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Eric the Mauve posted:I'd be leery of putting it like this to an aspiring writer. The reality is if you do it well you just might sell it and get it published; and if the general public becomes aware of your writing, you can definitely expect a certain number of self-appointed Literary Experts who will take time out of their busy schedules to explain to you at great length why your writing is terrible and you are a bad person who should feel bad. Yeah but I think if your writing becomes popular enough this will happen regardless of what you actually write. If your book becomes a best-seller it's probably either genre fiction, or it's tackling some hot topic, and either way someone somewhere is guaranteed to get mad.
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Nov 11, 2023 19:17
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 13:13 |
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I want to write an L shaped timeline, like we start at a pivotal point and mostly move the plot forward, but sometimes drop in a chapter that moves backwards from the starting point, until at the end there's two chapters back to back of the main character first arriving in (the main setting) and finally leaving (the main setting). The backwards-moving chapters would always reveal some past event that is relevant to the forward-moving plot at hand. I think that would be cool.
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Nov 13, 2023 20:56
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Oh I wouldn't want it to be confusing or even complex. I might label the chapter by year, or by the protagonist's age or something. The forward story is longer and lasts about 3 or 4 years, the backward story is shorter and takes about 20 years. That's part of why I want to do it that way, because I don't want to start with child protagonists and also don't want to start with a bunch of time skips. The other reason is I think the forward story will naturally make people wonder about the past and then they'd slowly get it and it would be satisfying. Drip-feeding the reader flashbacks is definitely something I've seen in a lot of stories. I don't recall a case where they specifically go backwards every time, or where the stories aren't connected by some conceit of a character thinking or talking about the past. But I'm sure it's been done.
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Nov 14, 2023 02:02
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It depends on what kind of first person narration you're using. If it's the character's thoughts in the moment, write like his inner monologue would be. If the character is telling the story to someone else, I could imagine some settings where unnatural diction would be evocative. Maybe he's telling the story to an evil robot, so he is trying to be very precise. Or he is telling it in a language he is not very comfortable in. Or, hey, maybe he just is not the type of person who uses contractions. But generally, I'd agree that contractions are easier to read.
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Nov 29, 2023 19:17
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Don't worry about the intro until you've finished most of the rest. Chances are your vision will change and you'll have to edit it anyhow. That's also how I deal with chapters and other small parts, just start in the middle and write to the end. If it absolutely needs an intro, I add it later.
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Dec 1, 2023 11:20
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I think there's better ways to introduce the idea of "there will be monsters / action later" than doing an isolated prologue. I mean, the problem of "I wanted to read about happy farmers and now there's monsters" or "I wanted to read about monsters and now have to slog through 100 pages of farming" persists even with the prologue. Ideally you'd find some way to anticipate the monsters in the farming part. Maybe characters discuss the monsters while farming. Or maybe the farming involves things that mirror what will happen later once there are monsters. Like in the LotR films, there's this scene where the hobbits hide from a farmer after stealing his produce, and that mirrors how they'll hide from monsters not much later. (I realise the LotR films also have an actual prologue but work with me here)
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Jan 18, 2024 08:49
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I usually don't mention it unless it's important. Like, I'll point out what language someone is speaking if it's thematically relevant, or if there is another character in the scene who wouldn't understand what's being said (and this is plot relevant somehow). Like quote:"Welcome to our family", she said to Bob. Her smile faded as she leaned over Laurie's shoulder and said in French: "I told you not to bring that man here." If you want that situation to go on for a while, I think you could establish some typography thing (e.g. italics, or a different font, or << >> style quotation marks) to mark one of the languages. I wouldn't try to match the grammatical structure, although it would be fun / immersive to actually use quirks of the language in question. E.g. in Spanish it's pretty hard to be evasive about the gender of a person, and so on.
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Jan 21, 2024 12:12
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I like writing in first person present tense. It brings the events really close. You can also just write thoughts and judgements like: > He is blocking the door. He is such an rear end in a top hat. Instead of: > He blocked the door. "He's an rear end in a top hat", I thought. So it feels much more natural to put in a lot of character voice. In first person past tense you always have to juggle that double perspective of what the character thinks at the time that things are happening, and what xe thinks about it in retrospect. It can be really useful in some scenarios, but it does add a lot of cognitive load. I do also like writings where the frame story is an epistolary or some other scenario of a specific person narrating for a specific reason. But I've never really been able to make it work, myself.
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Feb 28, 2024 09:35
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Hmm, it's like: First person present tense: > Ann puts her hand on my shoulder. She likes me. Pretty straightforward what is going on, POV witnesses something and then has a thought about it. First person past tense: > Ann put her hand on my shoulder. "She likes me," I thought. > Ann put her hand on my shoulder. She liked me. In the first case, it's implied that the narrator was wrong to think that, in the second case it's implied to be a fact and not a thought. That's not a bad thing! You might want that! But it removes immediacy. I think in third person tense matters less: Third person indirect: > Ann put her hand on Bea's shoulder. She liked her. Can work! But I'd argue we again have the problem that the narration implicitly agrees with the thought. It also might look like we're switching from Bea's POV to Ann's here. Third person direct: > Ann put her hand on Bea's shoulder. "She likes me", Bea thought. This is very clear, we know whose head we're in, and there's no pronoun confusion. But it's too complicated to inject it in the text everywhere all the time, so there will be less personal thoughts if you write like this. It's not an insurmountable problem or anything, and constantly injecting the POV's thoughts isn't for every story anyway. But I think it makes a difference.
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Feb 28, 2024 13:47
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 13:13 |
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"whether you use first person narration" and "whether the narrator is telling the story in some specific circumstance that explains their narrative choices" are basically two independent questions. You can have a first person narrator who is retelling the story later, e.g. in an epistolary. You can also have a third person narrator who is speaking from a specific perspective, although that is not used as much in newer books. But generally speaking, I do think that first person narration signals "you are experiencing the story from the perspective of a specific person, and her take on the situation may be wrong", while third person narration signals a more neutral perspective.
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Feb 29, 2024 04:06
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