POV dorkistry

[pjthompson]

I've been steadfastly dividing the narrative of my WIP between two characters, but I've reached an impasse where the next series of scenes I need to write can't logically be told from either of those POVs. I hate it (hate it hate it) when a novel is cruising along in one or two POVs for most of its length, then a new one is thrown in for only one or two scenes. If there have been a number of narrators throughout, that's one thing. I think you can get away with new POVs late in the book. But I've been writing in fairly tight third person.

I've been thinking for a week and can't find a way around this dilemma. I'm considering, for the sake of completing this damned draft, of succumbing and writing this new POV, then figuring a way to clean it up in later drafts. Because it's definitely holding me up, and having come to the brink of these scenes with no resolution, I'm wondering if that's what's been holding me up for some time now. The hind part of my brain has been anticipating these scenes, maybe, and putting the brakes on. Outlining the end helped get me over some of this, but the story is refusing to take that next step.

At times, my writing psyche is like a jump-shy horse. If it doesn't know how to solve a particular problem, it's been known to shut down a project altogether. It does no good to try to force the jump. It just won't go. For the most part, I've been used to not worrying about these things in my writing. I'll head off in the direction of home without knowing exactly what route I'll take, and almost always by the time I get to the quadruple fork in the road that's been worrying me for the whole journey, my backbrain will have come up with something and I'll know which path to follow.

Except sometimes.

It's hopeless asking my forebrain to try figuring it out. Forebrain just wants to put its fingers in its ears and start singing, "La la la la la, I can't hear you!"

So I've been working on stories in the interim, hoping that will jar something loose. It hasn't. Maybe I've reached the natural limits of my bag of backbrain tricks. Maybe this one will permanently stump me. It makes me all fidgety. It makes me feel all un-disciplined and dilletantish and failurish…

New POV, here I come…

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I have the alternating POV problem but fortunately never have anything that they can't handle; a lot of the point is double unreliable narrator plus things going on where they really don't know what's happening at the time, and nor does the reader. It means that I can completely stay inside their heads.

So I'm wondering now, how necessary is it for your reader to know the facts before either character does, or at all? Does the reader need to know, or is it something that works itself out and affects the character(s), where basically the effects are what counts? Or is there something in the way of characterisation - in which case the reader is seeing these characters directly instead of through the POV characters' eyes? (This is equally applicable to 1st person and tight 3rd)

If you write out precisely why you need this scene - and are really clear about when "show" is appropriate and when "tell" is - you might see a solution.

[pjthompson]

This is definitely a show-it scene. Otherwise, it would be comparable to having another character show up and narrate an action scene that happened off stage. It can be done, I've seen it often, but it always leaves me thinking, "Ah, the writer couldn't figure out how to show that given the POV structure." It's another one of those things I don't like much.

However, I suppose I should think about how necessary this scene is. Part of it is definitely necessary—the denouement can't happen without it. But maybe not all of it. I'll have to think on that some more. Maybe some of it can be told. But it would be so much better as "show"!

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

One point to think about when using tight third is that, since you are seeing the scene through the character's eyes and filtered through their mind there is a large element of "tell" even when you "show2; it's their perceptions as opposed to what objectively happens. And if something is told, it doesn't have to be done all in one piece; things can come out more or less gradually, and this can add to both characterisation and tension.

[pjthompson]

Yes, thanks.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Gee, does this sound familiar. Did you steal this post without my noticing?

[pjthompson]

lol--really, it's just a case of ideons, I swear! (Or the zeitgeist giving everyone POV cramps at the same time.)

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Write the new POV. I've been in the dilemma myself, merrily wrote the scene and later found out how to fix it. ;)

[pjthompson]

Yeah, I don't see any way in my current state of mind to proceed, so new it is.

[sestasik.livejournal.com]

When a new POV comes into a novel after a certain pattern of POV has developed, I'm usually a bit aggravated too. However, the the new POV is well-written or the scene is interesting/action packed, generally I forget quickly that the new POV is supposed to bother me. So if you end up not being able to change it in later drafts, as long as it is essential and well written, it may work!

[pjthompson]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for that!