First Chapter POV Character

I'm sorry if this is to sound like an argument, but if one starts to talk about "absolutes" in narration and compares them with grammar "absolutes", I find myself feeling a sharp stick in my eye. As someone with an academic education on stuff like that. Hm.

Grammar we are taught in schools is an approximation and prescriptive "version", suited for pedagogical purposes, that is: teaching kids the norm of a language for basic contemporary purposes. Grammar we learned in school could,would&should change several times during our lives: grammar, being prescriptive reflects not the living language but linguistical description of contemporary conditions in a living language. Thus, as there are no absolutes in a language, there are (indirectly) no absolutes in grammar. Anyone who claims otherwise is a m...should know better

Now, narratology is the same. Absolute truths? I don't think so - no, I stand corrected: I have a freakin' MA to know so! Narratology is as descriptive a science as it gets. And it's devoid of absolute truths. It wasn't supposed to be in its beginings, a hundred years ago. Structuralist studies had an idea how cool it would be to statistically and empirically study literature (and consequently, other narrative forms - includong commercial writing) treating them as biologists treat rats or behevioral psych. treat dogs. But things changed drastically in a hundred years. Sure there are still old formalist followers out there, in genre studies and especially in creative writing teaching. But...

Edit: to make it clearer - narratology is part of literary theory. Literary theory is to creative writing what linguistic studies are to grammar. Description versus prescription. Studying a living organism, making conclusions about its development, then incorporating these conclusions into a prescriptive norm. (With some politics and personal philosophy thrown in just for fun.) In the case of creative writing - it wasn't even ment to be prescriptive, but since the students and followers started talking in absolute terms, it became so.

A random chapter of a random book by a relevant author - a walk to a book-store as @Steerpike said - is all that is needed to rebut the "absolute" truths about literature, publishing and the universe. If it isn't so, that this becomes a freakin' religious debate.

 

This is a ridiculous statement. I can see now why you're so stuck on parroting the advice of others on the forums as some sort of holy writ - you've apparently lost the capacity for critical thought (or else you're just being disingenuous). Conflating grammar and the other issues discussed in threads on 'rules' of writing makes no sense.

 

Yes, a bit silly. And of course, I used the qualifier "almost any" in my own statement, thinking that since I was speaking to a community of writers my meaning would be apparent. JayG has read that sentence as an absolute, even to the extent that it must include grammar, though whether through intentional misreading or sheer lack of ability in interpreting the written word, I don't know (if it is the latter, it explains a few things at least).

Giving JayG the benefit of the doubt, and assuming it is the latter, I will henceforth use short sentences and small words when replying to points he makes, out of simple human compassion and the desire to avoid future misreadings. Here to help me in that endeavor, please give a warm Writing Forums welcome to Thing 1 and Thing 2:

 

@Steerpike don't need to be that sarcastic... I found JayG's advice well aimed, sometimes, and well-structured: the problem as I see it, is that scene/sequel/motivation/tension/goal/disaster/action/reaction/&c advice falls flat when facing situations as described by OP (and a good portion of other problems). There are too many unknowns and too many possibilities - in order to achieve that kind of scene structure you just can't stick too "absolutes".

 

It was humorous in my pre-caffeinated state

On a more serious note, I think the tactic JayG used above is a common (and in my view dishonest) tactic on internet forums. So I didn't mind poking a bit of fun. As to the substance - well, the comma and tension comments really don't get to the sort of things we're talking about here. The only one that did was the heavily-qualified dream sequence comment. As it happens, I'm fairly certain I've read books that open that way, though not very many to be sure (and no, I'm not going to research my collection to look for them, as experience tells me that producing one would have little or no impact on the debate).

I think what can be said with some confidence is that JayG at least gives the appearance of having a limited understanding of the diversity of works to be found within traditionally-published literature, and that this appearance should cause anyone reading his advice to take it with a few grains of salt and find out for themselves.

 

Statements like these about "respected universities" bring to mind that episode of King Of The Hill where Bobby went to formal clown college and ended up boo'd off the stage when he followed the "proper" way to be funny (which was archaic and outdated by the way.) Yet when he said to hell with the rules and what "formal education" says, and subsequently did his own thing he was greeted with thunderous applause.

That said, quit citing the how to books and the university fiction course absolutes. Really, all they've done for me is actually cause me to discredit most of what you have to say. Just IMO all these glorified rule books and college courses do is turn out a stream of cookie cutter authors with no mind of their own. No direction. No heart. Just a name on the cover of a string of identical $5 novels for the rack of flight reading at the airport or those carousels at the 7-11.

 

Are you saying you don't want to produce generic fiction, written in a generic style, with generic dialogue, a predictable structure and so on? I'm shocked

 

Oh dear Lord,
This is now character profiling thread all over again!
I knew it'd happen -.-

 

You'll get far with a little bit of critical thinking. Everyone's right and wrong on the internet at the same time, after all.

I have successfully avoided it so far.

 

Sort of like in Sophocles, where every step the hero takes to avoid the foretold fate becomes a step to bring it about.

 

I wasn't trying to get into any kind of an argument with my post, but sometimes people just have a breaking point. I for one find @JayG 's advice to be - for the most part - highly repetitive as well as rigid. Not to mention nintey-percent of it sound like a shameless plug for these "bible's" written by some so-called "god's of authordom" personally whom I've never heard of despite the fact they have apparently sold 75+ novels, which for all I know could be the same rigidly packaged, hard ruled, tension in every sentence, action scene in every paragraph, question and answer every third word story repackaged with a slightly different plot and cover art for the sake of making another sale.

All I have to say is keep it real and be true to yourself. Don't write a story in a way that feels unnatural to you just because the "rules" say you have to.

 

Hear, hear!

I know but the topics just switch out of OPs needs.
It's like communal thread jacking.

See?
That'd be good advice for that prophecy thread!
Poor MC, steps into all the wrong things

 

I see italics all over the place

 

At this point, I've just come to take this thread as a form of entertainment, and am reading it for the sake of seeing the next episode in my new favorite soap opera.

 

I wonder who's sister/brother without knowing it.

 

I'm more concerned with the more romantic aspect. I heard a rumor that the producers are aiming to put in a love/hate relationship. Just to add to the drama, you know. Imagine it...

"COMMAS DON'T COME FIRST!"
"SHUT UP AND KISS ME, YOU FOOL!"

It gives me chills just thinking about it...

 

A personal attack? And from a moderator, who is supposed to be keeping people from insulting each other? I'm a bit disappointed.

Had ad the advice I gave no been exactly what you would get were you to have asked any publisher or teacher of commercial fiction, you might have a point. And of course you've ignored such respected periodicals as Writer's Digest, who said this as the very first point in an article called, How Not to Start a Story:

I am not making this stuff up. I can quote chapter and verse for whatever advice I give. And in this case, begin your story with a dream like that and you will be rejected. That, loke so many publishing issues is an absolute.

If informing the members of the truth is being mealy-mouthed I'll take it as a complement and keep it up.

 

@JayG
Funny though that books and other media uses dreams as a start or as an end to something.
Obviously, it's not so terrible to do as others do it successfully.
At least, not as much as cursing and hating the whole thing just for it.
If anything, it gives a strong emotional impact that shocks.

Also a dream sequence is nothing to do about structure, style, grammar or whatever else to turn a story into a well written format.
As far as I see it, it's part of the story or whatever and a reader will either appreciate it or not like a genre or something.

Saying it shouldn't be done is just preferential.

 

My apologies, @JayG. It wasn't meant as a personal attack. I thought your line was funny and I pointed that out. "Mealy-mouthed," according to COED, just means "reluctant to speak frankly," and that's how you phrased your absolute statement. When you make absolute statements, you have to make them ABSOLUTE, not "pretty much" and the like. I probably wouldn't have posted that response if it hadn't been you making the original post, because you come across, frankly, as a real hardass drill-sergeant on this forum. I hoped you'd take it in the spirit it was intended.

Sorry if it offended you.

And I wasn't objecting to the content of the statement; I don't start stories with dreams and I doubt I ever would. I was only having a tweak at the form.

I used to subscribe to Writer's Digest a long time ago. I have a certain amount of respect for it, but it's like one of those fitness magazines - there's only so many ways to get ripped abs (for example), but the magazine has to put out an issue every month, year after year, and it does get repetitive. That's what Writer's Digest is like.

I know you can quote chapter and verse for your advice. It's not you we (sometimes) object to, it's the books whose chapters and verses you quote. You keep saying we're violating the rules of "commercial" fiction, and we are, sometimes proudly. I'm not interested in writing commercial fiction, and many other members here aren't, as well. We want to write the best fiction we possibly can - fiction that lasts. I don't want to be Jack Bickham, publishing seventy-five novels that will all be out of print a decade after my death. I'd rather be James Joyce or Vladimir Nabokov or Ernest Hemingway - writers who published far fewer books, but whose books are all still in print forty or more years after their deaths and show no signs of going out of print. As I said in another thread, you and I are not in the same business.

 

Funny that I can't seem to remember any this season...or last...or...

Just because all the schools, the publishers, and the magazines recommend against something certainly isn't a reason not to do it if you care to. Though, since it's their football, they kind of get to make the rules. And the part that said, "Never, ever, ever begin a narrative with action and then reveal the character’s merely dreaming it all. Not unless you’d like your manuscript hurled across the room, accompanied by a series of curses." seemed as if they...well, really felt strongly about it. Personally, I'd do it their way till I achieved fame, before giving that poor editor a hissy-fit.

 

So just because something isn't done often or regularly enough for everyone to see/read it backs up your point automatically?
Or maybe it's not as common as the blond girl tripping helplessly while pursued by a murderer?

I haven't read any books about wives of the 18th century murdering their lovers as they become slowly insane.
Guess it means there is a reason no one does that either.
Publishers must be flipping lids at authors who would only reveal toward the end the MC is a psychotic killer without them knowing.
Stories are supposed to make us get to know the character, not have them do a 180 at the last chapter where we figure it was all a lie!

And what about untrustworthy narrators that only tell their sides?
Liars all of them! confusing readers and making things not obvious and full of questions even after the book ends!

If someone gets overly angry that something was a dream sequence, they there just in the wrong place and maybe that publishing house ain't for you.
Not everyone goes to hysterics over the fact the fictional characters were doubly fictional.

 

Heh. Yes, unreliable narrators can be a lot of fun. I'm thinking, for example, of Humbert Humbert, of Lolita.

 

I just realized that I wrote obviousness when I meant not obvious. Unobvious is not a word apparently.

 

Non-obvious?

 

See, I always did think it was unobvious.
I learned something new today
3rd language, ho! *Fluency in English raised by 1pt.*