When Falling Isn't Moving
The backstory exposition:
Last year, before the computer mess started, I'd been working on a short story called Crimson -- Arthurian romance with serial killer. And got the idea that it might be fun to write the same story in two different voices -- Crimson being in Victorian archaic, and Red more rawly modern (And yes, the titles are from 'I see it crimson, I see it red'). But pretty quickly I found the language in Crimson allowed me too much distance -- and while that might make it more saleable (Dexter-itious) it's also not something I want to write, or turn this idea into. If I can get to grips with it (and honestly even distancing I was uncomfortable so I may not) it'll have to be less mannered and so there won't be enough room for Red to be unmannered in.
But having decided that, I still wanted to use the other title. (Or possibly I just really want to try selling first rights on the same story twice :D )
A couple of days ago I realised that there was a pretty obvious way -- tell the same events from a different POV. And, since there is an obvious other POV, that rocked.
But if I was going to give the two boys stories, it seemed really unfair not to give the girl her own -- she has, potentially, a unique perspective -- and so now Crimson and Red are joined by Swansdown.
And that's where I laugh at how my brain works, because in my books (at least the ones where the point is not entirely a romantic relationship) I have a fondness for tripods -- three POVs to tell a story. (I also tend to find myself with two male POVs and one female). Wait on then, with three POVs, and those likely a bit long in the shorts (Pale was 5600 words and very much less story), surely this is really a book rather than a crazed experiment in short fiction (where the experiment is *not* seeing what kind of trouble a girl can get into by trying to sell first rights to the same story three times although that would be crazed enough).
Obviously the sane thing to do would be to turn this into a three POV book.
Except, of course, that as a book it wouldn't work at all.
There are bits of writing advice we take for granted when we're learning... when people talk about how a sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter should do at least two/three things, the list from which those two/three things are picked usually includes 'move the story forward', it's the obvious one, the one you don't have to think about -- and the most important. And it's as true of POVs...
A long while ago I critted a chapter on the OWW where the writer took one POV through a series of events (as I recall it was the lead up to someone falling off a dragon) and then there was a scene break and another POV character related their view of and reactions to exactly the same events, (and the next chapter picked up from that point and then all four POVs gave their versions of the next chunk of events) Despite that the different POV characters did have very different 'takes' on the scene, by the time you've read two eyewitness accounts of an incident the third has trouble being interesting even if that's the one where you're discovering it wasn't an accident. I have a vague recollection that not even pride in my work could get me through the fourth version.
Crimson, Red, and Swansdown will all relate the same events, but to work each POV has to rerelate in new and astounding detail a pretty large slice of the events the other POVs have already covered -- also in detail -- and yes those versions are very different but they're still working with the same underlying architecture of actions. If I intercut those POVs you'd keep finding yourself rereading the same events, and however brilliantly I write the different interpretations, or skew the character filters, the reader knows what happens in this bit already -- the story will have stopped moving forwards.
Like the dragon rider in freefall stops falling.
A difference in perception is not enough to keep a story moving. Even major revelations in the later repeats are unlikely to, and may have a reduced impact because they're buried in a repeated scene.
But wait, you say, there are books and TV shows and movies that do this and they work!
(Although right now I can only think of the various detective dramas where similar eyewitness accounts of events are told in flashback -- oh, and the ITV drama 'Mobile' which pretty much illustrates that if you're going to tell a story from several different POVs it's probably best to give each one a seperate episode -- and even then it didn't rock my world because the first episode used up most of the drama and the second exposed most of the twistiness, leaving the third with a less entertaining, unconvincing, and heavily expository trudge to the denouement)
And jolly good luck to those who attempt it!
Thankfully Crimson, Red, and Swansdown aren't going to be quite as impossible as they won't tell the same events in quite the same order. Structure is our friend :)
Crimson has a 'now' frame round a set of backstory narrations. Red will tell the story from start to finish. And I think that Swansdown will start and end earlier -- for obvious reasons -- and I may just be insane enough to use a past frame with prophetic flash-forwards.
Because I can.
::giggles::
Last year, before the computer mess started, I'd been working on a short story called Crimson -- Arthurian romance with serial killer. And got the idea that it might be fun to write the same story in two different voices -- Crimson being in Victorian archaic, and Red more rawly modern (And yes, the titles are from 'I see it crimson, I see it red'). But pretty quickly I found the language in Crimson allowed me too much distance -- and while that might make it more saleable (Dexter-itious) it's also not something I want to write, or turn this idea into. If I can get to grips with it (and honestly even distancing I was uncomfortable so I may not) it'll have to be less mannered and so there won't be enough room for Red to be unmannered in.
But having decided that, I still wanted to use the other title. (Or possibly I just really want to try selling first rights on the same story twice :D )
A couple of days ago I realised that there was a pretty obvious way -- tell the same events from a different POV. And, since there is an obvious other POV, that rocked.
But if I was going to give the two boys stories, it seemed really unfair not to give the girl her own -- she has, potentially, a unique perspective -- and so now Crimson and Red are joined by Swansdown.
And that's where I laugh at how my brain works, because in my books (at least the ones where the point is not entirely a romantic relationship) I have a fondness for tripods -- three POVs to tell a story. (I also tend to find myself with two male POVs and one female). Wait on then, with three POVs, and those likely a bit long in the shorts (Pale was 5600 words and very much less story), surely this is really a book rather than a crazed experiment in short fiction (where the experiment is *not* seeing what kind of trouble a girl can get into by trying to sell first rights to the same story three times although that would be crazed enough).
Obviously the sane thing to do would be to turn this into a three POV book.
Except, of course, that as a book it wouldn't work at all.
There are bits of writing advice we take for granted when we're learning... when people talk about how a sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter should do at least two/three things, the list from which those two/three things are picked usually includes 'move the story forward', it's the obvious one, the one you don't have to think about -- and the most important. And it's as true of POVs...
A long while ago I critted a chapter on the OWW where the writer took one POV through a series of events (as I recall it was the lead up to someone falling off a dragon) and then there was a scene break and another POV character related their view of and reactions to exactly the same events, (and the next chapter picked up from that point and then all four POVs gave their versions of the next chunk of events) Despite that the different POV characters did have very different 'takes' on the scene, by the time you've read two eyewitness accounts of an incident the third has trouble being interesting even if that's the one where you're discovering it wasn't an accident. I have a vague recollection that not even pride in my work could get me through the fourth version.
Crimson, Red, and Swansdown will all relate the same events, but to work each POV has to rerelate in new and astounding detail a pretty large slice of the events the other POVs have already covered -- also in detail -- and yes those versions are very different but they're still working with the same underlying architecture of actions. If I intercut those POVs you'd keep finding yourself rereading the same events, and however brilliantly I write the different interpretations, or skew the character filters, the reader knows what happens in this bit already -- the story will have stopped moving forwards.
Like the dragon rider in freefall stops falling.
A difference in perception is not enough to keep a story moving. Even major revelations in the later repeats are unlikely to, and may have a reduced impact because they're buried in a repeated scene.
But wait, you say, there are books and TV shows and movies that do this and they work!
(Although right now I can only think of the various detective dramas where similar eyewitness accounts of events are told in flashback -- oh, and the ITV drama 'Mobile' which pretty much illustrates that if you're going to tell a story from several different POVs it's probably best to give each one a seperate episode -- and even then it didn't rock my world because the first episode used up most of the drama and the second exposed most of the twistiness, leaving the third with a less entertaining, unconvincing, and heavily expository trudge to the denouement)
And jolly good luck to those who attempt it!
Thankfully Crimson, Red, and Swansdown aren't going to be quite as impossible as they won't tell the same events in quite the same order. Structure is our friend :)
Crimson has a 'now' frame round a set of backstory narrations. Red will tell the story from start to finish. And I think that Swansdown will start and end earlier -- for obvious reasons -- and I may just be insane enough to use a past frame with prophetic flash-forwards.
Because I can.
::giggles::