Here's a question I've been wrestling over for a while, with my WIP. I just wondered of anyone had any idea or suggestions about it.

The book is told in the third person, and is essentially in the WIP of just the MC, but every now and again I have short scenes in the POV of another character. This character is now 17 - basically adult - but most of her scenes are sort of 'flashbacks' to various incidents in her childhood - necessary as we try to piece together a (sort of) mystery about what she is really like and what has made her how she is now. Anyway... most of them are not true flashbacks in the sense of being told as 'live action' from her childhood, but are, rather, her 17-year-old self looking back and remembering. I think I want to do it that way because (i) sometimes I want to give glimpses into her thoughts now, and what she thinks now about what happened then (ifswim), and (ii) the child voice would be just too difficult, especially as some of these things are memories from when she was as young as three or four (though they go through to when she was about thirteen).

So... my dilemma is this. How to write them in a voice which is her voice now (a 17-year-old almost-adult) but yet give them the flavour of how a child would have experienced the event (even in some cases a very young child). Do I, as I get into the recalled event, use childish words and phrases? Or is it just in the 'what' of what she remembers (the little details a child would especially recall) that I should convey her young age, rather than also the 'how' of the language I employ to describe the events?

It occurs to me that it might have more immediacy if, at least as I get into the description of the past, we start to feel it is the character-as-a-child, her at the time, who is telling the story, or remembering it - that she is back there, and thus us with her - rather than it just being a memory recounted from a distance.

Does the question even make sense to anyone except me??

Help!! All thoughts very welcome.

Rosy



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Did I just type 'WIP' when I meant 'POV'??? Please excuse general incoherence, incompetence, etc.

What an interesting question. You say that you want us to know that it's a 17 year old looking back so that she can speak with some understanding of what was happening - what about mixing the two voices within each flashback? And also mixing present and past tense? In some you could begin with the 17 year old voice and sort of mix into the child voice; then once that's established, you can begin straight in with the child voice and cut back to 17 year old as necessary, eg: (forgive terrible off the cuff examples)

EXAMPLE ONE:
It was so shit being six. I was always locked out of the loop that was our family chaos...no, Daddy, I want to stay and play with Abbie. Abbie's my best friend. She's got a beautiful princess dress. And horns and a long tail. I don't WANT to go to see Grandma. I don't like it there.

EXAMPLE TWO:
I hate her hate her hate her. My wrist hurts from where she twisted it. I going to tell on her... Only telling just made it worse. My father always took her side. And I shrunk a little each time he did.

Well, hope that makes sense.
Susiex

This is such a difficult one. I don't know if you remember the novel I was working on when I first joined ww? It was the story of a woman who is obsessed by memories of her first love. Whenever we went back to the past I deliberately applied a filter, so that the reader was always aware we were sharing a memory rather than sliding all the way back to live action iyswim, because I wanted to explore the limitations and distortions of memory. However, this led to one of the main criticisms of the book - everyone who asked for the full said they would have preferred it if I had gone all the way back into the memories and presented them in real time, as they felt that keeping them as memories made them less immediate/ powerful.

I was sorry about this as one of the things I was interested in exploring was the ungraspability of memory. However, just because I couldn't pull it off, that doesn't mean you can't, it just depends on what you are trying to do. If you just want to give back-story, then there is nothing to stop you presenting the segments in a clean way: as though they are happening to the little girl (so it is the pov of the girl at the age she is during the incident). If however, you want to filter it through the eyes of the girl as she is now, then maybe you need to frame it more with her interpretation of what she remembers (so it's the pov of a 17-year-old consciously commenting on how she thinks she felt).

Does this make sense?

If they're self-contained scenes, you do have the option of using present tense for the 17yr old now, and past for the child. You can then keep them both in play more easily, sliding in and out of flashback, sometimes the teenager now not bein sure about memories, sometimes a fully-realised bit of flashback. It's easier with different tenses, because the reader's more aware of where they are.

Sorry, my example-constructing brain has deserted me. I'll have a go later.

Emma

Susie - that's an interesting idea.... not sure I could pull it off very well, but I might experiment a bit. The segments tend to be short anyway - none more than 1,000 words, I think, and most nearer 500.

Saturday - I always loved the sound of that book, and it's such a shame nothing came of it, publication-wise. The way you describe what you were trying to do about memory and its unreliability sounds just brilliant. Yes, I suppose the purpose of these segments of mine is basically to drip in some back story, though they always relate to something that the character is thinking and doing in the main story (or at least that's the idea!) so they hep to give us an angle on why she's behaving as she is in the here-and-now. I really can't imagine just doing them as live action flashbacks - I mean, it would be OK when she's twelve, but how do I write in the POV of a 3- or 4-year-old? Eek - I think it is beyond me!

Maybe the thing is to use her 17-year-old voice and vocabulary, but to have the understanding she has of the events be presented as limited, in the way that a child's view of events always is limited. And then sometimes (but only sometimes) add a layer of her thinking about it again now, and new understandings/realisations dawning... That is kind of what you meant, Susie, wasn't it, by your examples? Except there you do mix the adult and child voices/vocabularies....

Urg. Thinking about this really ties me in knots!

R x

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Crossed with you, Emma. Perhaps I do need to experiment with the idea of different voices, and different tenses.

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I'm horribly conservative about tense, though. I find it very hard to imagine myself writing anything in the present tense!

Yes, that was what I meant. Really, it's just a suggestion to experiment a bit, and see which version 'lands' best for your story. Only you know (and will recognise) what is right. It does seem to depend very much on which is more important to the emotion and sense of the story - the seventeen year old account or the child account. Whichever it is would perhaps need to be the most immediate in terms of vocabulary and tense.
Gosh, you do set yourself challenges!
Susiex

Exaggerating, to make the point, assuming the memory is of very young:

Anna slams out of the house, hoping Dave is still gawping at the inside of the door, walks along the road and tries to remember that time; the time Mum says she can't remember. Anna's not sure who was there: Grandma, obviously, Mum not, she's sure. And Dad, perhaps? Yes, Dad, because he was making the cake in the kitchen, and when Anna wandered in he bent right down and offered her the wooden spoon to lick. Anna liked that. She liked licking the beater even more, because you could curl your tongue round the metal bits and stick it into all the corners, and get every last scrap out.

Anna still likes cake mixture, but it never tastes the way it did then. Was it the flour? Or all that butter? Was it knowing that when he'd done with the cake Dad would let her do the washing up, standing on a stool with an apron and lots of washing up stuff so that there was a huge pile of bubbles? Mum had a dishwasher, that was boring, and sort of smelly. Funny how you change, Anna thinks now. When Dave said it would be daft to spend money on a dishwasher in the new flat, when it wouldn't take her a minute, and he'd help, she was furious. She's still furious. She vows, there and then, storming along the road, never, ever, ever to take a job which will mean she can't afford a dishwasher.

Emma

That helps a lot, Emma, yes. Thank you.

When we go into past tense you are giving her memories more or less unfiltered, so we have what she'd observe and notice and understand and feel then.

Anna liked that. She liked licking the beater even more, because you could curl your tongue round the metal bits and stick it into all the corners, and get every last scrap out.

The simplicity of 'Anna liked that' and the repetition of the simple word 'liked' is childlike, and 'stick it in the corners'. And the list of short clauses separated by commas is childlike. But you still use adult vocabulary when necessary (e.g. 'every last scrap'.

I think this is more or less how I have been doing it. That as she slides into memory the language and constructions slip into a slightly more childlike cadence, as well as simply the things she observes being from a child's eye - but all within a global framework of an essentially adult vocabulary and narrative voice. I just haven't mixed the tenses as I do it. And the act of adult-her remembering is less overt in my passages than in your example.

Hmmm. All very, very interesting. Thank you all for your thoguhtful replies.

R x

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Your examples are always so great, Emma!

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Winkie was accidental.

Glad you approve. I think the thing with 'every last scrap' is that it isn't something a three year old would say, but it is something an adult would say to a three year old. So it's within her comprehension/child's memory, even though it's not her words or perhaps a phrase she'd use as an adult... (And notice how I brought in her father being much taller than her? Just to anchor the reader at the right height?)

I think, paradoxically, that having the adult her remembering, more present, can make the transitions less creaky than a straight jump, and back at the end, because you can always explain via the adult, something that the child wouldn't or couldn't know. Means you get away from those awful plu-perfect sentences:

'She'd always had to go to Grandma's on Wednesdays because that was the day that Granddad had said wasn't so convenient for Dad to work at the garage,'

and instead:

'What was it always Wednesdays, for Grandma? She has no idea, now, though there must have been some burning reason because it went on for years. Was it still when Dad worked for Granddad?'

and so on.

Emma

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The advantage of present tense for now and past for then is that you much more rarely get embroiled in plu-perfect, or whatever they call it these days 'had had' 'hadn't had to' 'hadn't thought that she wouldn't have gone' and so on.

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I notice now that adult Anna also slips into past tense for the bit about Dave and the dishwasher. Didn't even notice, then. So it's not that past is just code for flashbacks, as it were, just comes naturally, if we're living with Anna now.

It's daft to start insisting on having a logical basis for fictional technique, because it's all really sleight of hand, but the other reason I rather like doing it this way is that it's true to how memory works: you don't actually run a full scene that you remember in your head from soup to nuts, it's always mediated by your now self, and doing it this way reflects that.

It's true, I have got a lot of 'had hads'! But present tense....I dunno. It's not very me.

I'll have to try the experiment and see if it feels comfortable.

R x

Check out the mc in Meg Rosoff's How I live Now. Might be a 'voice' you can adopt - she incorporates the dialogue into the mc's narrative.



- NaomiM

It's not very me.

I know - which was partly why I asked if they were self-contained episodes, rather than part of the main narrative. Sometimes it's easier to lure yourself out of your comfort zone if you know it hasn't got to integrate with the rest of it: that the join is allowed to be visible.

Emma

Could you use an approach whereby the voice is that of the 17-year-old but certain words, phrases or even sentences are identified as being 'quoted' by her from her childhood? Whether you use quotes or italics or whatever is irrelevant, once you have established that they indicate the childhood voice. Perhaps it could work like this:

When the rows began, she would slip out of the door and go down to the bottom of the garden to meet her 'secret friend'. She would sit on a log with her invisible companion doing their 'special talking' until it seemed safe to assume that the arguments were over.

This sounds rather basic but it might work with a more sophisticated approach.

Chris

Thanks v much for all the suggestions, folk. Loads of food for thought and experimentation.

R xx

I've only skimmed through the replies, so forgive me if I'm giving the same advice, but I would say you should keep the same voice and show the younger character through action and dialogue. I have a similar situation in a novel where the MC in one particular thread is 13 for the main part but has flashbacks to being 9 and 10. My main problem was distinguishing the voices of two main characters, so I had to keep the flashbacks in the same voice. However, I do show more naivety in the flashbacks without the character referring to it, so it's clear to the reader that he's younger. I also make sure the first paragraph of each flashback section gives a clear pointer to the reader that this is a flashback.

Changing the narrative voice would treat the younger version as a different character, which would certainly be interesting if that's what you want, but could cause problems if you want the older and younger to gel.

Colin