Do You Know This Place?

I will send a free copy of DEADFALL, Level Best Books latest anthology of crime stories by New England writers to the first person to correctly identify the location in the picture above.

Send your answer to: vhardacker@comcast.net. Contest will end on January 31, 2009 or until the someone wins. Be sure to include your mailing address in the email.

First-Person Supporting Character (4th in a series)

A supporting character narrator can be any character who is the protagonist' relative, friend, or associate and can be either supportive or unsupportive of the protagonist. Probably one of the best know of these is Dr. Watson of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Since the narrator is a participant in most of the action, the first-person singular I is used less than the first-person plural we. The advantages of this POV are:

1. It can make a story more believable and realistic than if narrated by the protagonist. A supporting character narrator can describe the protagonist as the best, the greatest, or as being heroic and the reader will accept it without thinking it is bragging or boastful. He/she can also relate events about the protagonist without the reader questioning their credibility.

2. The supporting character narrator is seldom called to support his/her knowledge of the protagonist. He/she can reveal personal things about the protagonist's life going back to childhood to the reader. The reader will assume the narrator either experienced these events or the protagonist related them to him/her.

3. This POV allows the narrator to describe the protagonist. He/she can show how the protagonist's responds physically and emotionally to events as they occur.

4. This POV can reduce or eliminate reader boredom. If at some point n the story, the author feels the reader may become bored, the narrator can relate something interesting or exciting about another character.

5. The supporting character narrator has more freedom than a protagonist narrator and is therefore less restricted in the use of omniscient powers.

Disadvantages of this POV include:

1. A reader can only participate in events to the extent the narrator does. This can be a huge disadvantage because many dramatic and exciting scenes cannot be written in action. For example, if the protagonist and his/her significant other have an argument off screen, so to speak, the narrator can only tell about it. This violates the "Show; Don't Tell" Rule. In a court of law the event would be labeled "Hearsay".

2. The reader may identify with the narrator rather than the protagonist, this is not the case in the First-Person Protagonist Narrator or the Third-Person Protagonist POVs.

This POV has its place. It lends itself well to humorous novels, however a new novelist might be better off if he/she kept the protagonist as the focal point.

Third-Person Protagonist Narrator (3rd In A Series)

This POV has all the advantages of the First-Person Protagonist Narrator, discussed yesterday, except the writer loses in the personal touch that use of the pronoun I allows. However, it affords the writer the added advantage of using either the restricted or unrestricted omniscient power. This allows the writer to describe his/her protagonist and inform the reader of things the protagonist doesn't know.

Let's now look at the disadvantages.

1. The loss of the intimacy the pronoun I allows.

2. All the disadvantages of the First-Person Protagonist Narrator.

3. The danger for inexperienced writers to shift POV in midstream.

This last item is the greatest of the disadvantages. Avoiding it is a matter of projection. If the writer can truly project him/herself into the character when using this view, POV shift can usually be avoided. However, if they cannot, they must use unrestricted omniscient power exclusively when writing in this POV.

First-Person Protagonist Narrator (2nd In A Series)

In this viewpoint, the narrator is the protagonist singular. There are many advantages to this viewpoint, especially to the first-time novelist. These are:

1. Writing in 1st person comes easily since it is the most common way in which we communicate with each other. It offers a self-imposed discipline that the writer obeys. Use on the pronoun I confines the writer to the protagonist's POV and avoids inadvertent POV shifts.

2. The protagonist is the center of attention, which allows the reader to participate in all the events.

3. Since the reader shares the protagonist's most intimate thoughts, feelings and attitudes, they easily identify with the protagonist.

4. The protagonist shares his/her personal experience thereby nullifying any reader resistance to the story's credibility. It enables the narrator to speak with conviction and adds realism to the story.

So, what are the disadvantages?

1. The writer's omniscient power is restricted. He/she must confine themself to those things the protaganist sees, feels and experiences first hand. Since the protagonist can only be in one location at a time, this restriction is physical as well as mental.

2. Modesty is forced upon the narrator. While he/she can act brave and heroic, he/she cannot say they are brave.

3. There is a danger that you cannot hold the reader's interest, forcing the writer to make the protagonist colorful and exciting.

4. Description of the protagonist is confined. The protagonist cannot describe the expression on his/her face while experiencing an event.

In summary, the advantages of First-Person Protagonist Narrator, out weigh the disadvantages. More novelists employ this POV than any other and it is the predominant one in mystery novels.

Point of View: What Works Best For You (1st In A Series)

Point of View is simply the way the narrator of a story, scene or chapter views the action taking place. There are a number of POVs a writer can use and we'll discuss them in a few minutes. When using a POV it is important that the writer be cognizant of inadvertent POV shifts in their work. I cannot recall how many times my writer's group catches me in POV shifts. So let's start off defining the various POVs.

There are eight possible POVs and all traditional novels are told using one, or sometimes more than one. The eight POVs are: First-Person: Protagonist Narrator, Third-Person: Protagonist Narrator, First-Person: Supporting Character Narrator, Third-Person: Supporting Character Narrator, First-Person: Minor Character Narrator, Third-Person: Supporting Minor Narrator, First-Person: Shifting Viewpoint Narrators, and Third-Person: Shifting Viewpoint Narrators. In this post, I will discuss the Omniscient Power; what is it and does POV affect it.

I'd like to begin by defining Omniscient Powers. Omniscient powers are used by the writer to convey information that will assist the reader in understanding the story. This information can relate to characters, environment, and events. The omniscient view is a dispassionate view and the phrase omniscient powers conveys that the writer is playing GOD. Using these powers the writer can record conversations, enter into a character's thoughts and emotions, and even pass through locked doors. In short, the writer has absolute control on every aspect of his/her characters lives, even down to the era in which they live and what the weather will be like at any particular time.

The first thing a writer must determine is which level of omniscient power he/she will use; restricted or unrestricted. This to some extent is determined by the POV the writer has decided to use. If you are going to tell your story in First-Person you must use restricted omniscient powers and the following editorial rule must be observed: Only that portion of the action, narration, and description can be covered which the narrator can personally observe or deduce from his/her 5 senses, and no material beyond his/her perception or range of knowledge can be included in the novel.

In selecting the correct POV, the writer must ask some questions.

1. Is the story best told in 1st or 3rd person?
2. Am I going to enter into the thoughts and feelings of one character (restricted view) or into the thoughts and feelings of more than 1 character (unrestricted view)?

Which ever way the writer decides, he/she should not use restricted view in one portion of the novel and unrestricted in another (although of late there have been a number of novels that have done just this--usually established writers who will do a chapter in the protagonist's POV and another in the antagonist's).

Forthcoming posts will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of the 8 possible POVs.

Over The Fence: Plot Continued

"How's it going?" Larry asked.

"Okay, just finished working on a scene in my latest novel."

"The last time we chatted you mentioned scenes. I thought scenes were something you see in a movie."

I sipped from my can of soda. "Actually novels, and to a smaller extent short stories, are full of scenes. I think Robert McKee uses the best definition of scene in his book, STORY. He defined a scene as: ...an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a character's life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene is a STORY EVENT."

"That's a long definition," Larry said, "can you simplify it a bit?"

"Sure, a scene is is a sequence of events that seem to happen as if the reader were watching and listening to it happen; it's built on talk and action."

"I see, so a scene is like a chapter?"

"Nope. Although there are a number of popular writers, James Patterson comes to mind, who make each and every scene a chapter; others may have several scenes in a single chapter. Chapters are just a way to divide a book into pieces. Think of a book, any book in which there are no chapter breaks. "

"I don't think I've ever come across one," Larry said.

"Stephen King used no chapter breaks in Dolores Claiborne. I believe if any one but a writer of his stature had done it the reader would struggle to finish the book. How many times have you said, I'm going to finish this chapter and call it a night? We'll get into chapters later when we discuss structure of your novel."

"Okay, getting back to scene," Larry said, "a scene is a story within the story?"

"That may or may not be true," I said, "a scene isn't random; it must have a meaning. The true measure of whether or not a scene belongs in the book is to ask yourself one simple question: Does this scene move the story forward? If it doesn't scratch it."

"Hmmmm, there's a lot to this writing stuff that I've never thought about."

I glanced at the sky and saw the sun was hovering on the western horizon. "See you tomorrow? We'll talk some more about structure."

"Wouldn't miss it."

Over The Fence: Plot

I saw my neighbor, Larry, waiting at the fence and walked over to him.

"Hey," he said, "I wondered if you'd forgotten that we were supposed to meet."

"Nope, if I recall we're supposed to discuss plot."

"That's right."

"I suppose we should start by defining what a plot is."

He nodded.

"Not to make it overly simplistic, it's what happens in the story."

"That's it?"

"Not really. In truth the plot is built from a number of significant events. In your mystery now, what is the significant event?"

"The crime? I'm thinking making it a murder mystery."

"That's a good start, most mysteries are about murder. Robbery and caper novels seem to be more thriller than mystery."

Larry's brow furled. "I thought they were the same thing."

"Similar but different. Both usually start with a crime. The difference is that in thriller, everyone knows who did it, or is planning to do it. The plot then becomes, how do we stop him or her. Mystery, on the other hand, is a 'whodunnit'. We, neither the reader nor the protaganist, know who did the dastardly deed. The plot is how we find out who did it. Plots are really a matter of cause and effect."

"I get it," Larry said, "like in physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

"That's it. Let's leave it like this; plot is the things your characters do, feel, or say that make a difference to what follows the cause."

"Thanks, I'll see what I can do about coming up with a basic plot for my novel."

"Do that, then we can discuss how to utilize scenes to bring the plot to life."