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Writing in the first Person - too many "I"s?
I have heard good comments about the film.On multi-person dialogue I struggle with this as I seem to frequently have scenes of meetings with multiple characters but to return to the thread title I tend not to write in the first person.
I am from the UK too, like Will, and have had comments about UK style. Even more confusing when I had an audio book created of my first effort. This was narrated by a chap who was South African living in the USA who spoke BBC English until the odd bit of dialogue or place name caught him out. Slough as in Plough (UK spelling) was a good start. He did an excellent job by the way with my poor scribbling.
G. wrote: "Mobi, now you’ve got me wondering how “an unremarkable story that doesn’t really go anywhere” could have been made into a good film. Even “sparkling dialogue” can’t rescue a story that “doesn’t rea..."Hollywood does this all the time. Until more recently, when the author of the book has had more editorial control during film production, movie makers took all kinds of liberties with books, to the point that often, the movie didn't resemble the book in the least, except for the names of the characters. Hollywood isn't much interested in quality, they are more interested in cranking out something that will make money; aggressive marketing will make the public think this is something they can't live without, even if they don't know what it is. If you market it well enough, you can sell ice to an Eskimo. This holds true for books as well as everything else - it doesn't have to be a good story or well written to become a commercial success.
There are filmmakers out there, making good films (whether or not based on a book), but I think you'd find that they are mostly independent producers, not part of the Hollywood mainstream.
Sally wrote: “they are mostly independent producers. . .” How right you are! I watch a lot of films on premium cable channels, and I’m constantly amazed at the number of different companies—many of which I’ve never heard of—that are involved in making films.
Just for the record, Brooklyn was not a Hollywood production. As far as I can determine it was a British/Irish production.Strange though it may sound, the film is so much better than the book, yet they stuck reasonably faithfully to the plot of the book. Apart from cutting stuff out - which films always do - they somehow managed to turn a mediocre book into a great movie.
Arguably, they made a very subtle change in emphasis at the end of the film, which made it so much better.
I agree that film producers often tend to ruin good books but there are plenty of exceptions where they give the book a pretty decent shot.
Off the top of my head, "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Gone Girl" are two recent examples, and they even reckon that the film adaption of "50 Shades of Grey" is better than the book, although I haven't read or seen either of them. Le Carre's books are usually given a good outing in their film versions, as are John Grisham's.
Going back in time, one great movie that springs to mind is Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" but there are plenty of others.
I don't watch many Hollywood produced blockbusters. I generally stick to independently produced and British films. These days I increasingly find more enjoyment in French and other foreign language productions.
Modi, I’ve seen the film production of Fifty Shades of Grey and it is much better than the book, which is rather poorly written, to put it kindly. It’s one of Will’s examples of good movies made from badly written books.
I've not seen the movie, but I'd like to speak up for the book, which given the cliche situation held my interest to the end. - We understand and sympathise with the lonely passions of these sad case Irish heroines. I found myself rationing my reading in order to savour Eilis's dilemma. No, it's not a love story so much as an examination of cultural conflict and it leaves the reader with no happy ending.. And unlike Judith and Felicia in Toibin's earlier novels, Eilis is active rather than passive. Once she grows up in America she makes things happen and is, like all tragic protagonists, in effect the author of her own doom. There is an open question at the end: can she return to her American lover with the same purity of heart that she had shown earlier? I tend to like these open-ended stories; they return you to life with all its ambiguities.
Just for the record, David is writing about the UK novel by Toibin, not Fifty Shades of Grey. So that’s the movie he’s speaking of. Oddly, my real name is also David. Formally, I’m G. David Thayer, but only the “G.” shows up in my posts. Just saying. (Love that cliché!)
Will doesn’t like the way Dan Brown left out the word “said” in the excerpt I quoted, yet he says “it works because the two voices are distinct.” Exactly! I didn't realize it when I first used the excerpt to demonstrate a point to my friend. It was only when I went back and analyzed it for writing style that I realized how clever it is. I don’t miss the word “said” at all. It’s as if I am the proverbial fly on the wall listening to a conversation between two people.The only reason writers use the terms he said, she said is to make attribution for quotations. If you don't need them—and here the writer clearly didn’t need them—why bother with them at all?
IMHO, we can do without anything that impedes the flow of a dialogue. One person’s meat is another person’s poison, to reword an old cliché.
Well, yes and no. Speech attribution fulfills two jobs. It tells us who is speaking and it also tells us how they are speaking. There is a fashion for relatively spare dialogue with no or very speech attribution, but that doesn't always work. Some genres need more description than others - say romance and fantasy.The Dan Brown piece is fairly effective, but it's a long way from good writing. He avoids "said" to such an extent that it is sometimes hard to spot who is speaking. He clunkily uses the same action beat device over again. The prose itself is a fairly pedestrian piece of Socratic dialogue. Reading it I felt I was being hit over the head with a very unsubtle mallet.
It works in the context of the book in that it moves the story on and makes a somewhat laboured point. But it certainly isn't good writing. I called it a "reasonably effective piece of story telling." It works in the same way that a big Mac works.
Doing without anything that impedes the flow of dialogue? Well, no, sorry, I can't agree. Dan Brown recognises this, which is why he adds in his stock action beats. A better writer would have given us more of a flavour of character and setting.
There is something to be said about Will’s point that we writers tend to get so involved with the minutiae of writing that we sometimes lose track of what a book is supposed to do: entertain us.He says he only managed one and one-half pages of “Filthy Sheds.” Wow! That must be really bad. I once managed two whole pages of some Ludlum book before I threw it down in disgust. It was unreadable.
Will writes “He avoids ‘said’ to such an extent that it is sometimes hard to spot who is speaking.” Sorry, I disagree. I had no trouble at all telling who was saying what in that passage. To me, it was perfectly clear who each speaker was. Maybe I’m a better reader than I thought I was.Granted, this technique only works well where there are only two speakers involved. But that is the case here.
One of the techniques that good writers use is to pitch their writing so that it appeals to a broad range of readers. Some readers will follow the text closely and keep up with several rounds of speech without attribution. Other readers will read at a faster pace and need more speech attribution to guide them.It's similar to advice about character names. It is generally not a good idea to have characters with similar sounding names. Some authors even go so far as not having two characters starting with the same letter.
The Dan Brown extract has one stretch of six speeches without attribution. Some readers will keep up with that. Others won't. He just about gets away with it because the whole piece is largely exposition pretending to be dialogue.
I confess that I often have to go back and check who is speaking due to the sparsity of attribution in dialogue, especially when the content of the dialogue could have been spoken by either speaker.Is this because I read too fast? Quite possibly, because those reading slower will have more time to digest the conversation and keep track of the last attribution.
I am very careful about attribution in my dialogue, and only remove it when I am sure the reader will not be confused. Better to slow the flow a little, than to stop it completely while the reader retraces his steps.
David, regarding 'Brooklyn' the book - I should have added that it is generally well regarded by the professional critics. My view that it is a 'lightweight piece of fluff' is not shared by many. But in my 'book', anyone who writes with 90% reported speech and paraphrases emotional letters between protagonists is not an author I want to read. I also found the end rather annoying. The film fixes it, so they obviously agreed with me.
"Horses for courses" I guess.
I think it's a question of balance. If an author over-uses said bookisms, it can turn the narrative into a chorus of body noises ... he grunted, she whimpered, Fred sighed.
Too many "saids" can also be tedious. If there are only two people speaking the reader can work out that X talks after Y and vice versa.
Too many action beats can turn a story into a piece of street artist mime. The characters spend all their time nodding, sighing, picking their noses, looking out of the window.
Too many unattributed speeches can turn the text into a guessing game. Who said that? The reader sometimes has to count backwards to the last speech attribution to work it all out.
The best writers don't rely on one speech attribution trick. They mix them all up so their writing doesn't become predictable. More importantly, they make each character's speech distinctive. If a character has a distinct voice I don't need to be told who is speaking. I can hear it in their voice.
Will wrote: “I think it’s a question of balance.” I think this is the best advice you've given so far, overall.Your last paragraph especially applies to the excerpt from Dan Brown. The camerlengo’s voice is authoritative, assertive, confident, guiding (the conversation). Chartrand’s voice is hesitant, uncertain, questioning, and only becomes more confident near the end.
In our book First to Die there are some long stretches of unattributed speech. But the voices are utterly different. One is the DA, questioning, probing, even bullying on occasion. The others are crew members and officers of the ship, defensive, hesitant, evasive, even obfuscating at times. It is always clear who is speaking each time. There are entire pages done this way. We (the authors agreed) there was no point in trying to assign speaker names except when the witnesses were changed or to remind the reader who was testifying every so often. The DA was the only one putting questions to them.
Very good point, Will.
That's not voice. Voice is more about how someone speaks than the content of what they are saying. When we talk about a character's or narrator's voice we are talking about the use of slang, choice of words, sentence length, pauses, accents.
For example, an educated person would use longer words and less slang than someone with less education. A young person today would use "like" a lot in their sentences. Someone with an artistic or creative side would speak more in simile and metaphor.
That's one of the reasons that the Dan Brown piece is adequate but nothing more. He doesn't vary the voice between the two characters. For that matter, he uses more or less the same voice for them that he also uses for his third person narration.
Yes, the two characters are identifiable in the passage because it is all one big blob of exposition. We have question and answer, which makes it easier to spot questioner and answerer. But the voices are virtually identical. They use similar vocabulary and sentence structure. They don't have identifiable verbal tics. And they both sound like Dan Brown.
You can sometimes spot this in a Tarantino film. As much as I love his use of dialogue, when his characters go into monologue mode they all sound just like Tarantino.
Compare this with a better piece of dialogue from Lord of the Rings:
“Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain."
The voices are quite distinct. Gandalf is unmistakably Gandalf - long sentences, pernickety use of logic, theoretical, cold. Bilbo is much more direct. Shorter sentences, more emotive speech, warm.
That's voice.
Hmmm! Earlier you wrote about the same passage from Brown “It’s a bit of exposition wrapped up in dialogue, but it works because the two voices are distinct.” Yet now you say “He doesn’t vary the voice between the two characters.”It seems that “voice” means whatever you want it to mean at any given time. You can’t have it both ways. Either the voices are “distinct” or they do not vary.
I will agree that both voices sound like Dan Brown. It’s what they say that makes the difference. The camerlengo talks like a teacher; Chartrand talks like a pupil, almost like a disciple.
It's a standard term in writing. "Voice" refers to the quality of a piece of speech. "Voices", plural, refer to the noise that more than one person makes when speaking. Google it if you don't believe me. It's all fairly standard.The Dan Brown piece makes sense without the speech attributions because it follows a fairly simple question and answer format. It's a Socratic dialogue where the teacher makes a point by asking the pupil questions. There is one person asking the questions and one person answering them.
But could you tell those two characters apart if they were talking about something else? Does their speech tell you anything about them as characters?
I'll say it again. The Dan Brown piece works. It's isn't great writing, but it does the job. I can tell the two voices apart because of the different roles they take in the dialogue. Some people criticise Dan Brown for his clunky writing, but credit where credit is due. This piece is okay. Not great. Okay.
But in terms of character and voice, it's not doing all that much for me. I don't get a strong sense of what these characters would be like in any other setting. The voices may be distinct in this particular context, but neither has a particular distinctive voice, as we would use the term in writing.
Heh! I’ve gotta admit, Will, you’re as slippery as an eel on a wet rock. Go in peace. . . .
It down to years of practice working for the UK Government. Peace with your goings, likewise ;-)
Keep the thread going guys, I'm learning more every day...
Will wrote: "That's not voice. Voice is more about how someone speaks than the content of what they are saying. When we talk about a character's or narrator's voice we are talking about the use of slang, choi..."
Just a point, Will, about 'voice.' You say 'an educated person' will say ... etc but he/she can and will vary register according to mood and situation. When angry or excited may talk in a very 'uneducated', way. Perhaps we novelists should avoid typecasting our characters into 'educated' and 'uneducated.'?
Well, yes and no.In principle, yes, we should avoid typecasting our characters. So while I said that an educated person would use longer words than someone less educated, I didn't say they would always use longer words. Character voice and context need to work together. They would also do more than just "use longer words".
Imagine a conversation in a court room between a judge and a low-life thief. A good writer would ensure that the judge used a different vocabulary and sentence patterns to the thief. The thief might talk in slang, the judge might use polysyllabic words and legal terms.
But we shouldn't take this too literally. If the court-room suddenly catches fire, then sure the judge may well drop his polysyllabic words and tell every to "get out". The judge might also moderate his language so that the public and the accused can understand him.
Having said that, there is a place for typecasting. It can be very useful if we introduce an incidental character that we only see briefly. Say that the judge only appears in the story for a couple of paragraphs. We need to establish his character quickly, almost as if in a caricature. We haven't got time for an extensive back story, and our main story doesn't want or need the distraction.
The problem comes, I think, if we apply rules too rigidly. I would certainly agree that we shouldn't typecast main characters (but then I didn't say that) but sometimes it is useful to typecast the supporting cast.
As usual, it's a matter of thinking about what we are writing and not applying rules blindly or writing dialogue without thinking about who is talking and how they might say something.
'Speak up, man, for God's sake!' spluttered the judge.'You mean use more polysyllabic discourse,' returned the thief.
Exactly. That's why (including said bookisms) we don't write like that.
Back to my critical 'I' lady. She has now raised another issue, which has also been discussed in this thread. The first part of my novel takes place in the desert in the Arabian Gulf where the main protagonist goes to work for an American Oil drilling company. Nearly all the staff in this company are from Texas, and most are not well educated. They all speak with broad Texas accents, with plenty of slang. Every other word is an expletive.
When writing dialogue involving these people, which even includes the General Manager who came up through the ranks, I have tried to use a balance, as suggested by Will earlier in this thread.
What I tend to do is to use more slang/bad grammar when I first introduce a new character and then tone it down as I go along. I'm not sure if I have managed to achieve only "one piece of bad grammar or slang per sentence" - two is probably more the norm, although some sentences do only contain one. It really depends on the nature of the conversation. If someone is angry or is emphasising a point, they are more likely to use expletives and bad grammar.
My 'I' lady says:
"I'm not convinced the Texan accents add to the story."
I have re-read my drafts and I think the dialogue is quite readable and the accents do not slow comprehension. After all, these days most readers have been exposed to such speech in movies and so on, and believe me; I have definitely not gone over the top with the accents.
This part of the novel is about a young Englishmen living and working with Texan 'rednecks' in the desert. To remove their accents would be crazy - wouldn't it?
I should add that my reviewer is American. Maybe she doesn't like my portrayal of her fellow countrymen. None of them are portrayed as blatant stereotypes, they are all individual characters.
I will see how my other reviewers feel about it.
It is possible that you may be putting too much emphasis into the accents. Take a look at the character of Stu Redman in The Stand. He is from Arnette, Texas, but while his manner of speech is most definitely Texan he is a long way from the clicheed redneck.
Mobi wrote: "Back to my critical 'I' lady. She has now raised another issue, which has also been discussed in this thread. The first part of my novel takes place in the desert in the Arabian Gulf where the ma..."
Since you question this reader's opinion so much, why use her as a beta reader at all? Is your intended audience for the book Americans? If so, you might just ask her to clarify her comment. Maybe her comment is a shorthand way of saying that not all Texans have a pronounced accent, not all men working the rigs are uneducated and that redneck is a pejorative term that might rub her the wrong way. Maybe there just isn't enough variety in your characters or your treatment of them is stereotypical.
Mobi wrote: "What I tend to do is to use more slang/bad grammar when I first introduce a new character and then tone it down as I go along. I'm not sure if I have managed to achieve only "one piece of bad grammar or slang per sentence" - two is probably more the norm, although some sentences do only contain one. It really depends on the nature of the conversation. If someone is angry or is emphasising a point, they are more likely to use expletives and bad grammar."Without even seeing an example, this seems excessive.
A - Plenty of people who work on rigs are educated. It's an industry that can pay really well.
B - Texas is extremely diverse, and lots of people come from other regions to work in oil.
C - Using bad grammar / slang / expletives as a means of denoting regional, socio-economic or educational background is lazy. In this case, it would probably be common for them to often use "economy of language" and other characteristics of speech, rather than always pepper their speech with errors, cursing and slang.
"This part of the novel is about a young Englishmen living and working with Texan 'rednecks' in the desert. To remove their accents would be crazy - wouldn't it?"
Redneck is considered a slur. Plenty of people embrace the label, but many others don't. I would be careful throwing around this or any other such socio-economic designation. Your use of it makes me feel that you've already stereotyped these characters, even if subconsciously.
There are specific characteristics of a "Texas drawl" that extend well beyond the use of accent. Heck, it's nearly a way of life. There's a tempo of speech that works its way into word choices, etc. It can even be present in posture and gestures while speaking.
If your characters are presented well, the accent need not be always "on the page" for readers to clearly "hear" the characters' voices, and excessive spelling-out of accents can be distracting and tiring to the reader. That's probably what's happening with your reader, hence the comment about the accents.
(Oil rig workers are more often called "roughnecks" rather than "rednecks", for what that's worth.)
Good comment about posture being another way to illustrate regional characteristics. Nevil Shute uses this in "A Town Like Alice," in which he shows the Australian 'cowboys,' called 'ringers," coming into town and meeting the main character Jean Paget. They employ a particular squat or crouch while standing around. Shute mentions this a couple of times in his narrative, and then if he brings it up again, only alludes to it more indirectly.Unrelated to Texas: another "neck" nickname is the American nickname that the Marines use - leatherneck - after the heavy leather stock that early Marines used to wear around their necks as protection against swords and such.
Christa, All I will say is that I worked and lived with the kind of people I describe in my book for 9 years in the late sixties - early 70's, including a 3-year spell in West Africa and 3 years in the desert. My writing is from firsthand experience. I do know what I'm talking about. Even my general manager who was responsible for a huge, multi-million dollar operation couldn't even spell properly and I had to re-write all his correspondence for him. But he was a great GM. I am sure it has changed a lot in the past 45 years, but I am describing it as it was then. Many of these guys could barely read. Some were quite bright and rose through the ranks, as my GM did. Others went to college and came out as engineers etc. But they all had the same way of speaking - Texan drawls, loads of slang with a huge number of expletives mixed in for good measure. It is almost as if everyone who worked there slipped into this 'oilfield brogue'. Even the limeys and the Europeans tended to speak like Texans.
I do not mention the word 'redneck' in my novel, except possibly when someone is taking a derogatory stab at them, but I'm not sure whether I have even done that. I was simply trying to get across the type of people I was writing about - sorry if it offends you.
I am aware of all the oilfield terms used for men working in the oil business - roustabouts, roughnecks, drillers, toolpushers and the like and use these terms in my novels. I lived and worked with them.
You are condemning my dialogue without ever reading it. As I have said previously, I have toned it down considerably, which is why I can't understand my reviewer's comment. She is not saying that my portrayal of the accents is inaccurate, she is not saying that I should 'work' on the accents or tone them down. she says she doesn't see the need for them - period. This is what is confusing me.
Mobi - you've just discovered one of the drawbacks of beta readers. Each of them brings their own preferences to the table - the things they like and the things they don't. What we need to do as authors is to decide how big a proportion of the reading population each of our beta readers represents. Your beta reader has an issue with your draft. The first thing to say is that we need to respect that point of view. We can't say that she shouldn't think that way. Readers are entitled to their opinions.
The second thing we need to do is to work out how many other readers would have the same opinion. Your beta reader might be one in a hundred meaning that 99% of readers would be fine with what you have written. If that is the case, then go right ahead. Thank your reader for her opinion, but stick to your guns. If you are happy that the dialogue works then keep it in.
On the other hand, your beta reader might be alerting you to a potential problem. It could be that 99% of readers will agree with her. In that case, you would be well advised to tone the accents down.
It sounds like you need a second opinion. If you'd like to PM me I could cast an eye over some of your dialogue to give you some honest feedback. Or if you are feeling brave you could post some it here.
Thanks, Will. I did think about posting some here but I'm not brave enough - not yet anyway. I'll probably get destroyed by native Texans....
I think the saga has moved on a bit. I am waiting for a reply from her but I now think that she is more concerned with the manner that I wrote the Texan accents rather than the use of accents per se. I tried to write them as I heard them - a bit like Lawrence, I suppose, but she doesn't get it, so I must try again. She wasn't very clear when she told me she didn't like the use of accents.
I might take you up on your offer when I think they are as good as I'm going to get them.
May I raise a new point which is more related to my original point - writing in the first person, although it could also apply to third person writing.
The same lady is now questioning my use of italics to write things that I say to myself silently, or indecipherable mutterings under my breath, such as: "God! she's gorgeous!"
But it could be anything - usually when the character is surprised or angry or feeling emotional about something. such as "Why did she leave me?"
Again, nobody else has raised this point and even stranger, I used exactly the same device in my last novel, which she also reviewed, and didn't say a word about it.
As far as I have been able to determine, there are a number of ways to write unspoken thoughts. Some authors do as I have done, others write it as normal speech with speech marks and others just write it as normal text with no special punctuation or change in style.
Any views on this?
I think it is more normal to write in the first person without italics. That's how I do it. The reasoning is that everything written in the first person is from the narrator's head so there is no need to differentiate between thoughts and actions. Of course, it's not the only way to do it.Too many stylistic tricks - accents, changing POVs, italics, etc - can confuse and overwhelm the reader. It's generally best to keep it as simple as possible. What your beta reader might be saying is not that using italics is wrong on principle, but that they feel intrusive in this current book.
For first person, I generally imagine that the narrator is sitting down talking to someone after the events of the story have finished. Maybe they're sharing a coffee and reminiscing about old times. So I tend to write quite conversational and chatty first person - even to the extent of breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the reader.
FWIW, it sounds like you have got an excellent beta reader there. The best betas are the ones who challenge. They don't always know why something isn't working or how to fix it, but they can sense when something isn't quite right. The rest is down to the author.
You have expressed exactly what she said, i.e. - it doesn't feel right but she can't explain why.I have definitely come across novels where 'thoughts' are expressed in italics, but you are probably correct that no italics is the usual way to go.
Here's a small extract from my previous novel:
She was at one of the roulette tables - with her arms around a young man sitting next to her.
Shit! That's it, I said to myself. Maybe it's just as well. I should get some sleep and be up bright and early for my first day of work tomorrow.
If I was writing that today I would probably remove the "I said to myself"
In my current novel, there is little or no attribution to what I am thinking, as it is obvious. Maybe this what makes her feel uncomfortable, as I just write the italicised thoughts, without any attribution, as per below:
Then I noticed a man I had seen at the front of the queue earlier, walking in our direction from the back end of the tent.
There must be a back exit; quite a production line they've got going here…
I shuddered at the thought.
"Come on Mobi- it's your turn."
Let's not discuss the content - just the way I have written these 'thoughts to myself'.
Will, in your opinion, is it better to just remove the italics and leave it at that? Or should I put my 'thought' straight after the word 'tent' and not start a new paragraph?
Some quick thoughts:I'd certainly take the italics out. The reader knows that your narrator is the one doing the talking and thinking.
I'd also take out the filtering phrases "I said to myself" and "I noticed".
You might also want to take out some of the thought processes. It is tempting to lead the reader by the hand and tell them what they should be thinking. But if you write down every thought that you have, the reader might feel that you are leading them by the nose. It's the old advice of "show not tell".
Say that something scary happens. You might be tempted to say "I was scared". And while that's perfectly accurate, you don't actually need it. Describe the scary thing. Tell your reader what you did in response to the scary thing. But leave out the bit in the middle where you reacted with thoughts and feelings. If you've got your reader's attention they will fill the gap with far more vivid
imagination than anything we could write.
So in your second example, I would question "Then I noticed" and "I shuddered at the thought."
You might feel nervous about losing "I shuddered at the thought." You want to tell the reader this. Trust me on this one. They will know. They will.
Incidentally, if you chop those two phrases, you will lose both "I"s from this short passage. And that's what started this discussion!
I don't normally do this, but if you'd like to take a look at how I write in first person, you can take a sneak peek at my books on the Amazon "look inside" feature. I'm not saying that it's great writing by any means, but it might help.
Will, don't worry the 'I's are coming out thick and fast and as I wrote the extract on the thread I did realise that 'I noticed' was superfluous.I'm slowly getting there...
You didn't say whether I should put my 'thoughts' on a new line (para) as I have in my example, or just continue them in the previous paragraph after the last sentence. I feel that these comments, just 'hanging there' in italics on a line by itself, is what's bothering my reviewer.
I get your point about the 'shuddering' line, and will think about it. However, it really is something that would make most people shudder and it may be the exception that proves the rule. (He is shuddering about the prospect of having his 'turn' in the sand with some unknown female). There may be a better way of expressing this.
Thanks for your offer to look at your writing. How do I access it?
Personally, I wouldn't have a new line for thoughts unless I wanted to give them emphasis. I would roll the thoughts in with the action and dialogue. I'm also a little wary of having too many short or one line paragraphs. It can get a bit repetitive.As to the shuddering ... if it is something that most people would shudder at, you probably don't need to say it. You can also hint at it in the line that comes before the shuddering and the line that comes after it.
The normal sequence of events is this:
1. Something happens.
2. I experience an emotion because of the thing that has just happened - fear, excitement, loathing, whatever.
3. I do something as a result of my emotion - run away, hide, start a fight, kiss someone ...
As writers we can describe each step in turn - thing happens, emotion, action. There is nothing wrong with that, but it can be a bit pedestrian. In first person we can get a lot of "I" statements.
Instead we can describe step one and three and leave out step two. If you describe the thing in loaded terms and you react to it appropriately, it will be pretty obvious to the reader what your reaction to it is.
Imagine meeting a fearsome dragon. If you describe the dragon in ways that show he is terrifying and then you run away, you don't need to say that you are terrified.
It's not a hard and fast rule. We certainly don't need to take out all emotion statements. But there can be times when we can imply them without saying them directly.
To take a look at anyone's published books, click on their photo/ avatar and scroll down their author page (if they are an author) to see what books they have written. I write in both first person and third. The first two on my list are in first person.
Out of subject a bit here but Betas are your doorway to the world of readers. Of course, you don't have to listen to every thing they say but if a few of them tell you the same thing, well, there might be something going on there. If you're not going to listen to your betas at all, why bother having them? Just so your book gets read? Sorry but you can't just accept the good things they tell you. You've got to accept the bad things too, especially if you agree with the good. It's just not always easy to do.
Thanks, Will and GGGG I don't believe there is anything in my many posts on this thread that in any way indicates that I don't accept the things they tell me - good and bad. This thread is a testament to the fact that I do listen to them, but not always blindly. I probably accept over 90% of their input - one way or another.
In my last novel, I took the completed draft and went through it line by line with my reviewers comments and suggestions by my side. It was another three months before the final edit was complete.
This thread is to seek clarification where I don't completely understand the points my reviewers are rasing.
Will wrote: "The best betas are the ones who challenge. They don't always know why something isn't working or how to fix it, but they can sense when something isn't quite right...."I think this is an excellent point. The author doesn't have to agree with the beta reader's comments, but since the author asked for those comments, he or she should not only consider the detailed implications of the specific comments but also the overall effect of them on the story. I appreciated the comments I received from my beta readers, both those who are writers themselves and those who do not write. Most of our readers are not writers, so we need to figure out ways to bypass potential problems for our readers; beta-reader writers help us to achieve that with practical advice.
Challenges make one think, and that may do much to enable the author to develop the story and polish the prose, with future readers in mind. No one book will appeal to all, but if we as authors can make our work attractive to many or most, then we have met with success.
Of course, there are as many paths to that success as there are writers out there. Every story brings its own challenges and rewards.
I couldn't resist a blog on the theme of "leaving information out". https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...
Mobi wrote: "I am currently writing a novel in the first person. It is the second in a series of novels which is semi-autobiographic. There are a lot of facts mixed in with a generous dose of fiction to keep th..."Give that reader a gold star. They should be your reader A. You want non-writer readers reading your work, but they are not always able to articulate what is wrong. It is the writer's job to take the feedback and understand what it means. Your reader has a well-tuned passive voice radar.
Will is 100% correct in what he said about filtering. What I'm surprised he didn't say is that filtering is a form of passive voice. You want to write in active voice 98% of the time. Passive voice shuts the reader out, active voice invites them in. Your example sentence:
"I looked along the bar and saw two girls sitting there"
Is in passive voice. It makes a conclusion and states something that has already happened. It offers nothing for the reader to experience.
"Two girls sat at the bar." or "At the bar, were two girls" or "Oh, two girls at the bar, it's hard to suppress a smile." May not be the most exciting writing in the world, but it invites the readers along and makes them wonder why is this important and what's going to happen with the two girls. It is active.
About dialogue (I really need to write a blog post about this.)
Dialogue is not real conversation. It must sound like real conversation, though. It also must reveal character, be doing something and move the story forward. Many authors use the dialogue excuse to write "I saw" "I looked" "I heard" don't do it.
Sure people use those in real conversations, but only when they are telling a story poorly. If your character is telling a story of any length in passive voice, you are in trouble.
Have you ever noticed that the people who tell the best stories, the ones you can listen to for more than 5 minutes without your glazing over, do not use "I saw," "I looked," "I heard," or any type of filtering? I have. They very seldom use "I." It why you like their stories, they include you in them and don't just "tell" it to you. They "show" it to you.
Hope this wasn't a repeat.
Ah, well, no. You are mixing two different concepts.Filtering does not automatically mean that the passive voice is being used. The sentence "I saw two girls sitting at the bar" is partly active ("I saw") and partly passive ("two girls sitting at the bar").
We could equally have filtering with a wholly active voice - "I saw the girl drink a glass of wine". That is not in the passive voice. Both "I saw" and "the girl drink" are in the active voice. It's not a great piece of writing because it is filtering, not because it is in the active or passive voice.
The reason I didn't sat that filtering is a form of passive voice is because it isn't.
Will wrote: "Ah, well, no. You are mixing two different concepts.Filtering does not automatically mean that the passive voice is being used. The sentence "I saw two girls sitting at the bar" is partly active ..."
Now you are splitting hairs, Will. That example is passive voice and filtering is passive. No way around it. It is once removed. Both should be used only when absolutely necessary.
You are correct. "I saw the girl drink a glass of wine" is active and a much different sentence then "I looked along the bar and saw two girls sitting there." For one, it does not make a conclusion and pushes forward to the next sentence. It also contains more detail.
Again, splitting hairs. And this gets into the gray area of personal choice that makes one writer's style different than another's. It is why the writer must be involved in the editorial process.
It is a good demonstration of the level you need to get to before you send your work out into the world. You need to consider and question each sentence at this level.
I won't soft coat it. It is the hardest thing you will ever do the first time you do it. If you push through it, though, some of it will become second nature.
Cynthia: A word of advice. Don’t take on Will. He is a formidable debater. (The one and only thing I learned from my horrid eighth-grade English teacher: formidable is pronounced for-midable not for-mid-able. Dictionaries pander to the illiterati.)
G. wrote: "Cynthia: A word of advice. Don’t take on Will. He is a formidable debater. (The one and only thing I learned from my horrid eighth-grade English teacher: formidable is pronounced for-midable not fo..."Generally, I make my point and leave it. I usually stop when the debate becomes fruitless. If I feel some one is wrong, I have say something I don't care who they are.
Some people find me formidable. The Brits are better at nuance of language they us, I feel Will and I actually agree, but he likes to spilt hairs. My hair splitting is done here.
https://willonce.wordpress.com/2016/0...
I find Dan Brown's writing to be very clunky in terms of pure wordsmithing but quite effective at telling a story. I have several issues with the passage that G. quoted. For example, he avoids "said" to such an extent that we almost wish he had put it back in. His one and only speech attribution technique is to use the occasional action beat - X smiled. Y nodded. In this one passage we have smiled, frowned, flushed, smiled (again!), nodded. I almost feel grateful for the "did a double take" as it breaks up the monotony.
But for all that it's a reasonably effective piece of story telling. It's a bit of exposition wrapped up in dialogue, but it works because the two voices are distinct. It moves the story on and the reader forgives (or doesn't notice) any problems with the style of writing.
The other trick that Dan Brown does with Da Vinci Code (which most people don't notice) is to compress time. Most of the action takes place in a very short span of time - a matter of days. This gives the action a measure of urgency that it wouldn't otherwise have. Shakespeare uses this trick a lot.