This is POV too - I have to have some 'big scenes' - not quite cast of thousands but a few set pieces - and realise I don't have a lot of practice in writing them or much of a clue as to how to go about it.

So - how do you go 'wide screen' in fiction?

sarah

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More particularly - if you have a crowd or mob that is out of control - that stage where people lose their individuality, become part of the herd - how do you get inside that collective head of the crowd?

You can have someone witness it - be part of it - in cinema you can show it - but how do you write it?

Sometimes I give my characters a sort of out-of-body experience, because I have these too so I assume it's a common enough phenomenon. You know that thing where you're suddenly seeing yourself and whoever you're with from a distance? (I mean in your imagination rather than the whole ESP kaboosh.) I'd probably introduce such a scene with 'He imagined...'

That's one device you might try.

I give my characters a sort of out-of-body experience,

Yes, that makes sense - it's surprising how you do see things in a detached way in circumstances like that, and it keeps the narrative nonetheless anchored in one place, by being consistently through one pair of eyes. Or maybe more than one, but making it very clear when you switch so you take your reader with you, and clear that you're in the new person's PoV, not just saying what's happening to them. If you've got an omniscient narrator, on the other hand, there's no reason not to fly over all their heads. But if you want the reader to keep seeing it you probably need to be very clear in your own mind where you, as cameraman, actually are, at any point. Depending on the narrative voice, you can even say 'From the top of the Parliament building the rioters seemed ants...'

Another trick - working in the opposite way but also cinematic - is the part-standing-for-the-whole (there's a proper greek rhetoric word for it which I can never remember). It's quicker to cut-and-paste this from my own work than type out a better example. This is from the narrator-character's single PoV:

"Shirt sleeves and leather aprons and petticoats and Sunday-best pinafores may not easily be counted by company or regiment, but trumpets and drums there were aplenty, and flags, or rather banners, borne aloft in the heat-hazed air with every bit as much pride as that of a colour-sergeant of Guards. I was astounded too to see blood-red, tin caps of liberty bobbing on poles above my head."

Emma

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I think the latter technique might work particularly well as the scene degenerates, and fragments into riot...

Thank you Emma and Lammi - yes, I can use both of those!

Exactly what I was trying to grope towards in my mind but goodness knows how long it would have taken me to work it out on my own - probably forever

Can you recall that Greek term, Emma? I think I have a vague idea about it but my brain is melting.

Love the extract - leaves me wanting to read more.

sarah

Metonymy? I can never remember those kinds of words.

Good to know the extract does it for you - it's from page 2 of TMOL, and there are another 410 or so to go, so it's just as well it does have that effect on people!

Emma

I've just come across this problem in my edit of TA. The POV was all over the place in certain 'big' scenes, and switching between the various characters can be quite a hassle, can't it? I tend to just choose the one now, for a particular scene, and then leave a line if I'm switching, but I'm still not sure what the correct method is.

JB

I tend to just choose the one now, for a particular scene, and then leave a line if I'm switching, but I'm still not sure what the correct method is.

I think yours is a perfectly good method - nice and clear. It's trickier though possible to shift taking the reader with you.

Emma

Switching media for a moment - there's a scene in 'Romper Stomper' (Australian film) where there's an attack on Cambodian immigrants, and the montage uses very quick cuts between POVs - Nazis, immigrants/ attackers, victims - and it's very unsettling, because what it does is jerk the spectator (you) around so that you engage with each POV in turn. It's a real whirlwind. You can be a 100% decent Liberal and still feel yourself exulting in the violence for one second, and then feeling pity and terror with the victim the next. Further complicated by one of the immigrants fighting back ... Eisenstein is the grandaddy of this.

So: quick cutting and a cinematic approach anyone? Depends on the effect you want - how big is your crowd - do you want to get down and dirty with individuals or go, and keep, panoramic?

King Vidor's The Crowd (I may have mentioned this before) has a magnificent shot where the camera rises from the clerk's desk to take in scores - what seem like hundreds - of other desks and other clerks in a vast space.

John Dos Passos might be a good literary source for how this sort of thing can be done, and closer to home, Walter Greenwood handles with great skill a crowd of striking/demonstrating workers in 'Love on the Dole' (30s)

Jim

Thanks for that Jim - lots of ideas to work with there.

I love cinematic - there is a huge widescreen battle shot in 'Alexander' when it all becomes dust and desert which didn't work for me because I lost all sense of contact - yet in 'Return of the King' Peter Jackson does one of those 'general addressing the troops before battle' scenes - which actually makes you feel like you're there in the lines - and I'm trying to work out just how and why.

I think probably because by then he has built such huge emotional investment in the characters?

Anyway - will have to go do some thinking and some Eisenstein homework

Sarah

Sarah - glad to be of service. You write:"one of those 'general addressing the troops before battle' scenes - which actually makes you feel like you're there in the lines - and I'm trying to work out just how and why."

I haven't seen this film - but might it be the words of the general, rather than camera movement in this case? ("Once more unto the breach ..." Henry V before Harfleur in Shakespeare's play springs to mind). In war films, directors sometimes show reaction shots to the inspiring words ...

Of course, it could be camera POV (which you the spectator inhabit in this scene) ...

Good luck with it! You've got me thinking about a big scene (or sequence really) that I've got coming up in 6 months time ... lots of other problems to solve before I get there.

Jim