Re: Third-person limited omniscient narrator: revealer vs. follower
- From: "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwrede6492@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:26:18 -0600
"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:87tzsa7sb0.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've discovered that I write followers. If context about the
character's past must be revealed, I struggle to find a way to reveal
it in a way that doesn't sound like an "As you know, Bob," moment.
This makes hitting a 5,000 word mark on a character driven story
rather hard, as the set-up and payoff even for the revelation can chew
up 1,500 words easily.
It's hard to admit, but I must get better at *telling*; I must feel
comfortable telling something once in a while. Otherwise, I'm never
going to master the short form using the third-person.
Try writing something in first-person, either immediate or retrospective.
The first-person viewpoint has to "tell" the reader *everything*; it's no
great step from telling the reader what "I" am doing or seeing right now to
telling the reader that it reminds me of something "I" did or saw ten or
twenty years before. One can then use similar techniques in a tight-third
viewpoint.
I'm finding that a first-person retrospective that covers an enormous amount
of time, memoir-fashion, absolutely *requires* mastering narrative summary
(as well as changing the requirements for pacing and choosing scenes and
possibly structure). When you're covering four years' worth of events in a
single chapter, and it's not a matter of "The next four years flew by, and
then suddenly something significant happened that I'll tell you about in
detail," you really have to learn to summarize.
Damn backbrain hands me stretch even when I wasn't *looking* to be
stretched...
Patricia C. Wrede
.
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