[writing meta] Point of View, Characterization, and Narration
I was discussing fic with first_seventhe today, and something occurred to me that I've been wanting to talk about for a while, if only to get it out of my own head. It has to do with writing and point of view, and the literary tropes that I tend to employ when I'm writing, whether consciously or not.
( points of view, narrators, and general literary wankery )
( points of view, narrators, and general literary wankery )
I'm also not a fan of third-omniscient. There are some authors who pull it off -- mostly, I think, because I am forgiving of it in older works (Victorian novels, say, were full of omniscient) and so stories that play deliberately on older tropes get away with it (Steven Brust's Paarfi romances, starting with The Phoenix Guards, are a very, very funny and very deliberate pastiche of Dumas' Three Musketeers books -- but then, the voice of the book is almost not so much third-omniscient as it is the voice of a POV character who happens to be looking back on the story, so the line blurs). I enjoy reading first person, assuming I like the protagonist.
But I basically never write anything but tight-third, third person where the point of view is almost as limited as in first. I don't know why I prefer this so much to first, but I do.
The character shapes so much of the story, too. I'm having an interesting thing happen right now, in the long FMA piece, where Havoc is so, well, kind of dense about romance and kind of self-deprecating that even though I-as-the-author know that Hawkeye is drawn to him, Havoc-the-narrator has no idea. Which adds another layer of challenge to the story: I need to write it in a way such that, if and when Hawkeye makes a move, it startles the hell out of Havoc, without seeming to come out of left field for the reader. Tricky stuff. (Hawkeye herself is hard for a different reason, and the same reason Tseng is hard: she's so reserved that getting anything but the bare bones of a narrative out of her is like pulling teeth. It's rewarding, but it's work.)
Locke isn't self-deceptive or self-deceived in the same way, but he tells himself stories -- not literally, but he fits his actions into a greater narrative, where individual events become both more and less significant than they would be on their own. It's why he insists on 'treasure hunter,' and why he sets himself up as a protector of women: because he's trying so hard to get himself out of the story where a woman relied on him and died for it, and he doesn't know how else to do it besides to replay it until he gets a better ending. Celes sees to clearly to fall into that trap -- in fact, her faults are that she sees too clearly, and everything is defined too sharply, so that she cuts herself and everyone around her. She would never try to cast Locke in the role of Leo -- but she also doesn't have the veils of misdirection to make what she's seen and done any less painful, and there's a lot that she's seen and done that could do with some of the softening that she doesn't do.
*cough*
Blah blah blah!
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I've been plowing slowly through Phoenix Guards and the third-omniscient was annoying the HELL out of me, but your comment on it being a pastiche casts it in a different light, and I think I might enjoy it more when I get back to it. Thanks!
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That isn't to say I think you'd necessarily like it, but reading it that way made it very funny indeed for me.
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