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icarusOn Writing First Person
I discovered something.
I usually hate first-person stories. As soon as I see that 'I' in the first few sentences, I run. With first-person you lose half the visuals, you get trapped in their thoughts, repetition is often mind-numbing. It also tends to throw the continuity and time-line out of whack.
But it works when you need distance. When the subject matter is horrific or particularly intense.
It does the opposite of what you'd expect. It gives you distance. (That's why it works in 'Interview with a Vampire.')
The character tells you the attitude you're supposed to have. You spend so much time in his head, you don't have time to react to how lurid this all is. Instead you react to his reactions and asides. Gives you more distance to swallow it, while still preserving the immediacy of the scene. This is why it had to be a first-person narrative. Much as I hate them.
On Drabbles... and Hermione in a leather corset
Good Drabbles stimulate the imagination!
I've been watching the Drabbles lately, and see a pattern in those that work:
1) An underlying tension between the characters (of course)
2) An original plot, something that outside the expected
3) A plot that is completed by suggestion.. ie, you can see what's coming
4) A history that is filled in by suggestion
I've decided that a Drabble at its best is complete story where the reader fills in the blanks.
Examples:
1) Certain characters, as soon as you put them together, you get a whattheheck response. Ron/Hermione may not come as much of a shock, as the history is in canon. There isn't much for the imagination to work with there.
2) But Hermione standing over Ron in a leather corset, flogger in hand, making him beg... will suggest a great deal to the imagination.
3) Ron stubbornly refusing to do as she says, but totally turned on suggests an outcome to the reader, so the reader completes the story in their minds - he's going to give in. Thus they feel satisfied even by this brief vignette.
4) A statement at some point that explains what brought about this situation fleshes *ahem, pardon* the history. "All right, Malfoy, you've had your little peep show. Now where's Harry!?"
Voila! You have no mere scene, but an entire story in highly concentrated form.
*bows*
Can you tell I've just read CLS's Fashion Sensibility?
I discovered something.
I usually hate first-person stories. As soon as I see that 'I' in the first few sentences, I run. With first-person you lose half the visuals, you get trapped in their thoughts, repetition is often mind-numbing. It also tends to throw the continuity and time-line out of whack.
But it works when you need distance. When the subject matter is horrific or particularly intense.
It does the opposite of what you'd expect. It gives you distance. (That's why it works in 'Interview with a Vampire.')
The character tells you the attitude you're supposed to have. You spend so much time in his head, you don't have time to react to how lurid this all is. Instead you react to his reactions and asides. Gives you more distance to swallow it, while still preserving the immediacy of the scene. This is why it had to be a first-person narrative. Much as I hate them.
On Drabbles... and Hermione in a leather corset
Good Drabbles stimulate the imagination!
I've been watching the Drabbles lately, and see a pattern in those that work:
1) An underlying tension between the characters (of course)
2) An original plot, something that outside the expected
3) A plot that is completed by suggestion.. ie, you can see what's coming
4) A history that is filled in by suggestion
I've decided that a Drabble at its best is complete story where the reader fills in the blanks.
Examples:
1) Certain characters, as soon as you put them together, you get a whattheheck response. Ron/Hermione may not come as much of a shock, as the history is in canon. There isn't much for the imagination to work with there.
2) But Hermione standing over Ron in a leather corset, flogger in hand, making him beg... will suggest a great deal to the imagination.
3) Ron stubbornly refusing to do as she says, but totally turned on suggests an outcome to the reader, so the reader completes the story in their minds - he's going to give in. Thus they feel satisfied even by this brief vignette.
4) A statement at some point that explains what brought about this situation fleshes *ahem, pardon* the history. "All right, Malfoy, you've had your little peep show. Now where's Harry!?"
Voila! You have no mere scene, but an entire story in highly concentrated form.
*bows*
Can you tell I've just read CLS's Fashion Sensibility?
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Re: Message from a self-confessed first-person POV whore.
Date: 2003-03-09 01:10 pm (UTC)Ah! We are using the term 'distance' differently. Forgive me for being vague. By distance, I am referring to 'distance from the events, scenery, et al.'
By using first-person narrative the reader is removed one step away from the action. Instead of directly perceiving 'there was a white cow' and having their own response to that, you have 'I saw a white cow...' (here the reader waits for the meaning) '...and it made me think of my grandmother's farm. God, I loathed that place.' The reader doesn't directly experience the white cow, rather they experience it second-hand through the character's reaction to the white cow.
The skillful use of that filter is crucial.
The character itself has to be interesting enough to make second-hand observation not only bearable, but entertaining. Boring people are dead boring if you're forced to live in their heads.
The events have to be exciting or strange enough to survive being filtered and distant, not be overwhelmed by personality.
Plus the filter has to be used very skillfully. The writer can't forget time and place, which is all too easy to do in first-person narrative, floating around in that brain.
The misunderstanding about this second hand experience and 'distance', causes people to abuse first person in stories that would have been perfectly effective in third person limited, or charmingly fairy-tale-like in third person omniscient.
Simple stories, about ordinary people and things, become impossibly dreary by the application of first person narrative because the uninformed writer is unaware of the distance from physical reality they have created. It grows worse, as they forget to place the events in scenery and time. The result is a horrible swim through a cesspool of random mind. Then, invariably, they begin to whine....
~Icarus