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Hi everyone,
While we’re all dying, I thought it would be a good idea for me to share with you a couple lessons that I learned from a recent revision to my WIP. There are three main lessons I learned that I think anyone can benefit from.
First, I learned the key to writing good omniscient point of view. For those of you unfamiliar with the omniscient POV, it’s where the author doesn’t write in any character’s head, but can know what every character is thinking. The author can make any comment he wants to about the scene, and the comment is really his comment, not the character’s. The author can say things about the scene that the character doesn’t even know and even address the reader as Dickens sometimes does (though I don’t do this). It’s rightly said that with omnipotent, while each character’s voice is important, the author’s voice is the most important and is really what the whole book is made of. Now because this POV doesn’t actually let you inside a character’s head (though the author can say what a character is thinking, as in, “Jermy looked at the painting and considered how…”) people are sometimes critical of it saying that it makes the character’s less powerful. Unfortunately, this is truly the case, but that being said, some of the most powerful characters ever written have been done in omniscient. So omniscient doesn’t doom a character in the least bit, but it does make it very hard to write amazing characters.
This is something I had serious problems with because I was misusing the omniscient POV. This POV allows you to take the big picture look at things which can be incredibly powerful, but the problem was that I was doing that all the time instead of focusing on one single character. I found out (thanks to Kate) that if I want to create strong characters, for most scenes, I need to “pretend” like I’m writing in a deep third person POV. What I mean is that as the narrator, I need to narrate things as they seem to a single character, and as those events affect the character. I’ll give two examples. In the first example, I use way too much liberty with the omniscient, while in the second I write things only as they affect a single character.
1. Tim was walking down the path by the cliff. Above him, the mountain things were preparing their attack. Boulders were being moved to the edge. A mountain thing shoved one over the edge. Tim shouted as it landed mere feet in front of him.
2. Tim was walking down the path by the cliff. Faint noises were sifting through the canyon. He thought it must be Jerry and Lewis. They never seemed to leave him alone. He kicked a stone. Crash! A boulder landed mere feet in front of him. Tim flew back, yelping in terror. A cackle sounded overhead and Tim looked up and his heart skipped a beat as he saw the red eyes of a mountain thing looking down at him.
If you were paying attention, you should have seen that version two was much better. Both were written in omnipotent, but version two kept to a single character. That not only made things flow better, it allowed me to do more showing with emotion to give us a better idea of how Tim feels which is hugely important.Ok, lesson two. (Man, I’ve rambled a lot!) Another problem that I run into with doing omniscient is overviews, though these may appear in your writing no matter what POV you use. Doing an overview of an event, even if it’s short, can be damaging. Certainly, there are times when an overview is just the right thing to do, but more often they are not. An overview doesn’t show you how events are affecting any single character. Maybe they tell it, but maybe not even that. They certainly don’t have character interaction which is extreemly important in any POV, but possibly more so in omniscient than in any other. Overviews are characterization dark spots.
Lastly, I learned that it’s good to be critical about the necessity your very first chapters. First chapters can be some of the hardest, and since the plot hasn’t fully started yet, it can be easy to dally on things that are not important without even noticing it.
Hopefully that helps someone. I can clarify anything that didn’t seem clear (hopefully:) )
@kate-flournoy, did you see anything I missed?🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢
@Daeus there is nothing quite as satisfying as realizing you’ve really helped someone. 😀
No. You didn’t miss a thing. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
@kate-flournoy Ah, much satisfaction be upon you. Matthew is pretty satisfied too, so you can celebrate with him.
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@Daeus thanks. I think I will. *calls over shoulder* ‘Hey Matthew! Did you remember about the confetti?!’
*grins*
@Daeus I think the omniscient pov is one of the hardest to do. It can be done well but, like you said, it can be harder to create stronger characters. Another thing which can be hard and annoying if not done right in the omniscient view (I don’t know if your story does it or not; I just started…but some published books I’ve read do this) is the flow between characters. If you’re telling it deeply embedded in what character is thinking and sensing, then flip in the next sentence to the thoughts of a completely different character. Even though one can do that because it’s omniscient, it still has to flow between characters well or else it’s jolting.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
@hope Hmm, yes I should say it’s hard (knowing a thing or two about that). I think I’m starting to get the hang of it though. Let’s hope. Oh wait, I should say ‘let’s Hope’. Congratulations on your promotion to a verb.
I think I had some occasional problems with rough transitions before, but hopefully not anymore. If you see any though, please shoot them. I certainly do transition between characters. It’s one of those things about omniscient where every blessing has the potential to be a curse.
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*shakes head* Promotion accepted, I guess.
The other day I posted a picture on twitter of my feet…I’d traced my veins I could see with a felted pen (I had a novella to rework and didn’t want to do it. It was only natural to turn my pen elsewhere) and got a reply ‘when you pick up a pen to write, but it’s all in vein’. I’m still not sure what I think of that one. 😀
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Can I add something @Daeus? It’s about overviews. Or summaries. Or telling (instead of showing). After reading Showing & Telling: Learn How to Show & When to Tell for Powerful & Balanced Writing by Laurie Alberts I believe that summaries is rather essential to stories. I know that contradicts “show don’t tell” but hear me out.
You need to use summaries when you need to compress time or describe perpetual happenings. Or maybe you need to have some reflection time: one of the strengths of novels (as opposed to the visual strength of movies). My main point is that summaries occur more than you think in novels. Let’s say you have a character who interrogates a witness in the morning. Then the next morning the character finds the witness dead. What do you do in between? You have to summarize. What if you have an niece who lives with a crazy aunt? How will you show that the aunt is crazy? You have to summarize.
Now what’s that? You said you can show what happens instead of tell? Okay let’s see what would happen if that were true.
So you have the investigator who interrogated the witness–you describe what he had for lunch, how he went through the files at work, how he mulled over how the murder could’ve happened. Important stuff, right? Actually it isn’t because nothing important to the plot happens. Maybe you can have some great characterization moment or maybe you can show how intricate the murder was but you still have readers ready to drop the book. You can always characterize later on (actually every scene should have a great characterization moment).
What about the niece? You show the aunt being crazy. How she draws circles whenever she can. How she spends time staring at a mirror talking to her dead brother. How she sees snakes crawling around the house even though they live in Ireland (I have a strong desire to live there). Okay so that’s great. But what does the daughter do? I mean does she watch the aunt the whole day? If you think about it then it really doesn’t work. Now you have to add some showing (like dialogue) in there, but the majority of it will be telling. Also, this is dead time. You have to get to the next “good scene” quick. Giving long scenes of the aunt acting weird will bore the reader. Writing a summary (with some good showing moments) will be shorter and more compelling. And if you think about this if you have a strong point-of-view then you’ll also reveal character while telling.
So I’ve stated my case. @Daeus @hope @kate-flournoy
Can somebody attack me please?
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
Hey, @Mark-Kamibaya welcome back!! It would be a poor welcome indeed if someone attacked you now… XD
I do see what you’re saying, and to some extent I agree. For the most part, however, we aren’t talking about scene-by-scene summaries. In @Daeus’s case, it was several chapters summarizing a character’s childhood. (At least I assume that’s what he was talking about). For the most part, that should be relegated to flashbacks and subtext.
But with any summaries whatsoever, I would make the argument that you can skip them and let the next happening infer what happened in between. Writing is all about subtext, and subtext is all about the seen unseen. Inference. It makes the reader think.
In the case of the crazy aunt, that would be shown in the niece’s attitude. (POV). Say she walks in the door after a day of gardening and her aunt greets her with some off-the-wall comment about snakes strangling the mirror and making it so she couldn’t talk to her dead brother. The niece sighs and nods and gets on with whatever she was doing. That interaction only takes a moment, and it does advance the plot because presumably we need to know the aunt is crazy. But it’s not a summary. Or rather it’s about a chapter of relationship development deleted and crammed into a few words and a simple action/reaction… thing. I’ve forgotten the word. 😛 That’s subtext, and I’m pretty sure that’s where the majority of summary belongs.Does that make sense?
Hi, @Mark-Kamibaya, good to see you.
You’re right that overviews are essential, but I was arguing that they’re way too easy to overuse and that it’s best to always be critical of them.
To clear up what I was saying in my own novel, I was talking about any place in the novel where I overviewed events as if they happened in the past instead of showing them taking place in the present (even if I use past tense verbs. What I mean is that I have a live scene). The childhood chapters, @kate-flournoy, included a big overview when Matthew was at the Fletchers, but the burial chapter was not technically an overview because it was a live scene. It just still wasn’t best to keep.
As for your two examples, the murder one I could see going either way. You could give a summary, but I think it would still be better to have a live scene. Now, by live, I don’t mean “showing every second of what’s happening”. No, the investigator could arrive on the scene, see what’s there, and then you could say he wrapped things up and went on to some other scene. Granted, that would be an overview there, but it would only be one single sentence. You could also show him leaving in one paragraph which wouldn’t be to bad, but we’re assuming then that there is something really worth stretching out the length so that we can see it.
For the mad aunt one, I’d agree with Kate, it’s just so easy to show that it doesn’t make sense to make it part of an overview. If it can work smoothly, keeping details like that to subtext can have massive benefit. For many details, the reader will be able to figure them out by themselves if you give them a small hint or two. This is always way stronger.
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Okay I’ll respond with a more comprehensive reply later, but the point of a lot of summaries is that you’re describing perpetual happenings. Like as in it happens over and over again. So one scene might not cut it. A summary also gives a chance for the viewpoint character’s voice to shine.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
Yah. I totally get what you’re saying. I actually write everything like a movie. Like it shows everything as it is happening and (unfortunately) I barely enter into my viewpoint character’s mind (something I need to work on). However, once I read the book about showing and telling I really wanted to . . . liberate(?) my writing.
So do you guys get what I’m saying about perpetual happenings? A scene might work, but can’t you see how a short sweet summary (said in the viewpoint character’s unique voice) would really push that this happened again and again? Also, you would really highlight the perpetual occurrence instead of making it a passing thing. Subtext? Sure, but if it’s essential to the plot then you get to the point when you just have to tell it. You wouldn’t show a climax or turning point through subtext would you? Some moments have to be shown right in front of the reader.
And think about characters that you want to tell them what they’re like, but also want to give character development. So you got this person and the viewpoint character summarizes an incident in the person’s life. Is that a flashback? Sure. Summary? Yeah.
And think about reflection. There are millions of books that have reflection. Reflection is one of the strengths of books against movies! You can’t enter into a person’s head in movies (unless you’re watching X-men). And voice-overs are pretty stupid. And reflection is always done in summary.
So I hope you understand what I’m saying. I mean if you don’t have summaries and the like then you’ll end up with books that read like movies. Is that a good thing? Maybe. Might be trendy even. But you’re losing the strength of entering a person’s mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3QsUx0x_4w (video has language but is super helpful)
And for the record you should look at classic books. Even modern books. Rife with summaries.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
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