The secret of great fiction writing is...

[Toby Frost]

Indeed, my point is primarily that as an aspiring writer there can the pitfall of trying to communicate tension visually, rather than through a character experience.

This I certainly agree with. Tension comes not from the scale of what's actually happening but from the way characters respond to it. I think it counts double when you're trying to depict emotion: it's usually easy to see when emotion is being faked (I always feel particularly irritated when Batman depicts his inner turmoil by standing on something very tall and posing for a while).

That said I still do have a film that runs through my head. The only difference, I suppose, is that ownership of the film flicks from character to character, and we have to know not only what's literally happening but what the characters think about it. I think it was Dean Koontz who said you can't create tension in a vaccuum - you have to build tension on good foundations.

 

[Brian G Turner]

This whole issue feels like quite an epiphany for me.

My first attempt for my grand series was third person objective - it was literally written like a film, all visual cues, no internal character insight.

Attempts to rewrite with character experience so far have completely failed because even when I thought I was writing character viewpoints, I was really just writing behind their head.

Now I'm realising that a character is effectively a shell that I must step into, and make the story come alive through describing their experience.

It sounds simple, and mentally I know that's what I should have been doing - it just wasn't happening.

To open a scene I would still worry about how to write the visual elements and general experience as they happened to the character.

For example, in a storm scene I kept wanting to write about the storm, the landscape as it was battered, and only then, the character.

Now I realise I have to jump the reader into the character's head in the middle of the storm and just take it from there, and deal with the experience in the moment in order to avoid breaking show don't tell rules.

It's weird because I've always known character insight was important, that different sensory cues should be described, and I learned long ago about using tension and using Dune as a template on that.

However, something has always held me back because it hadn't all clicked together from understanding to actually comprehending the process.

As a simple example:

As Eric walked into the red room, Bob put a hand on his should and said "I think you're doing it wrong, Eric."

It's flat, and worse - it's dissociated. Eric doesn't experience Bob's hand - we simply see it happening.

As Eric walked into the red room he felt concerned at how Bob would react. He felt a hand clasp on his shoulder as Bob grinned towards him, "I think you're doing it wrong, Eric".

Now it provides something of Eric's experience, and also attempts to set up a tension between Eric's uncertainty, and Bob's actual reactions because they are in conflict. The entire sentence is far more dynamic and dramatic by comparison to the first.

Not great writing of course - but the point is simply to try and illustrate the two issues of actually describing a story from character experience, and secondly, using internal and external cues to set up tensions in that experience.

Last night when going to bed, I found myself spontaneously re-writing the start to a complex scene using this, and more importantly, felt that I had found my voice.

I've long felt I lacked a voice, but if I have found it, it was simply through comprehending how a writers tools should work together, and it all thus clicking together.

I hope I'm actually onto something real in terms of my own writing - but even if I am, I have a 750k novel to rewrite and slash down to a third of that!

Always challenges, but good to feel like moving past barriers at last.

 

[HareBrain]

The potential problem that then replaces disassociation is that you have "he felt"/"he saw"/"he heard" all over the place. The ideal is to get rid of them, and yet still have everything coming through as POV-character experience rather than outside observation.

When someone figures out a foolproof way of doing this, maybe they could let the rest of us know.

 

[Boneman]

by I,Brian
Last night when going to bed, I found myself spontaneously re-writing the start to a complex scene using this, and more importantly, felt that I had found my voice.

And you could sleep after that?????

I found the greatest help was to actually write a scene in the 1st person and that told me all the things (well, most of the things...) I needed from the character's pov, then go back into 3rd person. Every time I'm stuck, this has got me out of a jam. So I guess I'm agreeing with you, even though I still find I can't do without descriptive pieces - you should see the Temple on top of the pyramid - it's 3 minutes walk just along the base on one side! Somehow 'he felt dwarfed by the enormous edifice' didn't cut it. Okay, I didn't write that, but they'd all lived in the city all their lives, they were blind to it after all that time...

 

[Ursa major]

The potential problem that then replaces disassociation is that you have "he felt"/"he saw"/"he heard" all over the place. The ideal is to get rid of them, and yet still have everything coming through as POV-character experience rather than outside observation.

When someone figures out a foolproof way of doing this, maybe they could let the rest of us know.

There's absolutely no need for any of those artificial** "he felt"/"he saw"/"he heard" constructions. They are only there because we novice writers, in our ignorance, think that writing in close 3rd person means:

1. cutting out things that the POV character can't see/hear/smell/fell/otherwise-know - which is correct (except when, as Teresa has pointed out elsewhere, you can allow yourself, if you really want to, a few introductory statements in omniscient 3rd person before you burrow into the POV character AND
2. continually reminding the readers that they're meant to be experiencing the scene through the senses (and knowledge) of the POV character, which is, IMHO, wrong (although I'll admit to having done it).

Okay, I'm being specific here, by using the phrase, continually reminding the readers. It just isn't necessary and, worse, pulls the reader out of the POV character's head. I might even go as far as to say that it isn't close 3rd person, it's - for want of a snappier phrase - restricted omniscient pretending to be close 3rd person.

I think we can all see how it arises. We have some omniscient 3rd person narrative (by mistake or done deliberately) and we want, or have been told, to make it into close 3rd person. First we look for things that, say, Chris, can't know or experience, possibly marking things that we want the reader to know (and so have to find another way of delivering the information). Next, we make Chris experience what is left, hence the clumsy felt, saw, heard, etc. What we ought to do - at least in our heads, but possibly for real - is rewite the scene from scratch. At this point - and this is why it is not easy - we must become Chris, even where we're still in 3rd person. (This is where thinking, even if not writing, in 1st person can be helpful.)



Only my 2c.


** - This is my get-out word. I'm sure that there must be occasions - although I can't think of any, off-hand - where these words (felt, heard, etc.) could be used for specific purposes, deliberately pulling the reader partly out of the POV character's head (because that is what they do: they distance the reader from the POV character).

 

[Brian G Turner]

I found the greatest help was to actually write a scene in the 1st person

You hit the nail on the head there.