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Unpopular fandom opinions, POV edition
Dear anon meme people,
I thought you might want to know that when you use the acronym AYRT, despite the fact that I theoretically know what it means, I hear it in my head as an elderly man with a broad Yorkshire accent stating an affirmative followed by spitting out of the side of his mouth.
I doubt this is what you intended, but it does sometimes make threads more interesting.
I started re-reading The Gods of Mars after I saw the movie, and I have realized that a couple of the sillier things that I assumed were added by the scriptwriters (like the ridiculous framing story in which ERB is John Carter's nephew and executor) are actually honest-to-goodness book canon. Sorry, scriptwriters! I should have remembered you can always have faith in ERB to go to the extra few feet over the top.
In a related matter, I had forgotten that most of the Barsoom books were written in first person, and in thinking this over, I have come to a sudden realization: I don't like third person limited POV. That's why the Barsoom books suck me in irresistably but when I tried to read Tarzan I just kept skipping ahead to the next bit with Jane in! Tarzan is all third person limited - well, okay, "third person Edwardian" which is basically a very messy version of limited, but generally close enough.
And when I think back to the books and book series I've been really very fannish about, comparatively few of them are third person limited, especially considering how very dominant that POV has been in my lifetime. Even Harry Potter is a modified third person limited; JKR jumped out of the limited POV whenever she felt like it, and especially at the beginnings of the books.
I've been reading Hal Duncan's series of writing tutorials based on The Eye of Argon (which someone on my network linked to, and are quite good, by the way, they pick apart into elements of craft a lot of basic things I'd never quite looked at that way) and the one on POV pushed me to thinking about this, too. I really don't like third person limited. I can do it, with reasonable comptence anyway I think, and a well-written story written in it is fine as a reader, but it's no fun; I've generally tried to stick with it unless given an excuse not to, because it seemed like the thing to do, but why?
From my perspective as a writer, it seems to combine all the worst of first person and third person unlimited, with none of the advantages of either: voice is harder, plot is harder, structure is harder, pacing is harder, all the little details of camera angle etc. are harder, there are so many interesting possibilities that are cut off and no new ones added.
As a reader, I think the main reason I prefer other POVs is that third person limited makes no sense: with first person, I know, the protagonist is telling me about things that happened to them, yay! And with a proper framing story (like John Carter's or John Watson's) it's really easy, if one is so inclined, to drop disbelief entirely and pretend you're reading an actual first person account. With third person unlimited, you know you're being told a story by someone who has learned all there is to learn about this story, and is putting all their effort into making it the best story possible, whether they're retelling true events that they've researched, or they're making something up.
With third person limited - why? What is the explanation - and I'm not talking about craft or style or Doylist reasons, I'm talking about for the story as its story - why would you choose to tell a story in limited POV? What's the frame? Who is telling this story, and why, and why don't they know anything except what this one guy is seeing? With a really good story and good writer it doesn't matter, ideally the reader gets sucked into the immediacy of it and stops noticing it's a story entirely, but short of that happening, the story itself is sort of a non sequitur, lacking context. I think this is why the couple of Barsoom novels that aren't first person are so jarring: unlike the first person accounts, which were of course handed to ERB during John Carter's occasional involuntary visits to Earth etc, I don't know where the third person stuff came from or who is telling the story or how they know all this stuff, so it's hard to believe in them or trust them enough to care.
And, really, that's part of what gets to me as a writer, too: if I have a frame, if I know where the story came from and who is meant to be telling it and why, everything just falls into place so much more cleanly.
So consider this my manifesto!
I like first person POV!
I like third person omniscient, when it's done well!
I like third person omnipotent, where the writer makes no effort to pretend they're not tormenting the characters just for our pleasure!
And the one I call third person personal, because I hate the official names for it, where the narrator is outside the story but is very present as a distinctive voice, I love that one a lot.
I like documentary and epistolary stories which use a lot of limited POVs but frame them all!
I like second person POV!
I like the Homestuck POV, which is a specific variant on second person!
I once wrote a story in We-You POV, and I'm not ashamed of it!
While I acknowledge that there are still stories for which third person limited is the best POV to use, where an outsider perspective following one person very closely makes sense as a frame, I will never again attempt to put a story in that POV just because it's "normal" or because I think it will get more readers, not if it's a story that can be just as well told in another frame.
Now pardon me, I am going to go rework some of my stalled WIPs into more interesting POVs.
I thought you might want to know that when you use the acronym AYRT, despite the fact that I theoretically know what it means, I hear it in my head as an elderly man with a broad Yorkshire accent stating an affirmative followed by spitting out of the side of his mouth.
I doubt this is what you intended, but it does sometimes make threads more interesting.
I started re-reading The Gods of Mars after I saw the movie, and I have realized that a couple of the sillier things that I assumed were added by the scriptwriters (like the ridiculous framing story in which ERB is John Carter's nephew and executor) are actually honest-to-goodness book canon. Sorry, scriptwriters! I should have remembered you can always have faith in ERB to go to the extra few feet over the top.
In a related matter, I had forgotten that most of the Barsoom books were written in first person, and in thinking this over, I have come to a sudden realization: I don't like third person limited POV. That's why the Barsoom books suck me in irresistably but when I tried to read Tarzan I just kept skipping ahead to the next bit with Jane in! Tarzan is all third person limited - well, okay, "third person Edwardian" which is basically a very messy version of limited, but generally close enough.
And when I think back to the books and book series I've been really very fannish about, comparatively few of them are third person limited, especially considering how very dominant that POV has been in my lifetime. Even Harry Potter is a modified third person limited; JKR jumped out of the limited POV whenever she felt like it, and especially at the beginnings of the books.
I've been reading Hal Duncan's series of writing tutorials based on The Eye of Argon (which someone on my network linked to, and are quite good, by the way, they pick apart into elements of craft a lot of basic things I'd never quite looked at that way) and the one on POV pushed me to thinking about this, too. I really don't like third person limited. I can do it, with reasonable comptence anyway I think, and a well-written story written in it is fine as a reader, but it's no fun; I've generally tried to stick with it unless given an excuse not to, because it seemed like the thing to do, but why?
From my perspective as a writer, it seems to combine all the worst of first person and third person unlimited, with none of the advantages of either: voice is harder, plot is harder, structure is harder, pacing is harder, all the little details of camera angle etc. are harder, there are so many interesting possibilities that are cut off and no new ones added.
As a reader, I think the main reason I prefer other POVs is that third person limited makes no sense: with first person, I know, the protagonist is telling me about things that happened to them, yay! And with a proper framing story (like John Carter's or John Watson's) it's really easy, if one is so inclined, to drop disbelief entirely and pretend you're reading an actual first person account. With third person unlimited, you know you're being told a story by someone who has learned all there is to learn about this story, and is putting all their effort into making it the best story possible, whether they're retelling true events that they've researched, or they're making something up.
With third person limited - why? What is the explanation - and I'm not talking about craft or style or Doylist reasons, I'm talking about for the story as its story - why would you choose to tell a story in limited POV? What's the frame? Who is telling this story, and why, and why don't they know anything except what this one guy is seeing? With a really good story and good writer it doesn't matter, ideally the reader gets sucked into the immediacy of it and stops noticing it's a story entirely, but short of that happening, the story itself is sort of a non sequitur, lacking context. I think this is why the couple of Barsoom novels that aren't first person are so jarring: unlike the first person accounts, which were of course handed to ERB during John Carter's occasional involuntary visits to Earth etc, I don't know where the third person stuff came from or who is telling the story or how they know all this stuff, so it's hard to believe in them or trust them enough to care.
And, really, that's part of what gets to me as a writer, too: if I have a frame, if I know where the story came from and who is meant to be telling it and why, everything just falls into place so much more cleanly.
So consider this my manifesto!
I like first person POV!
I like third person omniscient, when it's done well!
I like third person omnipotent, where the writer makes no effort to pretend they're not tormenting the characters just for our pleasure!
And the one I call third person personal, because I hate the official names for it, where the narrator is outside the story but is very present as a distinctive voice, I love that one a lot.
I like documentary and epistolary stories which use a lot of limited POVs but frame them all!
I like second person POV!
I like the Homestuck POV, which is a specific variant on second person!
I once wrote a story in We-You POV, and I'm not ashamed of it!
While I acknowledge that there are still stories for which third person limited is the best POV to use, where an outsider perspective following one person very closely makes sense as a frame, I will never again attempt to put a story in that POV just because it's "normal" or because I think it will get more readers, not if it's a story that can be just as well told in another frame.
Now pardon me, I am going to go rework some of my stalled WIPs into more interesting POVs.
no subject
Also, mm, I'm not sure I believe in reliable narrators? I mean I've done enough writing on my own at this point, and enough close analysis of other work (by which I mean, fandom) that, well, at this point I feel like "many of the truths we cling to depend on a certain point of view". :P And I guess I want to know what that point of view is, explicitly. Even if it's "Authorial voice in the sky". A reliable narrator is just someone who doesn't want you to *notice* when they're wrong. :D (Also, from a writer's POV, writing a reliable narrator is both more boring, and a lot more nerve-wracking, because then you don't *dare* be wrong in a way that *is* noticeable, or it all falls apart.)
I totally get your point about the immersiveness of 3PL, though! It does have its advantages (especially if one wants a close POV for a character who just wouldn't be writing in first person - sometimes first person becomes *too* intimate). And to some extent the idea of the lack of any frame in 3PL is that you're supposed to be *in* the story, and not thinking about the telling of it - but sometimes I *like* thinking about the telling of it. And, also, a good framed story can be that immersive, too, you forget the frame eventually. (Also, a not-particularly-immersive story with a good storytelling frame can still work well, where as a non-immersive 3PL story often just plain fails, you know?)
And sometimes I wonder where the "3PL is immersive and invisible" is just because it's so much the default that it's what people are used to reading. I mean, I'm reading a lot of Homestuck fandom now, and a *lot* of Homestuck fic is 2nd person (partly because the canon is, party beause a lot of the writers are new enough that they' haven't been fully indoctrinated into 3PL) and I thought I'd never get to a point where 2nd preson didn't stick out like a sore thumb, but after reading a lot of fic where 2nd person is taken for granted, I find it if anything *more* immersive than 3PL. I mean, in 2nd person you really *are* put inside the character's skin!
no subject
When I talk about unreliable narrators, I usually mean the deliberate trick, the author choosing to withhold important info or trying to lead the reader to wrong conclusions. (And I'm not saying they're bad or that I don't like them, just that I read a story very differently if I suspect the author is not playing straight with me. It's more like puzzle-solving - "What are you hiding from me?" - and less story-immersion. And yeah, I want some signposts of what kind of story I'm in and whether or not I can take anything at face value, or I will feel cheated.)
I think basically we're in agreement about 1P highlighting the story*telling* aspect, while 3PL (done well) is a story that isn't being told but experienced. (Okay, it's a story that's pretending not to be told.) We just have different preferences. :D
You have a good point about 2nd person. I don't see much of it, so I hadn't commented on it, but I have read some excellent stories that made the 2P invisible very quickly. I think the author has to have a really good grasp of character voice, because they don't have the reinforcement of the character's name being constantly repeated or the outside description of gestures or physical traits - badly done, it's easy to lose track of exactly whose skin you're in. (I think that's true of 1P fanfic too, actually. A lot of fic relies pretty heavily on the reader filling in the details based on just the name, and without even the name, that collapses. Distinctive character voices are to be desired in any POV, of course, but 3rd person of any type gives mediocre fanfic a boost just by using character names. Except maybe not, in a fandom like Dresden Files, where the default assumption would be 1P Harry narration; only deviations from that need to be marked somehow. I don't read Homestuck, so I don't know what markers people use to distinguish characters from each other in 2P, but I bet there are particular quirks of speech that get used a lot. Don't those characters have colors and weird typography attached to them, too? And is this parenthetical ever going to end?)