I get your point. It is valid. In the real world, we rely heavily on body language, unless we are telepathic. Movies mimic reality with camera shots of characters' body language ( including facial expressions ). Good cinematic novels should use a narration camera to avoid stiff announcements of feelings. Even so, most writers limit their viewpoint characters to bare minimum. Readers will be unable to read the thoughts and feelings of most characters. I'm writing my first entirely cinematic novel now. My idea is to have it just a step away from a screen play version. I don't yet know how that will go. I'm experimenting. My interest in cinematic viewpoint is the result of two factors: 1. I want to make my bad guys threatening. I reason that if readers cannot read the bad guys' minds, fear-of-the-unknown will make their actions and dialogue more intimidating. Also, lack of empathy will help my readers loathe my bad guys. Usually, I have two viewpoint characters, hero and heroine. Any chapter without them is cinematic. 2. When I intend to write a story as both a novel and a screen play, I must at some point view the story cinematically. Interesting Note: I found out about Writing Forums as a result of googling "cinematic viewpoint." Before I ran across this thread, I had no knowledge that writingforums.org even existed.
Wouldn't narrative exposition be the writer's narrative voice, possibly implying the viewpoint character's thoughts, about his or her external world? Wouldn't monologue be narrative information in the form of a character's dialogue? Maybe, in theater, soliloquy might be viewed as both monologue and narrative exposition since a character ( actor ) is speaking. But it's to the audience rather than to other characters.
Well first off I need to make it clear I'm writing in 3rd person for the first time ever, so my question was not a trick one. All my fiction before has essentially been one long monologue, because it's been in 1st person. But I'm still not sure I understand. Are you saying that a monologue in 3rd person needs to be dialogue between "speech marks", because otherwise I'm puzzled as to how you separate a character's monologue from the author's narration. [edit] Just realised I've made an assumption the OP is writing in third. If they're not, then this changes everything I've said. Having said that, if they're writing in first I'm still not sure what the difference between monologue and narrative exposition would be.
I like your sketch concept. I understand your love of dialogue. I identify with these in my own writing. Dialogue and action overlap. Speaking is action since it is physical human behavior. Some actions are primarily communicative: Laughing, smiling, crying, screaming, gestures, etc. Sketching with dialogue can both inform and mystify when two characters know what they are talking about but the reader only partially does. This mimics reality when we overhear other people's conversations. I like a variety of all these. Constant dialogue ping pong can get dull: ( he said, she said, he said, she said... ) People doing nothing but making faces and gestures looks ridiculous. Who wants to hear the author make many long speeches? I have struggled with this literary juggling. Dialogue is my wild horse. Few beginning writers have had a tendency to under-describe and to over-dialogue. I am one of those few.
In third person, I see "internal monologue" as being closely related to character thought, perhaps so closely that they're the same thing. I'm going to present the same information in internal monologue and then in exposition, and see if people disagree with me as to how I'm labelling them: Monologue: Jane stared at the table. What the flying bleep was all this stuff? Two fish forks, a shrimp fork, a salad fork, two regular forks, and then just as many knives...no, there were more forks than knives. Was it a test to see who knew which fork didn't get a knife? And the forest of glasses expanded so far that she wasn't sure which was hers and which belonged to the person sitting to her right. Thank goodness there was no one to her left; that was the end of the table, against the wall, and maybe she could expand in that direction. Exposition: The table was set with the host's best--all of it. Every knife, every fork, every piece of crystal had been deployed. The waitstaff had spent forty minutes getting it set, and the event planner had walked the table with a diagram and a checklist. The monologue is close third person limited with Jane as POV character. The POV of Exposition is not clear in my paragraph, though the POV could be that of the event planner, since he/she would probably know all of the information. However, I would still call it exposition, because we're not diving into the event planner's head and getting her immediate thoughts and feelings. The monologue is not present tense first person direct thought, because I just don't do that. OK, I'll do a bit of it for the sake of the exercise: Jane stared at the table. What the flying bleep is all this stuff? Two fish forks, a shrimp fork, a salad fork, two regular forks, and then just as many knives...no, there were more forks than knives. Is it a test to see who knows which fork doesn't get a knife? And the forest of glasses expanded so far that she wasn't sure which was hers and which belonged to the person sitting to her right. Thank goodness there was no one to her left; that was the end of the table, against the wall. Maybe I can can expand toward the wall.
They're helpful examples, @ChickenFreak, but I can't say I share your opinion on the difference between monologue and direct thought. The only difference I see is the use of italics and change of tense, but this to me is more a style choice than a different POV.
I'm not saying that they are different. Internal monologue and direct thought are, IMO, essentially the same thing formatted and "tensed" differently. Plus, "monologue", to me, suggests some length. I wouldn't think of a brief thought in an otherwise action paragraph as internal "monologue", but that might just be me.
This is a 100% correct, and why I've back off on intensifying my imagery as of late. Mystics was written with an intense amount of Imagery, which a lot of people liked, but there was a flaw that the majority of my critique partners pointed out: They Sensually could experience the story, but they could not emotionally connect to my character. This was a major flaw (killed the story actually.) I love layering in imagery, but, experience has taught me that one must first learn how to reveal subtext (the emotional drives and desires of a character) before you layer cinematic/imagery heavy writing in. I have found that Romance writers are Gods at revealing character subtext; they really get me emotionally attached to the characters -which is why 1/3 of the people who read my W.I.Ps are Romance writers. I really urge people to master the use of Subtext before tackling Cinematic/Imagery heavy writing.
Um, when did it not??? Do I think most of them are good writers? Probably not but that is my subjective opinion. Less Than Zero was a huge novel and a game changer to some degree. If you are not selling books it means fuckall how good you are because no one will know.
Proved what point? Just because I don't consider someone a good writer does not mean the are not a good writer. I may hate Dan Brown, but his stories are good enough that millions of people want to read them. You may need to read a whole sentence or two instead of half a sentence.
@Poetical Gore - I'll try one more time, then I'm done. You said: This was in response to @Trish saying she didn't consider Bret Easton Ellis a good writer. In response to your comment, I asked a question which challenged your notion that having a best seller automatically makes you a good writer. You then admitted that it's possible not all best sellers are 'good' writers. In doing so you effectively proved my point. Your original response to @Trish was clearly said because her opinion of BEE goes against your own, and all I was saying is that you can't hope to prove that BEE is a good writer, based merely on the fact he's had a best-seller.