distance POV's

[nathan]

For the last year or so I have been fascinated with 3rd person, disengaged POV. [For the life of me I can't remember the proper term]. I just love it--not because I think it intrinsiclly better than any other POV style but for the reason blue is my favorite color and orange is not.

I like keeping the reader at a distance from the protaganist. The personal thoughts and reflections of the main actor are kept hidden to a large degree. All you see is how the character acts to stimulous and what words they speak leaving motivation and personality to evolve on its own in the mind of the reader.

I think it is my fascination with Less Than Zero after all these years but I don't know. It is a POV device most often seen in darker literary circles but I don't see it so much in genre work though it shows up in detective and horror fiction occassionally.

I was curious what others thought of this style [or if your know the proper name for this category]. I'm writing my Bolan's like this more and more though I was always doing that somewhat right from the start.

Is this lazy writing that tries to excuse lack of characterization or merely a single trick in a bag of writing tricks?

VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

[Jordan Lapp]

You can say a lot about something from their actions. I, too, am trying to write more like that. My writing group calls it 'cinematic' writing.

I think finding a mix is the right formula. Zoom out for most of the story, zoom in for the emotional parts.

Jordan Lapp

http://jordanlapp.com/blog

[Bill Ward]

I think its great, not a trick at all but just the other end of the pole from intimate first person, when you have to a lot of things differently too. The 'standard' limited omniscient and omniscient have their tricks as well, but obviously aren't as fragile as these two extreme POVs.

I've written a few things like this but they are never completely strict on staying away from the headspace, but even by writing a 'very-limited omniscient' or whatever you'd call it I think the effect can be powerful. As you both say, it can have a cinematic feel and definitely works in darker stuff as it keeps the reader at arm's length. Risky though, and some readers just aren't going to like it.

[Firlefanz]

Funny, I find myself drawn to almost the opposite with some of my characters - I enjoy writing in 1st person. My favourites are those that add slightly sarcastic comments on their own actions. (Right now, I'm writing a paranormal detective who likes to think of himself as hardboiled.)

Nathan, what you describe reminds me of movies - and maybe that's one reason why this kind of story-telling is growing. It's similar to a medium almost everyone is familiar with, and that's how stories are told on TV.

I wouldn't call it lazy writing. Maybe it's even a little more difficult, because you have to work harder to pull the reader in, compared to 1st person. Your character still has to be interesting, even if you only do it through dialogue and action.

I can see myself enjoying this, actually, but more as reader than as writer. :)

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons

[Jordan Lapp]

For me, 1st person is lazy writing. You can just 'tell' the reader how something should make them feel simply because they are so close to the character. Cinematic writing is way tougher for me because you don't get the luxury of saying 'He made me angry'. You have to say 'John threw the dead weasel at Fred's feet and stormed off.'

Guess it comes down to whatever POV you're comfortable.

Jordan Lapp

http://jordanlapp.com/blog

[Mike Lynch]

Nathan pondered aloud the idea of writing in the third person. As he sought out the adivice of others, the same nagging question came beckoning its siren song again, 'Did I leave the iron on?' He rose up from his chair covered with the last few remnants of his lunch--nacho chips and cheeze whizz. This was going to be another bad day.

How's that for third person writing for you?

[Jordan Lapp]

Well, in my professional opinion, it's sadly lack in dead weasels

Jordan Lapp

http://jordanlapp.com/blog

[Jeff Stehman]

nathan said...
For the last year or so I have been fascinated with 3rd person, disengaged POV. [For the life of me I can't remember the proper term].

I think all of these names are used: third-person objective, third-person impersonal, camera-eye, observer-in-the-corner. You're talking about the POV used in most movies and TV shows, right?

I usually write in tight third. I'm inside one character's head for the duration of a scene. Occasionally I'll use camera-eye, and I have one or two stories in omniscient. I've used first person twice. One was a flop. The other works well, but it's only first-person in the opening and closing scenes.

First-person gets my vote for the most overly used POV. I'd guess more than a third of the stories I've critiqued have been in first-person. It's rare I think it adds anything to the story, and more often than not, I get the feeling the POV character is saying 'Look at me! Look at me!' all the way through the story. But when first-person works, it can really work. Much of Brust's Vlad Taltos series is an example of this, as does Simon R Green's Nightside series (although this is noir, so first-person is a no-brainer). If a first-person story isn't tightly written with a sharp-witted POV, I'm very unlikely to enjoy it.

What bugs me more than first-person, however, is when story wanders from tight POV to tight POV within a scene instead of being omniscient. This makes it hard for me to identify with a character, and sometimes forces me to reread passages to clarify what's happening, and I hate when that happens.

--Jeff Stehman

[darkbow]

I try to write in that 'cinematic' third-person mode. Usually while I actually writing I add in all kinds of thoughts and feelings of the characters, but I cut almost all of that out during rewrite. It reads better that way most of the time.

For me it was a product of two things:
1.) Like Nathan, the Bolan books. I don't write them, don't really want to, but I've read a ton of them and learned a lot about action writing from them.
2.) Screenwriting. I had writer's block (or fear or whatever you want to call it if you are one of those who doesn't believe in writer's block) for five years. I got over it by screenwriting, which then helped me get back into novels and short story writing. I see a lot of similarities between the modern spec screenplay and the modern novel, almost as if the two are slowly merging toward being the same artform.

www.tyjohnston.blogspot.com
www.thereddoorconcierge.blogspot.com

www.thereddoorconcierge.com

[nathan]

T, I don't think the majority of Bolan books are written in this way. I think they tend be 3rd person tight not 3rd camera-eye often with shifting POVs to include tight 3rd of secondary character or villians. The major difference being that for the most part in 3rd cinematic you aren't privy to the character's thoughts: you have to intuit them.


Not that I'm saying one is better than the other, not at all. Just making an observation on the differences. Back in the day Don Pendleton used to spend a huge amount of verbiage on the metaphysical philosphy behind Bolan's action as a vigilente--invested quite a lot in it. After 10 years he was a fairly conflicted and 3-D personna. That's been smoothed out of the series quite a bit over the years--there's such a canon there's nothing left to characterize. But the point being that Bolan's thoughts, not just tactical, but about his own view of his actions is common--which doesn't mean it's bad.


For the life of me I can't think off hand of a really good example of this other than Bret Easton Ellis--but I'm low on caffenine at the moment and have just read less than zero so go figure.

VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

[darkbow]

Nathan, I agree with you. I just meant that the Executioner books, especially those beyond Pendleton's tenure, were written very tightly with action and dialogue usually strongest. Yeah, I can remember plenty of paragraphs about Bolan's thinking processes, but usually they weren't too lengthy. Usually.

www.tyjohnston.blogspot.com
www.thereddoorconcierge.blogspot.com

www.thereddoorconcierge.com

[Bill Ward]

But the trick isn't so much just limiting the internal monologue or thought revelations, its deliberately leaving them out in places where the reader might expect them, and forcing the reader to draw inferences from subtle observational and action cues. Even a story with a very minimum of 'headspace' can really be miles apart from a story with none if it uses those thoughts as safety nets for the reader in every instance where the reader expects and needs that kind of reassurance. Forcing them to make up their own mind can be risky, but also very powerful if pulled off successfully.

[nathan]

Yes! The feeling of 'ah-ha' the reader gets with each moment of clue realization. It seems like the whole novel gives a form of pay-off to the reader every few pages as they figure even mundane stuff out for themselves. It's showing, not telling at its purist--though I hasten to repeat I mean all this as a Compare & Contrast and no Good v. Bad.

VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

[erazmus]

I think I'd like a Bolan book where I get less of inside his head and more of what he's doing. A lot of times the writers seem to fill the blanks between the action with internal dialog, and not with a lot of originality in it. The story doesn't have to take place in Bolan's head, after all these years thats pretty well mapped territory.
But the series editors are likely to frown at anything too original, like say; a Bolan story told through a supporting characters POV beginning to end. Though it'd be fun, especially in a noir style first person narrative.
Mike

Michael D. Turner
'Psyched Up' in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
'Dutchman Rescue'in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm

'An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern' in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php

[BethS]

Jordan Lapp said...
For me, 1st person is lazy writing. You can just "tell" the reader how something should make them feel simply because they are so close to the character. Cinematic writing is way tougher for me because you don't get the luxury of saying "He made me angry". You have to say "John threw the dead weasel at Fred's feet and stormed off."

Guess it comes down to whatever POV you're comfortable.



Well, but...first-person should involve just as much "showing" as any other POV. It's not easy to do first-person well, and I'm sure examples of it done poorly abound, which may be the reason you're disenchanted with it.

It has been my reading experience that a disengaged third-person POV is even more likely to fall into "telling" traps.

~Beth[/quote]

[BethS]

nathan said...


I like keeping the reader at a distance from the protaganist. The personal thoughts and reflections of the main actor are kept hidden to a large degree. All you see is how the character acts to stimulous and what words they speak leaving motivation and personality to evolve on its own in the mind of the reader.


Is this lazy writing that tries to excuse lack of characterization or merely a single trick in a bag of writing tricks?




For myself, I prefer to more engaged with the character. I don't like filters being put between me and story.

That said, I do agree with your point that showing is often more desirable than telling--it's sometimes the difference between subtlety/sophistication, and amatuerish writing. But you can still be deep in POVand largely rely onshowing to communicate emotions.And I can imagine instances where keeping out of a character's head can turn out to be more compelling than letting us in on his thoughts.

~Beth[/quote]

[ScrewMoonshine]

In my English class, it was called Objective Perspective. Never been a big fan of it, as I like having a certain degree of intimacy with at least one of the characters.

Also, I've seen many cases where it is used out of laziness, as a way to avoid deciding what a character's emotional reaction to a scene would be. The old 'He stood up, saying nothing, and walked away' bit is often a cloak for a whole slew of possible inner reactions. Rather than trying to figure out what the character's feelings would be, and then defining them in a convincing manner, the writer cops out of the whole situation and makes the reader try and guess. I believe that it is always possible to show a character's thoughts and emotions using the Objective 3rd Person, but many writers employ it because it's the only perspective that lets them avoid showing or telling what the characters are thinking.

I often like a balance in the perspective, one which tells the character's thoughts and feelings when it makes for good telling, and otherwise leaves them implied by the action.

And there are other ways of getting away from straight-forward telling in 3rd Person Limited. Sometimes I tell a scene from the perspective of a character whose feelings are far less compelling and complex than the character he's interacting with. In a way, this is an even bigger challenge for displaying a character's inner feelings, since you can only relate things that your POV character would notice, whereas Objective Perspective is aware of everything that goes on in the physical realm.

Robert Orme

Out now:
'On the Tree Top' in Ultraverse vol.3 #5 (www.ultraverse.us)
'The Scab, the Man, and the I.V.' in Mount Zion Speculative Fiction Review #3 (www.mountzionpress.com)

Coming soon:
'More Than One Way to Protect' in Lords of Justice (www.carnifexpress.net/blogs/)
'And Afterward' and 'Candy Lover' in Flashshot, April 30 and May 23 (www.gwthomas.org/subscribe.htm)

[nathan]

ScrewMoonshine said...
In my English class, it was called Objective Perspective.

THanks for that Robert, I was able to google that and come up with this from wiki:

There is also a "Third person objective" perspective which tells a story without detailing any characters' thoughts and instead gives an objective point of view. This point of view can be described as "a fly on the wall" and is often used in newspaper articles. For instance the writer is restricted to not being able to use I, me or my.

I have no idea why I'm currently so enamored with it at present. But I just kind of dig the atmosphere that comes from being at arms length. I love reading it and like writing it.

It is almost the exact opposite of the reaction I have to 1st person. I have no true objective hesitations about 1st--just subjective hangups.


VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

[MichaelEhart]

Hmmm... I have two series characters in first person. One is a pastiche of hard-boiled, so first person is part of the shtick. The other is usually first person for a pretty coldly worked out reason. Other than that, I really don't mind writing or reading first person, especially since so much detective fiction is written that way. I also will use first person in a unreliable narrator story (I have a character very losely based on Casanova who will become a series character, currently languishing in 'someday soon' anthology--- someday soon being nearly 2 years now who is clearly form the first paragraph untrustworthy) , but will make it pretty evident that that everything presented is subjective--- this is much harder to write, BTW, but the reward is a sly, wink at the reader kind of voice that either works or completely sucks, resulting in several hours of writing being tossed as worthless.

"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, September 2007
"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review. August 2007
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, July 2007
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"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, March 2007
"The Death of Number 23" Dark Krypt,Fall 2006
"Servant of the Manthycore" Sword Review, April 2006
"Voice of the Spoiler" Better Fiction,Spring 2006
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"It's a Living" Byzarium---November 2005
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" The Sword Review, October 2005
Host, 2005 Nebula Awards Live Chat, sff.net
http://mehart.blogspot.com/

[RLCopple]

I think I prefer writing and reading in third person, limited as a rule. But then again, my most successful to date is a first person work. Of which, a series will be coming out that I feel real good about, writing in first person. Figured since I wrote the first one that way, it might be too jarring to write the rest in third. First worked for the first story because it was an internal debate/tension within himself that he dealt with. I think it worked better for the last one too because of some of the experiences he goes through there, it worked better from the more subjective pov.

I think there is a difference, too, between omniscient and objective pov. The former being free to jump into whose ever head one likes (like Tolkien and Lewis did) while the later being jumping into no one's head at all. Someday I thought I might try that last one, but they are harder to write well, I think, because a reader almost expects, most of the time, to make an emotional connection with a character which a more intimate pov allows. It is even one of the advantages of writing over movies, that you are able to get inside the head where movies generally don't short of the character's thoughts being broadcast when no one is speaking type thing, but not often done. To get that emotional connection in an objective pov is the key, even if the connection isn't intimate. The emotion still needs to be there.

R. L. Copple

http://blog.copple.us
http://www.raygunradio.com
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[BitterHermit]

Jordan Lapp said...
Well, in my professional opinion, it's sadly lack in dead weasels

What's with the marmot aggression? Weasels are people, too. Or not.

Exile of my own dull vice. . .

[Quetzalcoatl]

I'd be interested to see a sample of this type ofnarrative. Interesting.





Beware of words, for they holda power that can alter the fabric of our minds; intangible words that can summon the dormant predator from the dank recesses of the mind.

~Eryl Ravenwell~
When the Enchantress Whispers to the Beasts
http://erylravenwell.blogspot.com

[Anthony G Williams]

Of my two novels so far, the first is written in the third person, with multiple POVs (one main and one subsidiary character, with a clutch of less significant ones who often only appear for one scene), the second is written in the first person.


The reason for the difference is simply that the POVs fitted the particular plots -it wasn't something I thought about consciously in either case, it just seemed to be the obvious way to do it.


Having said that, when reading books I do like to relate to the principal character (I stop reading if I can't) and I particularly hate stories which reveal, for instance, that a trusted subsidiary character is a traitor aiming to do in the oblivious PC. I like to learn things as the PC does, and try to figure them out with him/her.





Tony Williams
Scales (2007)
The Foresight War (2004)
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk