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KIMIKO_FALLS
December 16, 2017
Okay, so recently I actually wrote some
fragments of Skip Beat fanfic which I
posted to the reddit skipbeat group. [link]
Embarrassingly enough for someone who tends
to go on quite a bit about fiction and the
way it works, it's been some time since Consider these:
I've tried to write some.
POV
ALL_WRONG
I keep thinking about the effort I
called "Lying in wait at the Darumaya
Alley" it has a few aspects that These fragments of fiction will not
contradict my usual doctrine which make much sense to a random
insists you should avoid the impossible reader... you'd need to be someone
device of the omniscient narrator, and who's been following the entire 40
keep the story viewpoint and the volume run of the "Skip Beat" manga
reader's viewpoint tightly aligned just to make sense of them.
together.
SKIP_BEAT
POV
The situation is simple enough: one
young woman is going to physically
attack another with the goal of
preventing her from being able to Two of these sets of witnesses
to take an upcoming acting role. I would say make perfect sense
The intended victim fights off the within the context of the
attack without much trouble, and story: it's quite likely they
then three different groups of people would be on hand (and likely
converge on the scene, having witnessed that the attacker wouldn't
at least some of the fight. expect them to be).
There's an obvious, standard way However as written, one is a
of writing this, in the forced coincidence-- I think I
all-too-common style of would just back up and explain
"suspense" fiction. this later, if this were longer
than a fragment. But maybe this
You first focus on the villain to is a touch of hypocrisy on my
establish the threat, then switch part as well:
to tracking the victim: the reader
then watches as the unwitting CHANCES_ARE
victim moves back-and-forth, closer
or farther away from the unsuspected
danger.
I personally regard this as complete trash:
rather than try to get the reader to identify
with the hero, the reader has acquired an
impossible "omniscient" point-of-view that CHEAP_SUSPENDERS
no one in the story shares.
So: I choose the viewpoint
of the attacker, and tried
to stay with it.
BITER_BIT
If it were just a story about a fight, we
could hypothetically use the victim as
point-of-view, but actually this is a kind
of "biter bit" story. It's not just
that the physical attack is defeated-- Though, the way I wrote it the
that's just the necessary framework-- heroine doesn't need any
really the attacker's nose is going to be of these men to defend her: she
ground in her own sense of inferiority: can take care of herself.
the heroine has multiple different These men would have
high-status males trying to defend her and liked to defend her
fighting over her-- this envy-inspiring though. There's a
situation is the actual shoujo payoff here. having-it-both-ways character
to all this: in male adventure
So: we lead off with the villain being fiction the protagonists are
baffled at the heroine's character (she expected to solve their own
continues working part-time at a problems; in "women's fiction"
lower-status job she doesn't need); then your worth is not measured by
after the defeat, the villain is surprised what you can do but by who
at the identity of the two men who are cares about you. My solution
clearly interested in her-- and she then appeals to both audiences.
runs off stage. He said smugly.
But then, after the
"pov" leaves the stage
there are a few lines of The tag line is the remark "What a
dialog that she couldn't terrible knife". It makes sense that
possibly hear. This this character would be a steel snob:
includes a tag line-- she's got a background as a Japanese
a joke where the heroine chef and she's recently trained in
makes an irrelevant handling katana.
comment that shows how
unconcerned she is with The joke here then is it's
the physical attack. irrelevant, and yet it is obviously
in character: absurdity and
recognition of the familiar.
I like these lines quite a bit and have no
interest in cutting them just to maintain Perhaps: since I'm
a purity of viewpoint. Hacking in a fix okay with narrative
like having the villain take cover in a viewpoint changes
hiding place where she can overhear seems between sections,
like an awkward, contrived addition. It it could be that
would be complying with doctrine without when you're near the
improving the story. section break it's
okay to begin the
change.
Somewhat worse, though: The idea that there's
one viewpoint is supposed to make the I could codify this
narrative more honest, to tell the story from as a standard
a possible viewpoint, not some manufactured "exception" built-in
"omniscient" view. In point of fact though, to my doctrine.
there is another viewpoint: there's the
person reading the text, and this concealed, Then the thing to do
ghostly viewpoint haunts every choice about would be to play test
what the characters say and do. the new rule.
When the heroine steps outside, there
are a few lines of dialog that may not
even make much sense to the pov, but
they tell the reader why the the
heroine stepped outside, and it
immediately explains why one of the
men is on hand. Also: typically, at the outset of
a story you have to do
Or consider that while the attacker is something to supply the reader
waiting, she looks down at the knife with the initial situation.
one last time, and thinks about why Here, I was happy to imitate play
she's carrying it. This isn't script format and just state a
particularly unnatural, but the few details...
real reason she does this is to
let the reader know she's carrying it. TELL_ME_TRUE
To comply with my doctrine, I could
begin the story with more stage-setting
verbiage, but the longer that is, the
harder it might be to get into reading
the story.
I might start the story sooner, and
have us watch the knife being bought--
but once again, this seems like
additional verbiage that doesn't
really improve the story.
So, my decades long and deeply
held manifesto about the
dishonesty of author omniscient It's a rare manifesto
and the desirability of a that survives contact
limited POV may itself be a bit with the battlefield...
of a cheat. It definitely has
some cracks in it. But the fact that I turned up
these problems with such a small
To defend my doctrine writing task is pretty
though: the rules I set remarkable. It's long past time
out trying to follow I did to apply some of my theories.
succeed in following
approximately, and I think
they did steer me away
from some bad ideas. MANIFESTO
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