Favorite Point of View

[Dawnstorm]

So for instance your example of a person hitting himself with a hammer and another person observing it and narrating the incident, and you saying the observing person is the narrator and the person hit with the hammer is the point-of-view character -- that's not going to work for most people. For them, the observer is the point-of-view narrator -- giving them the picture of the person hitting the hammer, and the person hit with the hammer is the focal character whose feelings are guessed at, but not known for certain, not definitively given.

I don't recall encountering a usage such as the hammer, etc, before, so had no idea how to properly address it.

Ah, well. It was an analogy. I was only talking about the "Ouch," not the entire situation. It is not a narrative situation, so there is no narrator in the situation, but the relation between the origin of the utterance and origin of the feeling is roughly the same as the narrator to point-of-view character.

Since the analogy failed to get that point across, it was a bad analogy. I've used it before. It failed, then, too. It is a bad analogy and I won't be using it again. (If I can remember that it's a bad analogy. It's hard to remember that as I happen to like it. )

Likewise the Middlemarch omniscient narrator is technically a first person omniscient because that's how they tended to do it back then, but gets called third person by some because it relates the characters and their pov in third person.

Okay. Why, exactly, is the Middlemarch narrator a "first person omniscient" narrator. Because she's a narrator and says "I" with respect to herself? To me, that's not enough, and if that's common parlance, than I do indeed think your better off without any terms than with that.

Why? Because, as you say, this requires an equation of narrator and point-of-view. How, then, do we account for third limited, whose very definition is that the narrator never uses his own point of view, but hides behind a view-point character.

Every narrator is an "I" in the context of the telling; some refer to themselves, and some are more direct in that than others. A point-of-view concept that does not allow for the question whether a narrator gives his own point of view or someone else's is no point-of-view concept at all.

It all comes down to inner thought. Whosever inner thoughts and feelings we get, they are the narrating pov character in people's conception, the camera in charge of the story for that part.

Okay:

And in the common parlance, the narrator is the point-of-view -- is the camera.

This is confusing me no end. "Narrating pov character", where "narrator is the point-of-view"? "The camera"? So a third person limited narrator is really the point of view character with the silly affectation of speaking about himself in the third person? What other interpretation does this terminology allow? There is more to third limited. That the point-of-view character is not the narrator is essential; it's not a verbal tick.

All narration -- observation, description, dialogue, description of action, metaphor, etc. is considered to be coming through their psyche (their point-of-view of things,) unless we get the inner thoughts and feelings of some other character, who then is taking over for that part of narrative.

Who is "their", and how - if point-of-view and narrator is the same thing - can some other character even take over? Are we now making the distinction instead of sweeping it under carpet, to save the "common parlance"?

For straight first person, this is very easy to see -- one narrator, one point-of-view of the whole story, all other characters have their thoughts and feelings interpreted by the first person pov narrator. For third person tight, limited, intimate, whatever the f they call it, which is like straight first person or revolving/alternating first person, it is also very easy to see because it is one character, one point-of-view, one narrator to deal with at any one time. Even second person, which usually uses first person or third person limited as the jumping off point, can be therefore relatively easy to follow in terms of whose inner viewpoint you're getting.

Actually, third limited is easiest, because the "hiding" of narrator's point of view is it's defining feature. The ease of first person is deceptive, because it's the same person - but at different parts in the biography. That's one of the reasons to use third limited; no (= little) difference between the telling and told.

Where things get more confusing on a writing comprehension level (but not on an instinctual reading or construction level,) is the different uses of omniscience, and not the technical, full-out omniscience but the working definition of the thing. Omniscience can come in many shades, allowing an outside narrator point-of-view and the ability of that narrator to telescope in to characters' inner thoughts and feelings, in whole or in part, and shuffle them like a deck of cards during a scene or just use one at a time. It can be done in first, second or third person, and done a lot of different ways.

And this the source of my contention. I don't think that things get confusing at omniscient; I think that's where the symptoms start to show, but the entire concept is corrupt from the get go. I think that the common near-equation between third limtied and first person, for example, is already part of the confusion (but an unacknowledged part). Omniscient is just where it falls apart - the scapegoat.

If you take it down to the atomic level, it gets a lot more complicated than that, but most writers and most readers are not analyzing it at the atomic level, even when it's something like first person semi-omniscient or mixed first and third person with bits of second person, etc. They are looking at it as to who is telling the story, which translates into whose brain are we in at the moment.

Yeah, and as long as the theory-babble doesn't trickle down into what writers actually do I don't care what they call what. Sadly, I've seen plenty of critiques that shout "headhopping" or "narrative intrusion" or "breaking the fourth wall" for no good reason I can see. I have the nagging feeling that theory-innocent readers are better critics than theory-corrupted writers.

***

Finally, this post of yours helped me spot a yearlong misunderstanding: whenever you said "first person omniscient" I should have translated that for myself to "third person omniscient with an overt narrator who refers to him/herself in comments". Instead I always thought of situations like Moby Dick, where Ishmael tells us what Ahab did alone in his cabin (emphasis being on "alone").

 

[ShellyS]

Ah, well. It was an analogy. I was only talking about the "Ouch," not the entire situation. It is not a narrative situation, so there is no narrator in the situation, but the relation between the origin of the utterance and origin of the feeling is roughly the same as the narrator to point-of-view character.

Since the analogy failed to get that point across, it was a bad analogy. I've used it before. It failed, then, too. It is a bad analogy and I won't be using it again. (If I can remember that it's a bad analogy. It's hard to remember that as I happen to like it. )

I thought it more an example to illustrate your point rather than an analogy, but it made no sense to me re: pov, since everything I've ever read or heard re: pov in writing has to do with the view of the narrator, and there's always a narrator as the words have to come from somewhere even if the narrator isn't always obvious. In referring to your post, I used the hammer example because it was a quick and easy way to do so.

Why? Because, as you say, this requires an equation of narrator and point-of-view. How, then, do we account for third limited, whose very definition is that the narrator never uses his own point of view, but hides behind a view-point character.

I'm not skilled enough to explain this as KatG is and I've never read Middlemarch, but the narrator is the pov as I see it. The view is who's telling the story, whether omniscient and able to tell us what other characters are thinking/feeling without it being a supposition, or a tight third limited intimate whatever where the narrator is conveying only what he or she knows for a fact, including their own feelings and thoughts and must make guesses re: the other character's inner thoughts if they even bother to consider the other characters. It's their view of the story that's being told that is the pov.

It seems to me that you are mixing up how pov works, but I don't think I'm the right person to explain it.

 

[KatG]

It's simple, Eddie, you have to dump your definition of what a narrator is.

Because that's not how most writers and readers use the word narrator. The narrator, for them, is either a point-of-view character (one whose inner thoughts and feelings, etc. we get) or an omniscient narrator (omniscient pov,) who then can also go into character's heads and give us their thoughts and feelings.

It's been so long since I read Middlemarch -- back in school -- that I honestly don't remember what format it used. I was going from what you were saying about it. But let me run through these things again, and see if it makes sense (don't use any lit theory here.)

Third person limited is when the text is in third person, but there is no omniscient narrator ever. Instead, there is one pov character whose inner thoughts and feelings we get, in third person. We see what they see, etc., and we get their interpretation of it. We cannot get anything outside of their viewpoint (if they don't see it, it's not in the picture.) In this, it's nearly identical to first person, except that it doesn't have that talking to the audience aspect of first. Instead, it's just the character thinking and observing and we're listening in. At a break in the text -- chapter or section -- the author can switch if desired to another character's pov. This is what George Martin does in A Song of Ice and Fire, which is written in third person limited, because he's limiting the perspective to the viewpoint of one character per chapter.

At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Rowling has the delivery of infant Harry to his relatives and she does it in third person omniscient. We don't get the inner thoughts of Dumbledore or other characters. We don't get Dumbledore's view of the street, etc. Instead, we are given that information through the omniscient narrator. The rest of the story is told in Harry's pov, and only Harry's. At various other points in the series, Rowling has omniscient passages when Harry's not around. When he is, she just uses his pov, with occasional sneaky bits of omniscience. But the use of the passage makes the book third person omniscient as the format. If Rowling had chosen instead to make it third person limited, that first section of the first novel would have been done through Dumbledore's point-of-view or the witch's or some character's, no omniscient narrator.

As I said, right now I'm reading two third person omniscient novels that are category bestsellers: Dawnthief by James Barclay and the first novel of Orcs by Stan Nicholls. Both authors use the omniscient narrator, giving information not from any characters' inner pov, and both "head-hop" between characters' inner thoughts/pov during scenes, giving multiple perspectives of what is going on, in addition to any omniscient description they may have. This works particularly well for them in battle scenes where they can jump from one character engaged with an opponent to another character engaged with another opponent, plus provide overhead views as needed. The character viewpoints are filtered through the omniscient narration (the omniscient narrator tells us the characters' thoughts and perspectives in addition to other information not from any characters' particular pov.)

But a lot of writers got taught that omniscient is wrong, that writers should only write in third person limited if they write in third person. This was based on the idea that new writers are not very good at handling head-hopping, etc., and so shouldn't do it at all, often along with the erroneous advice that editors and agents (who are always presented as acting with one hive mind,) didn't like third person omniscient features in narrative. It's less prevalent I think now than it was in the 1990's, when I was teaching classes and having to deal with a lot of it, but I'm sure it still shows up in critique groups. Many writers, however, simply do third person omniscient instinctively and are perfectly fine with it, and it's in the marketplace a very commonly used format.

First person omniscient and first person semi-omniscient are rarer formats that play with narration and pov. A first person omniscient narrator may or may not be a character in the story, refers to itself as "I" but knows the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story and provides them, essentially acting as an author voice. A first person semi-omniscient format uses a first person pov character as the narrator and this character has been told the inner thoughts and feelings of other characters by those characters or guesses what they were in situations in which the narrator may or may not be present, and relates them as if it were a third person text. Two good ones are The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns and Charming Billy by Alice McDermott.

Now of course you can get a lot more complicated than that in parsing these things out. Princess Bride alone, with multiple omniscient narrators, can keep one busy. But conceptually, so that writers can follow it, whose head one is in at a moment in the narrative is the key factor. And you can say that well, a lot of the narrative isn't actually from the character's pov, but as long as there isn't something that is clearly outside the character's pov, readers process it as that character's perspective, until there is information that indicates otherwise, that says now we're in another character's perspective or getting omniscient narration outside of the characters' pov's. So the formats are just how those inner pov's are organized. Unfortunately, many writers turn it into a form of religion, which I presume is what McDonald was talking about in part.

So the guy who hits himself with a hammer in your analogy isn't a pov character from a common parlance standpoint, even if he's the focus of the scene, because we're not getting his inner thoughts and feelings and view of the accident of the hammer. He's an acting character. We're getting the view of the incident from another character's inner pov, so that character is the pov character, the observer and narrator of that scene, through whose head we are seeing the incident occur.

Is that clear, or are we doing our talking in circles thing again?

 

[Dawnstorm]

Is that clear, or are we doing our talking in circles thing again?

All this post does for me is to confirm that I didn't misunderstand you where I thought I knew what you were saying. (I was a bit shaky on a couple of points.)

It's simple, Eddie, you have to dump your definition of what a narrator is.

Because that's not how most writers and readers use the word narrator. The narrator, for them, is either a point-of-view character (one whose inner thoughts and feelings, etc. we get) or an omniscient narrator (omniscient pov,) who then can also go into character's heads and give us their thoughts and feelings.

Dumping my definition is fine. Picking up what you say most writers and readers say is a no-no. That's like dumping your glasses and replacing them with sunglasses. You can do that, but you'd better not rely on your vision afterwards.

Unless there are compensating merits I am missing. (Allowing lazy thinkers not to think is not one I'll accept.)

Then, for large stretches of your post, I'm more or less with you (let's leave it at that ).

A first person omniscient narrator may or may not be a character in the story, refers to itself as "I" but knows the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story and provides them, essentially acting as an author voice.

Here I think you're wrong about what's commonly held. To be a first person narrator, you have to be part of the story (even if only in a frame-work sense, such as the arctic explorer in Frankenstein).

I've googled "first person omniscient" often enough, but have never seen any evidence that this refers to non-characters. Most texts mention Moby Dick. Non-character "Is" are usually talked about as third omni.

You're the only one I ever heard using it like this, but since this is the first time I actually understood what you mean by that, I can't know whether I've misunderstood others, too. Do you have examples of others using first person whenever an omniscient narrator says "I"?

And how do we justify that? Some narrators are just as clearly persons, even though they never say "I". (I'm thinking of the narrator of Jonathan Strange - but I can't say with confidence that she never once says "I" with respect to herself.) Where do we draw the line?

Unfortunately, many writers turn it into a form of religion, which I presume is what McDonald was talking about in part.

Yep, partly. But in a discussion with the mundanistas, he mentioned that - while he's sympathetic to many things they say - he'd rather not have the boxes to tick. Sounds like he's an intuitive writer and theorising hampers the creative flow. I don't really know, though.

So the guy who hits himself with a hammer in your analogy isn't a pov character from a common parlance standpoint, even if he's the focus of the scene, because we're not getting his inner thoughts and feelings and view of the accident of the hammer. He's an acting character.

You didn't understand what analogy I was trying to make. His being the focus of the scene has very little to do with it. The text to analyse is:

Ouch!​

We, the readers, know already that a character has hit his hammer with a nail, and that the "Ouch!" refers to that situation.

(a) The natural assumption we make is that the character is saying "Ouch!"

(b) But if we have an intervening narrator, we know that this "Ouch!" does not emanate from the character. However, we still attribute the "ouch" to the character rather than the narrator.

(c) Whether we are thinking of the narrator at all at that point depends on the stealth skills of the narrator.

(d) Very few people will ever view this "Ouch!" as a break from the narrative that points towards, say, a book falling on the narrator. Thus we do not get the narrator's point-of-view.

(e) Of course, we do get the narrator's point-of-view, in the sense that the narrators point-of-view is bound up with the character's point-of-view; in the sense that the narrator is experiencing empathy. But even viewed like this we still have "voice" to consider. (For example, is the character the type to say "ouch", or would he just yelp something untranscribable?)

Which means that narrator and point-of-view character need not be the same person.

 

[Sterling13]

Been following along (good stuff btw), and while I'm not about to jump into the "what's what" POV debate, I will add:

My personal preference is to write in 1st. I just like the way it flows when I'm mashing away at the keyboard.

For reading, I can't say I have much of a preference on novels (though it does seem that everything I pick up is 3rd limited), but where short stories are concerned, I'm normally drawn to those written in 1st. I haven't exactly examined why that is for me. Perhaps its because 3rd limited loses a lot of its advantages in short story form, where you're usually confined to one characters viewpoint for the piece?

Also, something I'm gathering from this thread as well as elsewhere, it seems to me that if you use 3rd limited - no questions asked. However, if you go with 1st, you must defend/justify your reasons for choosing it. But I could be wrong...


(As a side note: This sentence made my head explode )

All this post does for me is to confirm that I didn't misunderstand you where I thought I knew what you were saying.

 

[KatG]

However, if you go with 1st, you must defend/justify your reasons for choosing it. But I could be wrong...

You're wrong. First person is simply a way of telling a story. The author never has to defend or justify choices of structure and format, cause readers don't get a say in it.

(As a side note: This sentence made my head explode )

When Dawnstorm and I ramble, best to close your eyes.

Picking up what you say most writers and readers say is a no-no. That's like dumping your glasses and replacing them with sunglasses. You can do that, but you'd better not rely on your vision afterwards.

Unless there are compensating merits I am missing. (Allowing lazy thinkers not to think is not one I'll accept.)

It's the way writers think and the way readers process narrative. You're trying to come at it from a linguistics, sentence structure angle, I think, but that's not what most writers do with pov. I'm not sure that's what you do with pov either, as a writer.

To be a first person narrator, you have to be part of the story (even if only in a frame-work sense, such as the arctic explorer in Frankenstein).

It usually is someone who is a character voice in some way, but I wouldn't want to rule it out as not. Do we count William Goldman's version of himself in Princess Bride as a first person or third person omniscient voice, given that he's not actually in the story but making first person footnotes? First person omniscient is rare, and I haven't an easy example, I'm afraid. I think I read a short story with it, but I don't have it written down. But it is possible for an author to do, and possibly with a first person omniscient voice that is not a character, though I agree that is usually referred to as third person omniscient, and I'd characterize Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as third person omniscient.

As for Moby Dick, it is a classic I have not read. Does Ishmael know, magically without being told them or guessing, the inner thoughts and feelings of other characters and relays them as those characters' thoughts? Because otherwise Ishmael isn't omniscient, he's a first person pov character. He may be "semi-omniscient" in that he's relating character thoughts he has been told or guesses at for events at which he is not present, but unless he can go into their heads, he's not omniscient.

We, the readers, know already that a character has hit his hammer with a nail, and that the "Ouch!" refers to that situation.

(a) The natural assumption we make is that the character is saying "Ouch!"

(b) But if we have an intervening narrator, we know that this "Ouch!" does not emanate from the character. However, we still attribute the "ouch" to the character rather than the narrator.

(c) Whether we are thinking of the narrator at all at that point depends on the stealth skills of the narrator.

(d) Very few people will ever view this "Ouch!" as a break from the narrative that points towards, say, a book falling on the narrator. Thus we do not get the narrator's point-of-view.

(e) Of course, we do get the narrator's point-of-view, in the sense that the narrators point-of-view is bound up with the character's point-of-view; in the sense that the narrator is experiencing empathy. But even viewed like this we still have "voice" to consider. (For example, is the character the type to say "ouch", or would he just yelp something untranscribable?)

Which means that narrator and point-of-view character need not be the same person.

They don't work like that for construction. Narrator and point-of-view character can be not the same if the narrator is the author omniscient narrator, not a character. But if you have two characters, one who hits himself with the hammer and the other observing it, and if we receive the inner thoughts of the observing character during the event, whether the observing character is written in first person or third, the observing character is the point-of-view narrator of the scene. We are not getting the point-of-view of the character who hits himself with the hammer because we do not get his inner thoughts. We get to see his actions, his speech: "Ouch!", etc., as observed, related, analyzed and interpreted by the observing pov character.

So if you have it:

John brought the hammer down in a vicious swing. The nail went flying from his grasp and the hammer slammed against the side of his thumb.

"Ouch!" he yelped and sucked the injured digit.

George sighed. He knew John always got worked up when he and Mary were fighting. He would have to talk John into taking a break and getting a beer.

The reader will process the entire text as coming from George's point-of-view. They will process the interpretation of John's speech as yelping as coming from George's point-of-view, the information that George sighed as coming from George's point-of-view, etc. Because we have George's thoughts and we don't have John's. So the entire scene -- John hitting himself with a hammer -- is seen through George's perspective, relayed through his sensory observation and view of that observation.

From a linguistic standpoint, you can argue that George is a third person character, George is not telling the story to an audience as you'd have with first person: "I sighed," and therefore the George sighed part can't be from his point-of-view but must be from the author narrator. Makes no difference. It will be processed as George's point-of-view because George as the thinking observer of the scene is aware that he sighed. It's within his point-of-view, as it would be for him to notice that his sandy hair is getting tossed around by the wind, etc.

If, however, something comes up in the text that is clearly outside both characters' possible point-of-view: "Neither man noticed the storm clouds gathering to the east," but we still have George or John's thoughts, or if the entire scene was given without the inner thoughts of either George or John, then that's the omniscient narrator. And if we get both the inner thoughts of George and John in the scene and there's no break, then that is head-hopping omniscient narration too, which means that the author is telling the story in omniscient with forays into the heads of various characters for their observations and interpretations of parts of the scene or narrative, and that's how readers will process the text.

In our third person example with George's thoughts and not John's and no omniscient narration then, we don't know John's point-of-view because we don't know his inner thoughts. George observes and interprets John as being upset and analyzes the likely cause for it out of what he knows about John. But George could be wrong. John may be upset for an entirely different reason, or may not have been upset at all. John may be pretending to be upset and didn't actually hit himself with the hammer as hard as it looked to George. Maybe because he wants George to buy him a beer. Or George could be exactly right. We don't know because we only have George's point-of-view of the scene. Later on, if we have John's inner thoughts, we may find out if George was right or not. Or not, if the author doesn't give us those particular relevant inner thoughts. And dialogue, while it may contain information regarding a character's thoughts, is not thought, is not point-of-view. It's action.

Technically, this may be an incorrect use of the pov concept from structural theory. But it is how writers write characters and it is how readers process text. Which is why your analogy isn't working for most.

 

[txshusker]

I also won't go into PoV semantics, either -I ain't no smart scholar - but reply to the original question. I prefer to read 3rd person. 1st person to me inherently states that the outcome is happy, considering you can't tell a story if you're dead. (And if you do, I feel it's kind of a cop out.)

Of course, that's not to say that I avoid 1st person... Steven Brust does it wonderfully. I just finished a novel by Dave Duncan done in the 1st person, and enjoyed every moment of it. But I prefer 3rd person for the mystery of ending.

As far as writing, it's harder for me to write in the 1st person effectively than a 3rd person, so I don't try it often.

 

[Inkstain]

I prefer to read 3rd person. 1st person to me inherently states that the outcome is happy, considering you can't tell a story if you're dead. (And if you do, I feel it's kind of a cop out.)

Try a few of Lovecraft's stories

 

[ShellyS]

Dawnstorm said (and it's easier for me to just copy and paste here without typing in the quote coding):

"Dumping my definition is fine. Picking up what you say most writers and readers say is a no-no. That's like dumping your glasses and replacing them with sunglasses. You can do that, but you'd better not rely on your vision afterwards."

And that's why I realized trying to discuss this here would just lead me to continued frustration. I learned the terminology from writing books, a writing class, and spending at least years on online writing forums as well as writing blogs and LiveJournals by writers (even if there were various expressions for the same thing (intimate third, tight third).

A point of view character is the character whose view we get of the story, situations, events, etc. I have never, until this thread, encountered anyone in the 25 years I've been seriously writing and having discussions with writers, published and unpublished, pro and amateur, who didn't see pov that way. There were people who didn't know what pov was and asked, but none who defined it as you are. And I still don't see the point or value of such a definition when it comes to writing. Filtering a narrative through pov has definite writing implications. The choices made re: pov can and will influence all that gets written.

So, I'll just leave this to others and read from the sidelines with interest, even bemusement. But then, I always love reading what KatG has to say. She's one of those people whose posts I spent a lot of years reading on another forum. She does know what she's talking about.

 

[ShellyS]

I also won't go into PoV semantics, either -I ain't no smart scholar - but reply to the original question. I prefer to read 3rd person. 1st person to me inherently states that the outcome is happy, considering you can't tell a story if you're dead. (And if you do, I feel it's kind of a cop out.)

Of course, that's not to say that I avoid 1st person... Steven Brust does it wonderfully. I just finished a novel by Dave Duncan done in the 1st person, and enjoyed every moment of it. But I prefer 3rd person for the mystery of ending.

As far as writing, it's harder for me to write in the 1st person effectively than a 3rd person, so I don't try it often.

I've read many unhappy first person books, some of which ended ambiguously, and some which had the narrator die. In one, Patricia Anthony's Flanders, a soldier in WWI is writing letters home. The last letter is written by someone else informing his family that he'd been killed.

A critically acclaimed YA book from the '80s, The Girl in the Box by Ouida Sebestyen is told in the format of a diary being written by a kidnapped girl locked in a dark basement. She's typing on a small typewriter she had in her backpack when she was grabbed. The book ends abruptly, leaving readers to wonder if she merely passed out or died, or if she was rescued or found too late, or never found at all.

And of course, when it comes to dead narrators, there's always The Lovely Bones. I'm sure there are others. And given the nature of sf and fantasy, I would imagine there are or could be plenty. Then again, a lot depends on what you consider a happy ending.

I don't consider the pov when I choose a book to read. I consider the plot, the author (tho I do like to read first authors), reviews, and then I skim a bit in the middle to see if the prose grabs me. Sometimes, I'll go with a recommendation.

 

[Inkstain]

For me I suppose it has a lot to do with the main character's temperament. If it is a fairly well balanced character, a decent sort, I tend to like 3rd person limited omniscient. However, if I have a character that I think is a bit more of a cynical type and possessing of a matching sense of humor, then I like 1st person.

Classic example, and one of my favorite examples of 1st person narrative, The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Corwin tells his own tale. We only know of the other characters what he knows and can therefore tell us. However, Zelazny pulls a fast one on us at the end by taking what we all the time assumed to be 1st person narrative and slyly revealing that it was really 2nd person narrative all along.

Or was it? He then switches us about face again as he finishes his narration for the benefit of another before turning his narration back upon himself. Wondering what to make of all that has passed. Good stuff.

On the other issue, I read Moby Dick, Ishmael is 1st person limited as a narrator. He knows what he knows and he relates what he guesses and observes about others.

Reminds me of the time I handed a lady in my old writing group a bit of a story I had written using that older style of prose. She informed me it reminded her of Melville. I felt elated and thanked her. She then replied with how she hated Melville...

 

[Dawnstorm]

A point of view character is the character whose view we get of the story, situations, events, etc.

See, this is why I time and again wonder why I keep engaging in discussions, when I tear them towards semantics and theory, and then they start to disintegrate, and I confuse myself.

To the quote above, for example, all I have to say is: Yes, what else would a point-of-view character be?

I sometimes think I need to have my head examined.

Similarly:

From a linguistic standpoint, you can argue that George is a third person character, George is not telling the story to an audience as you'd have with first person: "I sighed," and therefore the George sighed part can't be from his point-of-view but must be from the author narrator.

This is not what I'm arguing at all. I'm merely arguing that the linguistic features point towards a narrator, and thus he is present even if his point of view isn't. This is important. It's why "third limited" and "first person" are different. If third limited transcends the experiental point of view (with, say, evaluative comments) it becomes third omniscient. If first person transcends the experiental point of view (with, say, evaluative comments), it's still first person.

By saying things like "third limited is like first person", people ignore this issue. In my online-experience this leads to an over-regulation of third person: either you have to write the entire text from the perspective of an omniscient narrator (which is not true because most omniscient books contain large stretches that read exactly like limited - try Pratchett), or you need to be very disciplined and never have the narrator intrude (which is true if have decided to write third limited and intend to stick to it, but there is no reason to make that decision in the first place, or why you can't "slip up" if you want to).

On the other hand, you get stuff like "first person is more immediate," which - again - is not necessarily true, as third limited is actually closer to the action (while first person is often closer to the character, as the time-distance between narration and experience hint at how the character has developed in the mean time).

What I'm saying is: it's important to keep narrator and pov-character separate, even if they are the same person, and even if all you can say about the narrator is that s/he's there.

And you're still treating the "ouch" example as a narrative situation, which it wasn't supposed to be. I'd be grateful if we could drop this, as it has failed to get a point across (at least I think so).

Do we count William Goldman's version of himself in Princess Bride as a first person or third person omniscient voice, given that he's not actually in the story but making first person footnotes?

I can see several different approaches:

Frame story. Footnotes are part of the frame, story = story. Frame = first person. Story = third person omniscient. Story takes precedence, so overall third omni (if we need to slot it in three seconds; otherwise I wouldn't bother with overall classification).

Third omni. Footnotes = commentary =/= story - therefore does not count as narration. Third omni.

I think the latter is more common, but I haven't read Princess Bride yet, so I can't tell how prominent the "frame" is.

As for Moby Dick, it is a classic I have not read. Does Ishmael know, magically without being told them or guessing, the inner thoughts and feelings of other characters and relays them as those characters' thoughts? Because otherwise Ishmael isn't omniscient, he's a first person pov character. He may be "semi-omniscient" in that he's relating character thoughts he has been told or guesses at for events at which he is not present, but unless he can go into their heads, he's not omniscient.

The part that led people to the first omni classification is the beginning of chapter 44 (here's the Gutenberg version).

Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table.

The argument goes that Ishmael gives an amount of detail he can't possibly know because Ahab was alone. Personally, I like Inkstain's "he knows and he relates what he guesses and observes about others" better, but I can see the first omni interpretation, too. (There are glimpses into Ahab's head, too, but it's none too wild, so here it's more a matter of "wasn't there/wasn't told" [Ahab's probably not the type to talk with Ishmael about the colour of his scrolls...].)

She [KatG] does know what she's talking about.

That's obvious to me. Which may be why I'm pressing the point. To see what I'm missing. [The less flattering interpretation of my online behaviour would be that I'm a... uh... trifle obsessive and get stuck in a rut easily. ]

 

[Dawnstorm]

Oh, and while I'm at it: however we end up defining point of view (if at all) doesn't have any bearing on my answer to the original question. I still don't have favourites.

 

[txshusker]

Try a few of Lovecraft's stories

You must have been reading my mind. I just bought a Lovecraft anthology over the weekend, having never read him and been always curious about it. I'm starting it tonight, actually.

 

[Inkstain]

You must have been reading my mind. I just bought a Lovecraft anthology over the weekend, having never read him and been always curious about it. I'm starting it tonight, actually.

I'll reserve you a nice padded room where you can later go and forget that which man should not know

 

[KatG]

This is not what I'm arguing at all. I'm merely arguing that the linguistic features point towards a narrator, and thus he is present even if his point of view isn't. This is important. It's why "third limited" and "first person" are different. If third limited transcends the experiental point of view (with, say, evaluative comments) it becomes third omniscient. If first person transcends the experiental point of view (with, say, evaluative comments), it's still first person.

Yes, but it then means the frame has to have an explanation for the first person pov character's outside knowledge, which can range from god-like omniscience (first person omniscience,) collection of information and the first person pov character imagining the inner experience of other characters (first person semi-omniscient,) to straight first person in which the pov character gets information from others and relates it without recreation, often because the story is told as having already occurred. It stays first person, but the type of first person doesn't stay the same, just as there is a difference between third person limited and third person omniscient as an approach to text.

Straight first person and third person limited, in which the narrative does not transcend the pov characters' viewpoint into omniscience, are, for how readers process them, pretty much the same, except in first person, the character is talking to the audience, and in third person limited, the readers just ride in the pov characters' heads when they are the pov narrator.

Only if material that is clearly omniscient -- not in any character's pov -- or head-hopping is present will readers process narration as omniscient, whatever the linguistic indicators. And even then, if those two omniscient features are not used a lot or are used subtly, readers may not realize they are reading an omniscient narrative, even if they are processing it that way. For instance, if you tell someone that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is in third person omniscient, they might think you're wrong because most of the narrative is only in Harry's pov. They forget the first part of the book, etc. Likewise, Pratchett uses omniscient, but as you note, has large swathes of text in which we're in the head of a pov character (which is common in omniscient.) So if you say that the Discworld books are in third person omniscient, for some that may be confusing. I have worked with writers using third person omniscient who did not realize that they were doing it. But it's relatively easy to point out, not as narration, but as outside of the character's pov.

By saying things like "third limited is like first person", people ignore this issue. In my online-experience this leads to an over-regulation of third person: either you have to write the entire text from the perspective of an omniscient narrator (which is not true because most omniscient books contain large stretches that read exactly like limited - try Pratchett), or you need to be very disciplined and never have the narrator intrude (which is true if have decided to write third limited and intend to stick to it, but there is no reason to make that decision in the first place, or why you can't "slip up" if you want to).

That's only if you regard the viewpoint formats as prisons, which many do, which is a large part of the problem that you've run into. The formats are not a set of rules, as you know. They are tools. They are different ways to organize and present pov. So if the author makes the decision that he's not going to have any omniscience because he doesn't want to use pov in that way, but he wants to write in third person because he wants that effect over first person, he writes in third person limited. And if he wants to have the tools of omniscience in third person, a little or a lot, he writes in third person omniscient. There isn't any "slipping up" because it is not an exam. An author either chooses to use omniscient tools or not with regards to pov.

On the other hand, you get stuff like "first person is more immediate," which - again - is not necessarily true, as third limited is actually closer to the action (while first person is often closer to the character, as the time-distance between narration and experience hint at how the character has developed in the mean time).

First person can be immediate if written as it's happening to the pov character with no foreshadowing material. But first person is quite often written with the time distance as things that have already happened, not are happening. Third person limited is usually written as it is happening to characters, but it is possible to write third person limited of things that have happened.

What I'm saying is: it's important to keep narrator and pov-character separate, even if they are the same person, and even if all you can say about the narrator is that s/he's there.

They aren't going to follow it that way. Conceptually, it works better for writers to come at it from pov character on up, not narration on down, as you are doing with stating narration as a separate function. You start with first person, because that's the easiest one for everybody to follow, mostly, and you work upwards through layers to forms of omniscience and mixed formats. And then they see that it is just different ways of organizing information, not correct ways to write and horrible ways to write.

I think the latter is more common, but I haven't read Princess Bride yet, so I can't tell how prominent the "frame" is.

Oh, you must, you must, and don't skip the Prologue. It is a novel with multiple omniscient narration frames. Plus, it is really funny.

The argument goes that Ishmael gives an amount of detail he can't possibly know because Ahab was alone. Personally, I like Inkstain's "he knows and he relates what he guesses and observes about others" better, but I can see the first omni interpretation, too. (There are glimpses into Ahab's head, too, but it's none too wild, so here it's more a matter of "wasn't there/wasn't told" [Ahab's probably not the type to talk with Ishmael about the colour of his scrolls...].)

Sounds like probably first person semi-omniscience. I really have to read Moby Dick.

 

[KatG]

The memory on the forums server had some problems yesterday which seemed to have effected my post above, but we're all good now.

 

[Dawnstorm]

Only if material that is clearly omniscient -- not in any character's pov -- or head-hopping is present will readers process narration as omniscient, whatever the linguistic indicators. And even then, if those two omniscient features are not used a lot or are used subtly, readers may not realize they are reading an omniscient narrative, even if they are processing it that way. For instance, if you tell someone that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is in third person omniscient, they might think you're wrong because most of the narrative is only in Harry's pov. They forget the first part of the book, etc. Likewise, Pratchett uses omniscient, but as you note, has large swathes of text in which we're in the head of a pov character (which is common in omniscient.) So if you say that the Discworld books are in third person omniscient, for some that may be confusing. I have worked with writers using third person omniscient who did not realize that they were doing it. But it's relatively easy to point out, not as narration, but as outside of the character's pov.

Well, the problem I see is two-fold: "loaded terminology" and "arbitrary gravity centres". If we're using terms like "third omni" we're basically casting a net across a story already written, hoping to catch most of it. But the nets don't necessarily look the same. Analysts need to know that there can be a difference in terminology, but also that the terminology itself is "ordering" the field in a way that may not fit every story very well (that is with any available net we catch no more than, say, 75 % of the story).

When we say that "readers process a story as omni" etc. we're simply turning the net onto the readers, but have pretty much the same problem (but with added complications, since we can no longer ignore different reader experiences - we shouldn't have anyway, but analysts tend to do that for simplicities sake).

Writers are not analysts, although for some the skillset may be useful. But since writers are bound up with creating rather than analysing, it's easy to think that a problem with analysis is a problem with the story. Which it may be, but often is not. Because stories that are simple to write and easy to read are often very hard to analyse. For example, try to push epistolary fiction into the three-pov model. Is it rotating first person? Rotating second person on a rotating first person basis? It's way easier to say that the characters just write letters to each other. It causes less confusion.

With the exception of extreme third limited, I'd say that most pov-constellations have a real-life analogue, so - for the writer - the entire analytic framework is not necessary. Even if it's not necessary, it can be helpful, but it also comes with the peril you get when you take a toolset designed to analyse into a context rife with creation.

Earlier, I tried to make writers abandon the entire terminology, and ask questions to the story instead. This didn't work too well, because the three-pov model has already "seeded". You have to deal with it. It's a thing in the writers mind (and I think it very often behaves like an obstacle in the road).

Now, I'm trying the hack away at the boarders, showing the endemic porosity of the system. But that's also not really successful; it's just causing confusion.

I'm quite aware that you have more experience actually working with writers. So I'm beginning to think that I should just shut up. (Not all the time, just for general semantic posts, like this one.) Well, I'm not just beginning to think that; I really just slipped this time, but once I get going, I'm hard to stop.

That's only if you regard the viewpoint formats as prisons, which many do, which is a large part of the problem that you've run into. The formats are not a set of rules, as you know. They are tools. They are different ways to organize and present pov. So if the author makes the decision that he's not going to have any omniscience because he doesn't want to use pov in that way, but he wants to write in third person because he wants that effect over first person, he writes in third person limited. And if he wants to have the tools of omniscience in third person, a little or a lot, he writes in third person omniscient. There isn't any "slipping up" because it is not an exam. An author either chooses to use omniscient tools or not with regards to pov.

Yeah, but if you skip the terminology, you get none of the anxiety and lose... what?

They aren't going to follow it that way. Conceptually, it works better for writers to come at it from pov character on up, not narration on down, as you are doing with stating narration as a separate function. You start with first person, because that's the easiest one for everybody to follow, mostly, and you work upwards through layers to forms of omniscience and mixed formats. And then they see that it is just different ways of organizing information, not correct ways to write and horrible ways to write.

Hopefully.

Oh, you must, you must, and don't skip the Prologue. It is a novel with multiple omniscient narration frames. Plus, it is really funny.

It's been on my to-read list for many years. And I never skip prologues, so I won't this time, either. (I'm mostly an impulsive bookshop browser, and I've only once come across a copy of PB - a German translation, which is not what I'm going to read. Maybe it's time to go ordering books again? There's a quite nice independent bookshop in town... )

 

[E_Moon]

In the early years of the 20th century, my step-grandmother had a high school text called "Elements of Prose Composition" with a long discussion of point-of-view in fiction, and some brilliant examples of very skillful transition from one to another. She gave me her old schoolbooks when I was in junior high or high school (sorry, memory's the first thing to go) and I read that particular book avidly because it had other nuggets for an eager young writer--much more meat to the page than in any of my textbooks. There were chapters on exposition, narration, description, etc.

At that time, most fiction did commonly wander from POV to POV, as we understand it--including the narrator directly addressing the reader in the "Now, dear reader, let me explain about [whatever.]" Omniscient into internal third person and back out, as the writer felt the need.

 

[KatG]

Well, the problem I see is two-fold: "loaded terminology" and "arbitrary gravity centres". If we're using terms like "third omni" we're basically casting a net across a story already written, hoping to catch most of it. But the nets don't necessarily look the same. Analysts need to know that there can be a difference in terminology, but also that the terminology itself is "ordering" the field in a way that may not fit every story very well (that is with any available net we catch no more than, say, 75 % of the story).

We're just saying that the writer is using for the story these tools for organizing and presenting viewpoint. So a writer using third person omniscient is using character pov and omniscient pov tools. Writers use those tools in different ways, but the format just means that the tools are there and those are the tools that the writer has chosen.

And so that makes it easy for the writer to conceptualize -- I am using these tools. A writer who has chosen the limited 3p format has chosen to use character pov in a third person approach, but not to use omniscient pov tools. That character pov may be used in a rather loosey-goosey manner, and it may involve one character pov or several, so again different ways to use it, but the tools remain the same -- third person character pov. First person, the author chooses to use only one character pov, first person approach. Other authors may use first person but add tools -- multiple first person pov's, a character pov that can project into others' heads (semi-omniscient,) etc.

What happened, though, is that incessant need for rules and for writing teachers to provide rules instead of techniques. And so the formats become cults of a sort, dogma, instead of just a name for using a set of tools in a wide variety of manners. But luckily, in the real world, writers largely ignore this idea of cults and simply use techniques. Which is why we have lots of different narratives. But writers do come into it wanting to know what third person omniscient is, for instance. Rather than ditch the term, you simply present it as it is -- tools for handling pov. Which then lets them play with the tools. While it is true that writers can write in third person omni instinctively without realizing it, it's better if they are aware they are doing it, so that they can better manipulate things.

For example, try to push epistolary fiction into the three-pov model. Is it rotating first person? Rotating second person on a rotating first person basis?

They are a form of third person omniscient writing. The letters are essentially dialogue. We don't go into a character's inner thoughts (pov,) having only what thoughts they express (as if they were talking,) in the letter. The letters are physical things (dialogue) being thus presented by the storyteller's pov (omniscient.) I think the problem is that you think third person omniscient as a term is regarded as a very limited thing. But third person omniscient is a term for a very broad frontier. Of course, you run into writers who do think third person omniscient is a very limited thing. But it's pretty easy to show them that it's wider when you show that it's not rigid but just saying that certain tools will be used by the author in some approach.

Now, I'm trying the hack away at the boarders, showing the endemic porosity of the system. But that's also not really successful; it's just causing confusion.

That again is presenting the formats as a rigid system of rules, but they aren't that. Again, they are simply terms that designate that an author is using certain tools, not how the author is using those tools. The 3 main formats are the most commonly used groupings of tools, just as past tense for narrative is the most commonly used. But there are novels where the author uses present tense as a tool instead, and plenty of novels which are in past tense but use bits of present tense for effect. (Let's not go further linguistically there.)

So you show them that the format means these tools are present, not a rigid system, and then talk about different ways authors use those tools, not chipping away at a system. It's usually easiest to take them through sections of actual narrative and show them how the author uses pov in them. Your problem, Eddie, is that you always dive for the analyst's atomic level, where most people cannot follow you.

Yeah, but if you skip the terminology, you get none of the anxiety and lose... what?

Well no, you have much more anxiety, because it becomes difficult to conceptualize and understand what other authors are doing. You lose the concept of different forms of pov, which is kind of important for them to know. The viewpoint formats are shorthand, again, for groupings of pov tools. It's simple and it's fast communication. Once they understand the concept of pov tools in the commonly used groupings, it's way easier for them to understand more and more about pov and to play with it with different techniques.

While I agree with the idea of ditching terminology because the definitions get confused in the abstract, the fact is third person exists. First person exists. And you have to have a way to conceptualize those and omniscience as different tools, and the formats, misinterpretations aside, have been easiest. I don't think we need to throw them out, just be clear about what they are. (Of course, this works best if one is declared king of all writers, but such is life.)