In which Rolanni is fed up with book larnin'

[rolanni]

Yesterday, alostgirl posted a query about handling POV shifts to genreneep. A buncha helpful people chimed in to offer advice, and I did, though I rarely do so. Follows one of the reasons I'm so seldom helpful in open fora. It will, I fear, constitute a Rant, because, y'know, I'm Just Not In A Very Good Mood Today, and will be decently hidden behind a cut.



In giving my advice, I noted that I am a headhopper, and use a variety of techniques for signaling a change of head, among them: hitting the enter key twice and starting the new POV; making a new paragraph and starting the new POV; making a new sentence and starting the new POV. The point being that, whatever you do and however you do it, you-the-author do not want to be so clumsy that the reader is kicked out of the story.

Well enough.

Comes jenwrites who advises making POV changes at chapter breaks, which is fair, reasonable, and workable. But then she says, "...I think it also makes for much cleaner, much more thoughtful writing on the part of the author. If you jump back and forth willy-nilly, it takes a lot less thought to construct a good narrative."

Since the object of the exercise, so far as I understand it, is to construct a good narrative, regardless of how much work -- or thinking! -- might be required, I thought that I hadn't perfectly understood her point, so I asked it using less thought to construct a good narrative was a Bad Thing.

And comes the answer: "Not necessarily, but I prefer to read a narrative that the author has put a lot of thought and craft into over one that's just slapped together organically. If you know you're shifting POV with every chapter, then it's very likely to make you plot things out more thoroughly than if you just switch back and forth at will."

First, the dismissal of an organic novel as being "slapped together," as if writing organically were some lesser and not very cleanly practice guaranteed to produce inferior books roasts my groats, but that's just me.

Let's take a look at "...if you just switch back and forth at will." Now, dammit, this is MY book we're talking about here, right? Whose will ought to prevail in the writing of it?

Also? Being forced to set up the structure of the story ahead of getting any actual story written (you know -- the Fun Part) is more likely to inspire me to go read comic books on the couch than it is to plot things out more thoroughly. I don't like to plot things out thoroughly. The stories I've written which were plotted out thoroughly in advance, IMO, lack the energy that informs those stories which were slapped together organically. As a reader I look for energy (i.e. "stories that rock"), and am willing to forgive all kinds of "error" in structure as long as I also get engaging characters and consistent worldbuilding.

Which feeds into my gripe with yet another comment made in thread. From green_knight we have the following: "Headhopping never used to disturb me right until I internalised PoV. Nowadays, it's a major turnoff - the story cannot 'rock' when it's badly written, and the better I become, the more stories fall under 'bad'."

This is nonsense. It makes the assumption that all headhopping is bad writing (and that a good story badly written can never transcend the writer's skill, which is clearly not so, or all of us who have published a first novel would never have published a second), that it's never done well, that it's never necessary to story or to character development, and that writers who employ this technique are BAD WRITERS. I happen to headhop because I like to headhop. It's fun to play with viewpoint. Not only that, but occasions of well-executed headhopping have never once inspired me to throw a book across the room.

Genre fiction is not Literature, folks. You are not competing with Shakespeare -- no, bad example; Shakespeare played all kinds of word and structure games. Um... *thinks*... Ah.

You are not competing with the God-Shakespeare college professors labor to create in youthful minds. You are competing with what's on the tube. You are competing with multiplayer computer games. You are competing with let's go to a movie tonight. You are competing, in Damon Knight's perfect phrase, for Joe's beer money.

Writing is not, as kaygo once put it, a hair shirt. The myth that you must suffer for your art is just that -- a myth. Life is already much too full of suffering and pain. And rules. If your writing isn't feeding something in you that resonates contentment, or joy, or just plain fun -- you're in the wrong line of work. There are jobs a-plenty that strangle your joy with rules. And they're all much more financially rewarding than your writing -- or mine -- is ever likely to be.

Comments

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm biased, since I prefer character driven stories to plot driven ones. Ideally I'd like both, but I'd rather have great characters than a wonderfully plotted book in which I don't give a damn about anyone in it.

That being the case, I enjoy seeing things from other points of view than just that of the title character or characters. If nothing else, if gives me insight into how the characters (and settings) I like are seen by others. It gives a richness to things that you can't get any other way, and you learn more about each character by seeing how they see the world and how they are seen.

I don't see why the change of perspective should only be made once a chapter. As long as it's clear that the POV has changed, I don't care if it happens more often (although certianly jumping around from paragraph to paragraph within a single scene could get distracting).

What does drive me nuts, after reading writers like yourself who are good at POV and at showing rather than telling, is when I read something where someone walks into a room they've never been in before, and you get a description of the room which includes things that wouldn't be apparent at first viewing, i.e. "...with a closed door leading to an enclosed porch in which the residents often enjoyed afternoon tea." Mind you, the book is in third person, so it doesn't really break the rules, but it feels odd to me, and I find it jarring.