Point of view...

[telophase]

OK, so in this story whose rough draft I hammered out last night, I'm playing a bit with point of view, as used sometimes by people who attempt to write pompously academic-sounding essays/reports/whatever and who often fail hilariously. It's a sort of ... fake third person? for want of a better phrase. (unless one of you who Knows Better tells me what it is.) The characters are referred to in the third person, but "we" is used, and it's clear that the narrator is one of the group, and which one it is.

I know I've seen this used effectively before, but the only example I can remember is Kipling's Stalky & Co., where I think it's not obvious until near the end which of the boys is the narrator, and part of the fun lies in working out who he is. At least it was that way for me when I read it at the age of 14 or so - it might be obvious off the bat for everyone else. :D

I have no clearly-defined questions other than "what are the elements involved in doing this effectively?" but if any of you has any ideas, thoughts, or digressions on the subject, please post. :)

*goes to retrieve Stalky & Co. from the shelf*

ETA: Just grabbed S&C from the shelf, and I see I misremembered a bit - it's in pretty much normal 3rd up to the last chapter, which takes place much later with the students, now men, telling war stories and reminiscing about school days, and engaging in a bit of Where Are They Now? talk. It's told in first person, with the narrator unknown until the last page.

ETA2 I think the paranormal investigation report at www.memphisghosthunters.com/investigation_reports/2006/001-06.html fits sort of what I'm trying to do, only I'm making it funny (hopefully).

Comments

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Scientific Paper POV, aka "Take no actual credit, earn no actual blame." The main trick is to use the passive voice as much as possible. Refer to yourself only as "the author of this paper" or "he/she/Dr. X", and only if there's no way to avoid it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It seems to be surprisingly hard to walk the ground between "the author got it wrong" and "the narrator got it wrong" at this point. I'm attempting to imitate the style of a lot of the ghost investigations posted online, while keeping it readable and entertaining and revealing the personality of the character writing it.

This is an actual, less readable, quote from an investigation report online:

In addition to photos and Evp's, other evidence collected was recorded in the report as influx in Geo Magnetic fields which indicted energy fluctuations that supports spirit energy. These readings are in direct correlation to data collected by this agency and those others that utilize EMF meters and the evidence collected falls within the area identified as spirit energy present. Thermal probes and scanners indicated several drops in temperatures that were such a drastic change that no normal or realistic explanation other then the paranormal could be given. They fell within the parameters and data supporting such changes and would indeed lean toward that of the paranormal. These readings were present and noted in this investigation.

That's from www.ghosthaunting.com/html/johnstown_property.html which I am not direct linking in case they look at their referrer stats like I do. :) If you go there be warned: the page may play music at you or scream or something. I don't know because it informs me I need additional plugins to play all the media on the page, so I have been spared.

Another investigation from the same page:

22 November 2003; Brian, Linda and Jeff arrived at the Loomis House in Carlinville, Illinois to conduct an investigation of this historical landmark. The Loomis House is one of the oldest standing buildings in Carlinville and it holds rich history. But what makes this dwelling different from the rest, is it still houses spirits from the past. The owners have been experiencing paranormal events for some time and were searching for answers as to whom the spirits are that stills walks the halls of the Loomis House. So this day, MGHS along with psychic Jeff Watkins were brought in to bring some of these answers to light.

After making contact with the owner, we were given a walk through of the entire building and while doing so, we collected evidence and Jeff was conducting a reading of each room. This would prove to be very fascinating, for before we ever entered the building, Jeff felt a deep piercing pain in his back and told Linda and I that a man had been stabbed in his back out front here. After we talked with the owner, we had revealed what Jeff felt outside and she had confirmed that just 10 years earlier, a man had been stabbed in his back out near the front of the Loomis House. This would be the first of many confirmations that Jeff would get this night.

ETA: Also, check ETA2 in post.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Ye gods! It's as if Egon Spengler wrote Paragraph 1 and Ray Stantz wrote Paragraph 2.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :D I've read so many of these things in the past week or so that they're all hilarious now, especially in the earnestness with which the investigators attack their duties.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Hm, are you talking about an extremely distant and impersonal third person POV with occasional intrusive first personal plural (royal we style)? I've seen it used in academia, mostly in classics papers. I'm not sure I could give you a rule set, but I bet if you gave me sample sentences, I could screw them up, I mean, suggest revisions which would be of that nature.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Mmm, more like a humorously failed attempt at distant and impersonal POV. :D

I'll forward you the draft, just because I think it's easier than pulling a few sentences out of context. (Also see reply to badnoodles above.)

ETA: Also, check ETA2 in post.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

Hmm... third person collective? :D (That's speculation, natch.)

I think I've seen a few short stories written in the "singular we", but no names are coming to mind, though my brain is linking them with the first quarter of the 20th century. It's not a common POV, obviously, maybe because it doesn't jibe with that modern Western individualism/solipsism thingie. It gives a flavor of collaborative action which fits situations like an organized squad of soldiers or schoolboys. I do have a book full of oral accounts of Japan during the war, and a lot of them are told at least partially in the "we", whether by combat veterans or civilians. Part of that seems to be the solidarity encouraged in wartime, and part of it is that characteristically Japanese group orientation; I'd probably find "we" most natural in a modern group situation if the characters weren't Americans. (Given that they weren't a military or quasi-military group either, like a football team or a monastery.)

In a lot of cases, I might get the impression of stepping back and spreading out responsibility for what happens (usually something bad) on a group rather than all on an individual -- "Yeah, I was there, but all these other guys did exactly the same things or worse, and it was someone else's idea, and those other guys were the ringleaders and the rest of us just went along for the ride." A spectator point of view -- I don't think "we" would work too well if the narrator were the one in charge of the whole enterprise, or the most active character. He'd have to be a subordinate member of the group, or else he'd be telling it as "me and those other guys".

I think you'd have to sort out whether your narrator will automatically know what anyone else in the group knows even if he didn't personally witness it, or if he has the same limitations as a first-person narrator. "When cracks spread down the face of the dam, our sentries ran to warn the rest of us..." or "Our sentries came running to warn us that the dam was about to break..."

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Does it make a difference to know that the format is a case report of an investigation, written after the fact so that the narrator would indeed know what happened with the rest of the people? (And that it's - hopefully - comedy?)

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

Ahh, OK! This sounds interesting! So then you might go for a pompous know-it-all tone? :) You might want to incorporate noticeable *lapses* of logical POV. As if the narrator were pretending to be modest by attributing various actions or discoveries to the group, but actually implying that he was the main actor and the rest were only there to admire his perspicacity. Hmm, that's a bit of a toughie... but I'd look for ways in which he could not-so-subtly point out other people's mistakes, or just happen to be the one to put together the evidence, or second-guess someone else's success -- "Sam was the first of us to enter the room and encounter the mystic presence, but that could have led to disaster, since he had not made all the preparations that I would have recommended if he had consulted the group..."

Or the narrator could make egregious mistakes or pratfalls himself and brush off their importance, or claim to have been trying some new and daring way of doing things even if it didn't immediately succeed. So it's not actually a "we", just pretending to be. You could probably push that pretty far, considering the inherent pomposity of the subject matter! Actually, Mark Twain might give some good examples -- I'm thinking Huckleberry Finn, or even Roughing It, which has some very dry tall tales of group endeavors.

[octopedingenue]

You totally need to read the story pause while I google it and so look smart by not fumbling for the title "Reports of Certain Events in London" by China Mieville, from the McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories anthology.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sounds nifty, thanks. XD

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

yes, you made it funny.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

yay! XD (Humor is so subjective, and it's invariably the things you thought were funniest that fall flat and the bits you tossed in and didn't think were very funny that make people roll on the floor. XD)

[octopedingenue]

Sounds a bit like The Story of the Treasure Seekers:

There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how beastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!' said Hildegarde with a deep sigh, 'we must look our last on this ancestral home'"--and then some one else says something--and you don't know for pages and pages where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it. Our ancestral home is in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a garden, not a large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don't care because I don't tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all. Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald--and then Dicky. Oswald won the Latin prize at his preparatory school--and Dicky is good at sums. Alice and Noël are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this story--but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't.

It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep it to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, and said--

"I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House."

Aside from the totally-anonymous-really-narrator going over the top now and then (and the requisite headdesky period racism) it's pretty cute.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ah, I may have to poke through that and see. :) It's been a long time since I read E. Nesbit. Wonder what it is about kid lit that leads to playing with POV? XD

[octopedingenue]

I will now put on my Official English Lit Grad Who Totally Almost Double-Majored In Psych Hat and say, maybe since kids haven't learned-to-the-point-of-stuffiness all the narrative building blocks yet, they're more okay with them being tossed around? (Though there's tossing and there's dropping. I almost tossed an adult book on the floor yesterday because it suddenly turned multi-POV in the middle of the book, in the middle of a paragraph. I expect better from Nebula winners!) And you do switch around a lot in kid-storytelling and kid-playing: okay, this time you be the dragon and I'll be the warrior princess. I like fiction that likes to play!

This was not my favorite Nesbit book, but there are bits of it of which I am very fond. Like this:

I am afraid the last chapter was rather dull. It is always dull in books when people talk and talk, and don't do anything, but I was obliged to put it in, or else you wouldn't have understood all the rest. The best part of books is when things are happening. That is the best part of real things too. This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, "thus the sad days passed slowly by"--or "the years rolled on their weary course"--or "time went on"--because it is silly; of course time goes on--whether you say so or not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts--and in between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and went to bed, and dull things like that. It would be sickening to write all that down, though of course it happens. I said so to Albert-next-door's uncle, who writes books, and he said, "Quite right, that's what we call selection, a necessity of true art." And he is very clever indeed. So you see.

I have often thought that if the people who write books for children knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the story and you were writing it. Albert's uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You probably have it right. :)

I ... had something I was going to add, but I'm watching House right now and got distracted and FORGOT WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY WOES


ETA: I know! I read a Mercedes Lackey book once which was in either first or tight-third for 2/3 of the book, then dropped into someone else's POV for one short scene, when the protagonist was unconscious, and then went back to the protagonist for the rest of the book. Drove me crazy, because there's ways to get around that. ARG. It was the past of an established character, too, so it's not like there was any suspense about whether he survived, so he could have said "This is what I learned later happened".