Intriguing. I'm always interested in different ways of doing things. I'm a bit puzzled about this one though. I mean, if you want to show a specific character through the eyes of others, wouldn't you *still* be using a POV, just a different character's?
That's a good question, and something I have struggled with, because I think that line by line it does not make much difference at all. But I think in the way a scene develops it does make a difference, and maybe the way to describe it is to make a distinction between a narrative that is "in" the character's POV and a narrative that is "about" the character's POV. Because you can only be "in" one character's POV at a time, but you can write "about" multiple character's points of view at once.
One of the things that fascinates me about human relations is how people misunderstand each other. Even lovers. Maybe especially lovers. I have a couple of scenes in the book where each character is misunderstanding the other and the narrative is about what each of them thinks is going on. It is about both points of view, not in either of them.
Which seems perfectly valid and necessary to me, to tell a certain kind of story, but is a violation of modern POV theory.
But, in that example of 2 lovers, wouldn't what you describe amount to showing with character A thinks of B's action from his POV, then switching things around and doing the same thing with B's POV about A?
The only other option that I can think of that would 'break' the POV approach (though not really either) would be using a 3rd person narrator, but then we'd be in omniscient territory.
Speaking of which, why do you call that a 'pejorative category'? I use omniscient a lot :o Well, maybe not as much as 1st person, but still... it can be a very powerful tool, as it does allow you to show what everyone thinks.
Good questions, but requiring more space and development than a comment thread allows. Part of the problem, though, is the question of what it means to be in close POV. Does it mean that you are seeing only what the character sees and attends to. Or does it mean that you are looking at them from close up, and seeing what an interested observer sees about them? Conceptually, these are two very different things. In practice, people almost always write as if they are both at once. So whose POV is that actually, the observers or the observed? In practice it is almost impossible to write about a character without describing them as an observer would see of them, rather than recording what they are actually attending to themselves. But if you can describe what the observer could see of one person, why not two or three? But more on this another day.
Intriguing. I'm always interested in different ways of doing things. I'm a bit puzzled about this one though. I mean, if you want to show a specific character through the eyes of others, wouldn't you *still* be using a POV, just a different character's?
That's a good question, and something I have struggled with, because I think that line by line it does not make much difference at all. But I think in the way a scene develops it does make a difference, and maybe the way to describe it is to make a distinction between a narrative that is "in" the character's POV and a narrative that is "about" the character's POV. Because you can only be "in" one character's POV at a time, but you can write "about" multiple character's points of view at once.
One of the things that fascinates me about human relations is how people misunderstand each other. Even lovers. Maybe especially lovers. I have a couple of scenes in the book where each character is misunderstanding the other and the narrative is about what each of them thinks is going on. It is about both points of view, not in either of them.
Which seems perfectly valid and necessary to me, to tell a certain kind of story, but is a violation of modern POV theory.
But, in that example of 2 lovers, wouldn't what you describe amount to showing with character A thinks of B's action from his POV, then switching things around and doing the same thing with B's POV about A?
The only other option that I can think of that would 'break' the POV approach (though not really either) would be using a 3rd person narrator, but then we'd be in omniscient territory.
Speaking of which, why do you call that a 'pejorative category'? I use omniscient a lot :o Well, maybe not as much as 1st person, but still... it can be a very powerful tool, as it does allow you to show what everyone thinks.
Good questions, but requiring more space and development than a comment thread allows. Part of the problem, though, is the question of what it means to be in close POV. Does it mean that you are seeing only what the character sees and attends to. Or does it mean that you are looking at them from close up, and seeing what an interested observer sees about them? Conceptually, these are two very different things. In practice, people almost always write as if they are both at once. So whose POV is that actually, the observers or the observed? In practice it is almost impossible to write about a character without describing them as an observer would see of them, rather than recording what they are actually attending to themselves. But if you can describe what the observer could see of one person, why not two or three? But more on this another day.
"But I believe that if anyone misunderstands us, it is ourselves."
Me. 100%.
I definitely sympathize with your character.
However, I don't see my decisions as likely to wreck a community.
I am learning about me. And writing blogs about some of that.