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Deep POV/Limited Third Person
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SIODAI
 26 Jul 2010, 20:35 #94763 Reply To Post
I'm trying to make my writing more emotive and "show" rather than "tell". By dispensing with speech tags such as see, notice, understand, feel, realise and think and slipping from third into first and back again. A reviewer says she has found this confusing. Any suggestions?
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
RobertB
 26 Jul 2010, 23:11 #94772 Reply To Post
I think I'd find it confusing as well if you keep changing person!
karen milner
 27 Jul 2010, 08:12 #94782 Reply To Post
Quote: SIODAI, Monday, 26 Jul 2010 20:35
I'm trying to make my writing more emotive and "show" rather than "tell". By dispensing with speech tags such as see, notice, understand, feel, realise and think and slipping from third into first and back again. A reviewer says she has found this confusing. Any suggestions?


Hi SIODAI, I'm not exactly sure what you mean but dispensing with speech tags is a dangerous thing in my opinion. I think you can get away with it when the dialogue is short, but when you get up to more than four or five exchanges, well I personally think you need the odd tag.

I've been reading a lot of Koontz and in his book 'Fear Nothing' he quite often drops the speech tags and has two or three of his characters chatting away for long stretches; can I follow it? No, I find it confusing as hell. So for me, even the 'greats' should avoid this practice for extended sections of dialogue.
As for slipping from third to first person, if you read your prose out loud this should help identify the problem.

FLASHECHOES
 27 Jul 2010, 08:16 #94784 Reply To Post
If the narrative is rendered in close third-person, the thoughts of the POV character merge back and forth (in the reader's mind) with those of the narrative. By suddenly including first-person thoughts this illusion is perturbed and the POV character may seem schitzophrenic.

Conversely, with a more distant narrative focus the occasional injection of first-person thoughts are 'accepted' for what they are, though tags ('he/she thought') or italics help the reader. However, heavy use of italicized thoughts is ugly on the page, and would call into question the narrative focus being employed.

There is a nice treatment on this in 'Self-Editing for Fiction Writers' by Renni Brown and Dave King.

Cheers
"In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw."

(from "So Long, See You Tomorrow" by William Maxwell.)
NickP
 27 Jul 2010, 08:34 #94787 Reply To Post
Point of view is the toughest thing to get right...but there's no absolute right or wrong.

Who is the narrator? Who is the point of view character? In whose mood is the scene imbued?

Think of Dr Watson...he's the point of view character, the everyman observer. But the star is Holmes, of course. A wondrous being we meet through the point of view character.

I'm reading Picture Of Dorian Gray and the narrator stands aloof and tells us what he wants to tell us about the thoughts of the characters. He lets us hear their voices, but not their internal voices.

Then have a look at Harry Potter. The first line "Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." That's the Dursley's point of view, their voice, reported by the narrator.

Get that point of view right, the relationship between narrator and character, and you can involve the reader.

"...the likes of NickP can rant on if they like"
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