The First Five Pages: Viewpoint and Narration

January 29th, 2008–The First Five Pages: Viewpoint and Narration
This chapter, for whatever reason seems to have stalled me out. I don’t think it was this chapter, specifically, rather just events unfolding and taking a cumulative effect.

You know you’ve stalled when you find more amusement in watching the garbage truck trying to dive through huge drifts of snow than think about your writing. Or, you know, going and meeting your husband’s cousin who happens to be on the ‘disowned’ side of the family.

Anyway, I did go out and study other viewpoints for narration like Lukeman suggests. This in fact, is part of what has distracted me for at least five days. And you know what I discovered? I discovered that the authors that are my (Chick Lit) heroes write in <gasp> first person, present tense! Eeeek! Call the writing police! They are making bestsellers and breaking a forbid rule. (Then again, the rule says you have to be a really good writer to get away with it, which evidently they are.)

But can I? Well, time will only tell, of course. But it has bolstered me enough to not go and change all my manuscripts away from first person present tense. (That and the kind words of other writers on this site.)

So, I will ignore the plows and garbage trucks and the fact that it was really fun popping our little car through big snow drifts so my hubby could get to work, and get down to work myself.

After I have some more tea. And maybe check my email.

Later…Okay, I did the exercise where you change the narration in your story. I changed a scene from first person to third, just to see what it was like. It was interesting. I may use it someday. Although, it felt like I was giving too much to the reader. I could be so definitive–that was a refreshing and interesting change. Yet, there was no real room for interpretation as I could just jump into each character and explain them. Less work for the reader. Less work for the writer. Although, I suppose once you are talented at third person, you can leave little hints and clues for the read instead of hitting them over the head.

On a totally separate vein…I saw the CBC show last night, ‘The Week The Women Left Town’. Cool premise. It appealed to the sociologist in me.

The First Five Pages: Showing Versus Telling

Although I have heard this one before, it is one that needs repeating in my ear fairly often. In fact, it is something that came out of the first chapter that I had critiqued by another writer. I was trying to get on to the good stuff by breezing over and telling instead of showing.

That gets tricky. You have to totally be mindful of your characters and their motivations all the time and what you are trying to show in every interaction and scene. I’m not that thoughtful when I write. I’m not even sure who my characters are when I first start out. I just blab on and see where it takes me and the characters. This, it appears, leads to a fair amount of editing.

This chapter made me think of a real life example from many, many moons ago. We were on our way to Mexico and we left in the middle of a snow storm. We got as far as Montana when we came up against a barricaded road. The guy at the roadblock told my dad that the road was closed and that we couldn’t get through. From where we were, the road looked fine. The interaction between the road guy and my dad went something like this:

“Sorry, this road is closed. You’ll have to turn around.”
“Is there any other route from X to Y?”
“Nope. You have to turn around.”
“Are you sure the road is closed”
“I’m sure. It’s closed.”
“How closed? It looks good. I’m sure I could get through.”
“Nobody is getting through.”
“I’m from Canada and I’m driving a truck.”
“Look, the drifts are over 20 feet high and even our snowplows aren’t getting through.”
“Oh, where can we stay around here?”

So basically, the guy went from simply telling my dad the road was closed to showing him. Not literally showing him, but giving him concrete visuals. Still telling my dad, but showing him at the same time.

The First Five Pages: Melodramatic Dialogue

It turns out that I can’t stay away from my manuscript. I did rewrite the opening scene. We’ll see tomorrow which version I like better. The totally rewritten one or the multi-edited version. My bets are on the new one. As for my characters, we had a chat and they are now in therapy.

For my writing exercises of the today…well, melodrama was interesting. I like the idea of conveying drama with silence. I actually had used silence to convey the drama of the ending of my book and it pissed of a friend that read the ms. She was like, ‘what, that’s it? I want more. Is there a sequel? Go write it. You can’t leave it like that!’ Evidently, she wanted the ending spelled out for her. Oh well. Maybe I was being a little cruel. We’ll see. As I am learning, this stupid ms will never be complete. Even though it has been for a year. And of course, now I have a new idea that is itching to be written, but I don’t feel like I can just drop all the learning and whatnot that I am doing here and go off for a month or two to write it down. I’ve got to see this through. Besides, I think the new idea needs some percolating or else I’ll end up in revision hell for decades. The revisions aren’t hell, just the never-ending part.

The First Five Pages: Informative Dialogue

One of the things I like most about Lukeman’s book is that it simply and accurately isolates and highlights certain passages within my ms where I am flubbing up. I read a chapter and go, ‘aha’ that is the problem right there on page 28. Now I know. Then I go fix it. This time, it was page 4. And now it is better.

The First Five Pages: Dialogue

Well, in this chapter I learned the reasoning ‘why’ behind the things I had picked up by looking at the dialogue in some of my favourite books.

I also learned that chopping up my dialogue as I have being doing here and there to mix it up, is evidently distracting if you do it too much. I have a feeling that a lot of what has been covered so far in the book will really hit me in the chapter on pacing and progression. It almost makes me want to leap ahead…but I won’t. I will hold myself off.

Okay…I just read through the first four (I’m such a rebel, I didn’t do ‘five’) pages of my ms and you know, what, maybe I’m not quite as bad as I thought with the breaking up the dialogue thing. Whew.

On to the next chapter on dialogue.

Later…

Read the next chapter on dialogue. I think I understand why my character was always ‘looking’ everywhere. I’ve been trying to describe too much of the everyday while trying to build the feeling of a scene. I think after my second try at a novel, I got past the desire to try and make the dialogue totally everyday and therefore commonplace and dull. At least I hope so. It is still realistic to my characters, but mostly I have cut the crap.

Although it worries me. He says if you find an extraneous line on the first page, you will likely find one on every page thereafter. My question is, how do you know what is ‘extraneous’. Some is obvious. Sure. Some can be done without and won’t be missed. Although what about the take it or leave it lines that add miniscule bits to one paragraph or page? The overall effect of taking out all those lines could leave you with a slightly bare feeling that you can’t quite put your finger on.

I suppose it comes back to ‘art’ and ‘style’.

But does it? The lines I am thinking about are not cut and dry. If I let myself–in the right mood of course–I would slash everything, leaving me with a husk of a story.

So, should I go through my ms again looking for lines I can cut? I always find some. Yet, I always add some too. Hmm…