Hi,
A while ago, there was a discussion in Flash Fiction group about the rights and wrongs of killing your viewpoint character. (To summarise; if the viewpoint character dies, then who the hell is speaking?)

After several pages of discussion, two things happened; EmmaD recommended a book (Narratology) and the discussion came to a natural end.

So I ordered the book...

First of all, a few provisos;
1. The book only arrived today and I have only read one half of the first chapter
2. The book, while amongst the most exciting things I've read in a while, is not for the faint of academia
3. Two out of the three concepts I'm going to talk about have not yet been defined
4. Because of the first three points, I will not be held accountable for getting anything wrong here!

However, with disclaimer duly disclaimed, I want to reopen the discussion because what I've found out so far is, frankly, gobsmacking.

Up till now, I've looked on writing fiction as the point-of-view that it is being written from (which I have paralleled with "the narrator") and the characters being written about and, in common with many of us, have therefore obsessed about keeping a consistent POV so as to improve my writing.

But then...

Narratology opens with what appears, so far at least (see provisos above) to be a refutation of the conventional understanding of viewpoint.

It does not make a difference to the status of the narration whether a narrator refers to itself or not. As soon as there is language, there is a speaker who utters it; as soon as those linguistic utterances constitute a naraative text, there is a narrator, a narrating subject.

Or, in other words, whatever viewpoint the writing, the narration could just as easily be thought of as first-person in that "Cinderella shall go to the ball!" gives an implicit first person narrator in "I (the narrator) say Cinderella shall go to the ball!"

In some ways, this clarifies the original thread; "the narrator" is speaking after the "viewpoint character" has died. Ergo; you can kill off your viewpoint characters with impunity.

In other ways...

In other ways, though it seems correct, it isn't very helpful at the moment as it essentially diminishes a very useful rule and an entire category of terms to help describe writing (eg: viewpoint).

Although the following is surely headhopping;
"Margaret looked at the table and thought it would be quite clever to balance her hot mug of coffee on that very solid looking lump of butter. Bob looked at Margaret and thought she was quite silly. The alien lifeform masquerading as a lump of butter looked in terror at the deadly hot mug approaching it and wished for the safety of Qrgg#."

The above, at first glance, bearing in mind the provisos at the beginning, makes this seem valid;
"I (the narrator) say; Margaret looked at the table and thought it would be quite clever to balance her hot mug of coffee on that very solid looking lump of butter. I (the narrator) say; Bob looked at Margaret and thought she was quite silly. I (the narrator) say; the alien lifeform masquerading as a lump of butter looked in terror at the deadly hot mug approaching it and wished for the safety of Qrgg#."

Narratology goes on to distinguish two other terms; the focalizor and the actor. It looks like the focalisor may parallel what I had been seeing as the viewpoint and the actor may parallel the viewpoint character. (Regrettably, they have not yet been defined; I think there will be a chapter for each later.)

So, we have narrator, focalisor and actor. All three of which can overlap to a greater or lesser extent (apparently, though bearing in mind my provisos above) and an apparent refutation of viewpoint.

In some ways, it makes sense. Certainly, it saves me from the intellectual dead-end of dismissing any number of books from a different writing orthodoxy where head-hopping and changing viewpoints were more readily accepted.

And yet...

I also know my writing has improved by focussing in on and getting closer to specific viewpoints, then writing consistently from there.

Is that just because of the additional effort I have placed in honing my writing, the subjective ease for my reader of being more comfortably placed where they know what is happening and to whom, or something else?

Maybe I should go and read a bit more of the bloody book, I don't even think my question makes sense!

G

Gaius, only just skimmed this because I should be doing something else, but I would say that this is the one part of that book which I think is just plain wrong. She's wrong. She's not a fiction writer and she's wrong. Definitely.

The other book I think I was recommending, is Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds, which is a bit more accessible, and agrees with me, that there's a fundamental difference in having a narrator who is an actor in (and an experiencer of those events) the story, and one who isn't. So there is a fundamental difference between first and third-person narrative...

Emma

<Added>

Just re-looked at your post and realised that you're not talking about the bit I thought you were. So please ignore the above. I'll be back in a bit...

not talking about the bit I thought you were

Ok, but now I can't wait to get to it!

The book sounds fascinating, as is the whole topic. In the novel I'm working on chapters are written from the pov of three different characters - not first person pov but events seen through their eyes - close identification pov or whatever its called : 'Jim woke up feeling shattered and wondered where he was.' One of the characters is the murder victim towards the end of the book. I did have some qualms about this, I must say, mainly because I don't like characters I've become attached to when I'm reading suddenly disappear. Maybe I'm right to be uneasy for other, more obscure, reasons?

Sheila

This may be slightly lateral to this discussion, but I've been thinking quite a bit about POV recently. It struck me that a fair few of the writers I work with have trouble with POV; most of them are conscious about this and so we often discuss it. However, I'm becoming more convinced that the problem - or challenge as such - is not really about finding the right technique for POV, or making sure it's consistent; it's more to do with empathy. What a reader needs to feel is they're included in the story; that they're right inside the mind and heart of the characters. Of course, good technique helps a writer to do this, but it's secondary. Primarily, it's a case of how much empathy a writer has with his characters and his readers.

It's similar with conversation. Some people know all the right words, have lots of clever things to say, have read all the right books on how to have a meaningful conversation, know when to ask you how you are, etc, and yet . . . something doesn't quite click. Whereas someone else sitting around the table may not say very much at all but you catch their eye at one point - probably in the middle of the expert's very incisive take on immigration or whatever - they raise an eyebrow and you feel this bubble of warmth and connection. That one raised eyebrow said more than the expert's two hours' worth of yak, in other words; it also connected you to the actual, real, atmosphere of the conversation. The knowing speaker believes the atmosphere of the conversation is shared information. But it isn't; the real atmosphere is the contrast between twat-speak and fun subversion, for example, with the added value that only the two of you have connected to it or even know it's there.

So, I guess I'm thinking that the story is or should be a knowing, unspoken dialogue between the writer and the reader, which makes them partners in the true atmosphere of the tale being told. POV is the vehicle by which the author achieves these relationship. But it can't be faked; the author has to genuinely love and understand and want to always increase this kind of dialogue with the reader.

Terry

Primarily, it's a case of how much empathy a writer has with his characters and his readers.

Yes, I'd say empathy is the goal.

Like the problem with writing in second person; if you get it wrong, it is too easy for the reader to react badly and so to be thrown out of the narrative. (I am driven to apoplectic rage by one advertiser's assertion that I "am only six weeks old and all the world is a mystery" or similar. I am quite clearly not and it isn't.) There are too many good examples of people mixing POVs and still managing to write compelling and involving prose to think that POV is the be-all and end-all.

But that seems to ignore the fact that concentrating on POV _does_ seem to improve a lot of writer's writing.

Or does it? Maybe the concentration is in and of itself inspiring the intimacy with character and scene needed to convey that to the reader?

EG: I have a picture in my head of how a critical scene works on a macro level, but until I get into character and see how it unfolds on a personal level, I can't convey that in an interesting (or, rather, dramatic) way.

G

Just finished Alan Campbell's excellent Scar Night fantasy thriller where he has several povs, including that of one of the main antagonists (a very charming antagonist, I should add), and it works because it is so tightly edited to keep the suspense going even when the reader discovers things before the main character. He's also not afraid to kill off pov characters when it suits the plot.
I can highly recommend it to anyone who's writing a plot-driven thriller with multi-povs.

the story is or should be a knowing, unspoken dialogue between the writer and the reader, which makes them partners in the true atmosphere of the tale being told.

This reminds me of the pov discussion in my reading group yesterday.

We'd been reading Trollope's The Warden, in which the author's voice and over-riding pov seemed so peculiar to the modern reader. Young members of the group found it off-putting.

It was the common nineteenth century literary 'guiding we' , as in:

'Mr Harding, we may say, is not an unhappy man.'

One of the reading group described it as 'the royal we', which at times it comes near to, but that would be too alienating if it were consistent. I called it the 'BBC' or 'listener-implicating we'. The assumption is that all -right-thinking people must think like the author, and if they don't they must be mad, bad or dangerously anarchic.

It's called the 'hegemonic we' in media discourse- used a lot in advertising, for obvious reasons, and in Sunday supplements or columns like 'Lost in Showbiz' in The Guardian: 'We think Sienna has lost her sparkle' means 'you should think' and you're pulled in by mere fact of reading the column - your collusion is assured because it's more implicatory than a bald statement. I sometimes call it the 'recruiting' 'we'.

Maybe this is the third narrator referred to. The Victorians were just more upfront about it, whereas the modern taste is to disguise it in the seemingly more democratic 'show not tell' style of writing.

Sheila

Good points, Sheila. I guess earlier authors could be more self-assured with speaking direct to their readers because they knew that most of them would think the same way. You can't assume that today of course. But then everything has its up and down sides. As you say, 'show not tell' can be just a disguise for prejudice; a bit like when reporters preface a question with, "Some people say you're mad, Minister . . . "

Maybe the 'answer' as such is for writers to a) have more courage about their writing self; to be more obvious about it, and b) make sure it's a self that's attractive.

Terry

I have a feeling that after a glass or two of wine, I shouldn't be joining in this conversation but - hey - dutch courage!!!

But it isn't; the real atmosphere is the contrast between twat-speak and fun subversion, for example, with the added value that only the two of you have connected to it or even know it's there.

According to Wikipedia (the definite dictionary ) Twat and similarly spelled words can mean:

* Twat is a slang word for the female external sexual parts, and a derogatory term.


So being extremely literal, Terry - this works really well!!!

But it isn't; the real atmosphere is the contrast between female external parts and fun subversion, for example, with the added value that only the two of you have connected to it or even know it's there.




I'm on the bandwagon tomorrow - honest guv!

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I think I might go on the bandwagon tonight instead...

I've been thinking about pov lately too. I was surprised by the variety of third person pov you can use. I thought of it as a way to keep a distance between the narrating voice and the character. But close pov in third person seems to be a very popular way of telling a story. I tried out a piece I'd written on fellow writers in close pov and more distant (both in third person) and overwhelmingly the response I got was that each reader preferred the close pov even in third person. I guess we want to identify with the main character.

Dianne

The above, at first glance, bearing in mind the provisos at the beginning, makes this seem valid; "I (the narrator) say; Margaret looked at the table and thought it would be quite clever to balance her hot mug of coffee on that very solid looking lump of butter. I (the narrator) say; Bob looked at Margaret and thought she was quite silly. I (the narrator) say; the alien lifeform masquerading as a lump of butter looked in terror at the deadly hot mug approaching it and wished for the safety of Qrgg#."

Well, I'd say that it is logically sound, in the sense that there is an implied narrator, who can know all these things, and can choose to narrate them. Exactly how far inside any character's head the narrator can go is up to the writer, and it's bad judgements about THIS which lead to accusations of head-hopping. Point of View is a usefully tidy way of talking about something which is actually (and philosophically) much more complicated than that, but it's not the Law of the Medes and Persians.

I was pleased (and relieved, given how ridiculously doctrinaire some CW pundits seem to be) to find that the big Workbook (i.e. textbook) for the OU course I teach does no more than suggest mildly that changing PoV more than once a page or so is very hard to pull off.

I'd suggest that the reader is more likely to cope with these if

a) the psychic distance (c.f.) isn't too close-in: the real sense of head-hop comes when we're deep in A's head, then suddenly deep in B's. It's easy enough to know what's going on in more heads than one, but as everyone's said, empathy is a different thing: it takes time to build up. In Bal's terms, I guess, don't switch focalisor too often and too abruptly.

b) it's set up from the beginning that it's this sort of narrative.

Re what I thought you were saying... At some point Bal says that, philosophically speaking, there's no difference between what we'd call a first person narrative and a third person narrative. I assume (it's ages since I read it) that's because the

[I, the narrator say] he went shopping

is logically the same as

[I, the narrator, say] I went shopping

But as Dorrit Cohn says (I'd hugely recommend that book, and it doesn't require quite such a strong academic stomach), when you as the reader inside the narrative, having a narrator who was or is an actor in the story is a very different thing from having a narrator who is external to it.

Actually, some of the most useful bits of Bal for my PhD project of trying to connect up my experience of writing and reading with an academic understanding of how narrative works, were about external, internal and character-bound narrators, (and fabula, story and text, come to that.).

I think her concept of character-bound narrator equates to our idea of 1st person narrator, but she would also apply it to a true, 3rd person limited subjective, which is essentially the same thing...

Emma

<Added>

And of course a narrative doesn't HAVE to be focalised through any character. There's always third-person limited objective narrative, which is in no one's head (except, I suppose, by implication the external narrator who recounts purely actions, and no interior consciousness of anyone. John Gardner describes this narrative as having a 'savage sparsity', which I'd agree with.

<Added>

And Bal's thinking reinforces my idea, (as yet not put into practice in a whole novel, I have to admit) that if you want to use more than one or two PoVs in a novel, you might well be better off with a knowledgeable narrator who can move fluently and fluidly between different characters' experience and consciousness, than you are lurching abruptly from one limited PoV to another.

But I'll tell you if I'm right when I've written the next novel. ;-)

If:

The narrator is the one who relates a series of events or transactions.

The focalizor is the character from whose point of view the story is told.

The actor is a character, object or entity that performs an action for the focalizor to observe so that the narrator can narrate.

Then, by definition, the point-of-view is surely that of the focalizor...?

And the focalizor can move at the narrator's will which is why;

you might well be better off with a knowledgeable narrator who can move fluently and fluidly between different characters' experience and consciousness, than you are lurching abruptly from one limited PoV to another

But jumping too frequently or making too bold a narrator is militated against because you are hoping to promote empathy and to avoid the:

hegemonic we

Which leads into psychic-distance as you should ideally be in close to gain empathy but quite distant to switch viewpoints.

Then;

Unless you are empathising with the narrator directly, the consistent viewpoint that seems to improve writing does so by reducing the psychic distance and so building empathy with the focalizor?

G

<Added>

Plus, it doesn't matter a damn about the narrator always being first person ("I, the narrator, say that...") as the viewpoint you are discussing is not the viewpoint of the narration but the viewpoint the narrator has chosen for his focalizor?