

[glyneth.livejournal.com]

My husband has read the Martin books, but he's a reader's reader...not into the craft of it. I will start them someday, when I have a month off and can stay up late reading them.

The Stand is an excellent book in its original form, IMNSHO. King can do it well, and since my novel is also about a handful of survivors in a post-apocalyptic sort-of-world, I suppose I should just cross my fingers and hope. :)

Thanks for your reply!

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Which is to say, you have to do what the book needs you to do. Whatever that turns out to be.

Yeah, what she said.

This discussion set me off on a review of my own WiP, which has four PoV characters and is going to be rather short, only about 90k words. After wrestling with it for a few days (in between all that RL stuff) I concluded that I sure don't need any more, but I also need all four. Two of them are splitting the protagonist's job (because I dislike omnicompetent protagonists), and the other two (the villain and her opponent) are necessary because the underlying theme of the novel is that faith/doubt thing, and they provide two essential perspectives on the matter - not to mention the fact that the plot is based on their conflict, but they'd both make lousy protagonists.

It's kind of a four-way compromise, and it may not work at all, but that's what I've decided for right now. And I feel more confident for having actually thought it through, instead of going on instinct the way I was before.

Bujold?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

How about Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign? It jumps between at least three unreliable first-person narrations, and I think she did a great job with them.

Then there's her Mirror Dance, which has 5 povs within one character....

Re: Bujold?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I like Bujold better when she sticks to one viewpoint character. Or has two for a really good thematic reason, as in Mirror Dance.

Again, YMMV.