lin

No, I'm saying that paying attention to how many POV's there are and counting them up and setting limits on them and all that shit is a waste of time.

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CaptainFreedom

Quote:

Originally Posted by lin By the way, this whole POV obsessioin, "head-hopping" thing is the fad of the year, but it's essentially meaningless.

I don't know about that Lin. Maybe here in the forum people who don't really write get in arguments over it, but sticking to one character's perspective at a time has a few advantages. You can have somebody think without using italics all the time or something like that and you can alter the style of writing to fit the character. It's also a good way of withholding important information from the reader.

I didn't think to check on the internet before I started trying to write, and I probably could've saved a lot of time if I did. I was writing my first novel and I thought it sucked but I didn't know why. So I started analysing some books from my favorite author, Dean Koonz. And I saw that he invariably sticks to one perspective per chapter. So I kind of ripped the idea off from him before I saw that everybody whose been on a writing forum has heard the POV stuff a million times. It's second only to 'show not tell'.

CF

Non Serviam

I don't want to get into the whole POV discussion again, but I will say that writing in first person eliminates all these cinematic/POV concerns and lets you get straight on with the interesting stuff.

I'm finding first person fiction increasingly attractive to write as I grow older.

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Non Serviam

Mate, it's far from one of the first signs. I've been a grumpy old curmudgeon since I was three.

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The Backward OX

Well, yes, I knew that. It shows in your writing. I just didn't want to be that blunt.

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lin

You can do that anyway. Who the hell does that, anyway.

DEAN KOONTZ is your guru of great writing? Ay, ay, ay.

Okay, fine. Do like he does. But don't try convincing somebody it's the way it has to be done. There are painters who stick to one or two colors, too. Big deal.


Yeah, that seems to be who argues about it. That and people who haven't gotten things figured out yet.

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Wintermute

Film is getting so bad these days I look at them as inspiration to write something better. Calling a novel too skeletal is absurd. Aren't you competing against the tube, anyway? A punchy style should transcend well to the casual reader.

But whatever. Agents know everything. Or so they claim.

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Vee

I haven't read this thread and I have skipped over it a number of times before today but I'd argue that no tv and movies are not a bad influence on writers as it would expose the writer to wider genre than what they prefer to read and write themselves and even inspire.

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lilacstarflower

I second that. I see my stories as movies in my head and then just write out as much dialog as a particular 'scene' needs and then I think about putting in the descriptive narrative necessary to make it read more like a piece of writing than a movie

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duston

I think the problem is that you can't just think of a scene in purely visual terms. The other day I was in someone's garden, and the sun was just setting and behind a row of trees which were blowing in the wind, and I thought "wow, I'd love to be able to just copy this out into words." But it doesn't work like that, I actually found it counter productive to envisage the scene cinematically when I did attempt to write it, because I was trying to furnish prose with pictures.

Look at this example from my (second) favourite novel of all time. (Prizes for guessing it)

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rose-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by french windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up towards the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

That is highly cinematic and visual description, yet what makes it so effective is that rather than an attempt at film-esque description, the scene is coloured by wordplay.

The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens-finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

There you can see how the picture is painted using various literary techniques. The extended metaphor of the lawn running, the pattern mid-sentence of adjective-noun building momentum, and the concluding the metaphor with a witty observation.

What is seen in both examples is the lack of a static image, and the use of literary techniques to achieve this. It helps as well that it doesn't feel overburdened by adjectives.

kip

I had to look it up, but that was funny, since it's one of my absolute favorites too. But see, I'd describe that as an *excellent* example of scenic/filmic (or cinematic/visual) writing. As in, scenic/filmic writing done well. What defines it as s/f done well, for me, is the fact that the writing easily conjured an image in my head of the scene as it transpired--which is exactly what you get when watching a film itself. I think people tend to confuse trying to capture every ray of sunlight or every object in the room with capturing a scene. But IMO, the wordplay you reference above is just an example of how to paint the picture efficiently, yet vividly.

I agree--but again, this, to me, is still the definition (or at least one definition) of cinematic/visual/scenic/filmic writing. The reason we like it is because it's done well--but that doesn't mean it isn't c/v/s/f. It just shows how you don't need hundreds of words to craft an image in the mind of the reader, but rather, a few, key, well-chosen ones. So it is still an attempt at filmic description, just as it is when someone drones on and on about the colors of this or the 400 objects in the garage or the...(insert overlong description here). The difference is that the attempt is successful here.

Arin

Thank you for posting that excerpt, lin, because I only had a vague idea of what exactly the style would be like. Now I know: it's almost exactly like watching a movie. I can understand why agents would say it was "skeletal" in the sense that its directness is almost jarring; interpretation of the images are very concrete. And though I'm not sure how much I would like an entire book, this one passage was lots of fun to read. I could hear the exciting soundtrack playing in my head.

And as for this kind of writing being "good" or "bad," it's certainly not "worse" than writing a screenplay or a teleplay. You have merged two different kinds of writing, which, to me, is just a logical outcome of our evolution as a culture. Of course, I hope more traditional forms of writing maintain their existence forever, but I think your work would be highly enjoyable for many people---just like any good TV show or film, and not of any lesser merit.

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mi is happy

I don't think they are a bad influence unless you make them one. I love to watch movies, but it doesn't mean my books will be just like Iron Man. It's the same problem people have with Tolkien. They love LOTR so much that they write their book just like LOTR. You can watch the movies, just don't write the movies. Also there is a big difference between visual pictures and words on a page.

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