Catchup
Because of course we didn't have enough stress and debt, my computer went toes up. Dealing with that over past few days.
Used the downtime to catch up on reading, and thus have been thinking about narrative voice.
The easiest scene for a writer to write is a character sitting in a room thinking his backstory at himself, usually plied with plenty of rhetorical questions. Why is the big bad hunting my chitlins? Did I remember to lock all the doors? And of course, What’s going to happen next?
The problem is, this static scene stops the story dead in its, tracks while all this data is unloaded. Readers often skip those solid paragraphs of information in hopes of picking up where the story actually starts again. Writers are told, put the data in when readers want it. Only how is the writer supposed to know that? The writer is already invested in the world, so as far as she is concerned, the reader needs to know everything right on page one.
Detail that lets the reader come to conclusions is more effective then the narrator telling the reader what to think: “Phil and Mary traded witty sayings, as the room full of guests roared with laughter.”
There are two problems here: one, you didn’t show the two being witty, and second, when all the secondary characters have a single reaction, they become cardboard figures.
Geniuses like P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett figured out that readers will happily read data-dumps if the narrative voice is entertaining. Humor is one of your most powerful weapons. Readers will stick around a lot longer for funny, and ironic, but if you can’t be funny or ironic, using free indirect discourse-that is, slipping from the narrator’s voice into the character’s voice-can be very effective.
Example:
Neutral narrative voice, or diegesis mode:
Kellam raised his palm-laser, as he realized he recognized the other man. It was Jones, who had gone into his family’s clave when Kellam went into peacekeeper training. Kellam hadn’t seen him since then. “Jones,” he said, and disengaged the safety mode on his weapon. He grinned without humor. “What are you doing here?”
Free indirect discourse
Kellam raised his palm-laser. “Jones.” Hatred sped his heartbeat, a hate all the more intense since the day Jones walked out of their friendship into his shitty uncle’s clave. Grinning at this chance to provide a personal introduction to the peacekeeping training Jones had despised, he thumbed off the safety. “What are you doing here?”
I know that none of that is good writing, just an example of what I'm trying to get at.
One of the toughest lessons I've been wrestling with over the past few years, once I realized I was a visual writer/reader, is that my mine is entrenched in the mental movie. so I don't hear a narrative voice cleverly telling the story. I am describing it, and I struggle with trying not to let the narrative voice back out into public space so far it reads neutrally, like a Wikipedia article.
A neutral narrative voice can be perfectly grammatical, and killingly dull.
If one doesn't have a naturally charismatic narrative voice, which I don't, then consciously moving into private and intimate space can be super effective. It's a conscious thing, a revision thing.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/969245.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Used the downtime to catch up on reading, and thus have been thinking about narrative voice.
The easiest scene for a writer to write is a character sitting in a room thinking his backstory at himself, usually plied with plenty of rhetorical questions. Why is the big bad hunting my chitlins? Did I remember to lock all the doors? And of course, What’s going to happen next?
The problem is, this static scene stops the story dead in its, tracks while all this data is unloaded. Readers often skip those solid paragraphs of information in hopes of picking up where the story actually starts again. Writers are told, put the data in when readers want it. Only how is the writer supposed to know that? The writer is already invested in the world, so as far as she is concerned, the reader needs to know everything right on page one.
Detail that lets the reader come to conclusions is more effective then the narrator telling the reader what to think: “Phil and Mary traded witty sayings, as the room full of guests roared with laughter.”
There are two problems here: one, you didn’t show the two being witty, and second, when all the secondary characters have a single reaction, they become cardboard figures.
Geniuses like P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett figured out that readers will happily read data-dumps if the narrative voice is entertaining. Humor is one of your most powerful weapons. Readers will stick around a lot longer for funny, and ironic, but if you can’t be funny or ironic, using free indirect discourse-that is, slipping from the narrator’s voice into the character’s voice-can be very effective.
Example:
Neutral narrative voice, or diegesis mode:
Kellam raised his palm-laser, as he realized he recognized the other man. It was Jones, who had gone into his family’s clave when Kellam went into peacekeeper training. Kellam hadn’t seen him since then. “Jones,” he said, and disengaged the safety mode on his weapon. He grinned without humor. “What are you doing here?”
Free indirect discourse
Kellam raised his palm-laser. “Jones.” Hatred sped his heartbeat, a hate all the more intense since the day Jones walked out of their friendship into his shitty uncle’s clave. Grinning at this chance to provide a personal introduction to the peacekeeping training Jones had despised, he thumbed off the safety. “What are you doing here?”
I know that none of that is good writing, just an example of what I'm trying to get at.
One of the toughest lessons I've been wrestling with over the past few years, once I realized I was a visual writer/reader, is that my mine is entrenched in the mental movie. so I don't hear a narrative voice cleverly telling the story. I am describing it, and I struggle with trying not to let the narrative voice back out into public space so far it reads neutrally, like a Wikipedia article.
A neutral narrative voice can be perfectly grammatical, and killingly dull.
If one doesn't have a naturally charismatic narrative voice, which I don't, then consciously moving into private and intimate space can be super effective. It's a conscious thing, a revision thing.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/969245.html. Please comment there using OpenID.