Subject: Re: Narrative Point of View (was Re: [FFML][Essay/rant]A Long Strange Walk '99 )
From: Matthew Lewis
Date: 4/6/1999, 3:28 AM
To: kleppe@execpc.com (Gary Kleppe), Elsa Bibat
CC: "'ffml@fanfic.com'" <ffml@fanfic.com>, "'ashita@cchono.com'" <ashita@cchono.com>, "'curtiss@seattleu.edu'" <curtiss@seattleu.edu>

At 04:15 AM 4/6/99 GMT, Gary Kleppe wrote:

I'll just skip righ to the end, dearies, since that's what I want to address.

As always, being the author it's 
your choice of what POV to use for maximum effect. 

What POV to use is your choice, yes, but which one tells your story the
best is a (sort of) objective matter. I've seen a lot of fics written in
omniscient perspective that IMO would've worked better with a limited
third person.

I may write and post an essay on narrative POV if people are interested
in seeing it.

<sniff> oh no... I write a whole essay on narrative viewpoint and narrators,
chock-filled with references to actual fics (my own, but still ^_^ ), and
does anyone remember it? Does anyone say to themselves, "Hey, that made sense!
I never thought of that! I'm going to use it in my next...."

So okay, maybe it's because you're not sure if I'm serious or not, whether
or not I mean it or am joking, or whether or not I'm just plain full of it.
Could also be that whole rambling thing of mine, but we won't go into that
either (see? I'm getting better!).

	Here's the gist of it, at any rate (I wonder if I still have it kicking
around. You want to know? You come and you ask me and I'll take a look and
send it to you, okay?).

	Narrative viewpoint and narrators. Now, most people don't seem to realise
that the narrator isn't the author. The narrator is, in fact, a character.
Objectivity is impossible, although some narrators would have you believe that
they are objective. Everything you see in a story is being filtered through
the narrator, whether or not it be first, second or third person.
	First person? Easy. The narrator is an active part in the storyline.
You know the drill, I won't bother to repeat. Second? Gets used so seldom,
and, well, again, you know what's what.
	Third? Third's the tricky one. You've got different kinds of omniscience,
for instance. You've got total (all characters thoughts, all the time, knows
what's going to happen next, knows the past, that kind of thing). Easy to
slip in a comment here and there and get you (the reader) to believe it as
truth, because the narrator presents himself (could be herself, just as
easily,
but if it's unknown, I use the male pronouns-- used to be a rule of syntax, at
least). There's also a limited omniscience, which is able to see into the
thoughts of not necessarily all the characters, or perhaps doesn't know what's
going to happen in the future, or doesn't know the past. Basically an
imperfect
version of the first. Often follows a character around and see only through
that character's eyes, seeing only their thoughts-- such a character is
referred to as the 'reflector character.' Some stories have more than one
reflector character, but not more than one at a time.
	Then there's the camera narrator. The reader doesn't see any thoughts,
but just sees what's going on at the present.
	But wait, I'm not done yet. You've also got personality. Is the narrator
chatty? Is the narrator making a pretense of being objective, or is he, or
she,
putting in snide comments once in a while, or perhaps alluding to something
the
reader doesn't know about yet (something that happened in the past, or in the
future). Is the narrator helpful, recalling facts the reader may have
forgotten,
or trying to obfuscate things and cover up and mislead the reader? Your
narrator's
personality may set the tone for the whole story.

	Ever read The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy by Lawrence Sterne? 
Absolutely brilliant book. Greatest novel ever written, it is said. Take a
look
at the narration in it. Not an easy read, but extremely funny, and absolutely
brilliant. It'll teach you things about narrators, and about what you, as an
author, can do in a story, and with a narrator, far better than any essay or
lecture or rant could, I think.

	Also, sometimes the narrator can be tricky to find, trying to hide. The
omniscient one, for instance, often tries this. In the epistolary format
(letters), the narrator hides, sort of. In my story Shell Games, the story is
told through a variety of media: collected from television and radio
broadcasts,
newspaper articles and classified ads, from security cameras, from
transmissions
and other sources. And yet, there is still someone telling the story.
That's the
narrator. 
	Your narrator is the one telling the story, whether or not the narrator
takes part in it or not. Do not confuse the author with the narrator, because
there are times when the author and the narrator do not agree, and when the
narrator tries to subvert the story.

Matthew Lewis is:
	Matt on IRC
	Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
	maybeso@ican.net
	a casualty of causality
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Reality and I have this arrangement, see?
I ignore it, and it ignores me. we're quite happy
with the way it works, really.
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