{ but your basket has a hole. }

[delga]

I was up until about 2am last night watching Standoff. ! Still managed to get up around 0830, huzz.

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Guys, I was curious: what kinds of narrative voice do you enjoy reading? For example, I get excited when a fic is written in the second-person, and Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides was written in first-person plural which was also made of win. Let me know.

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I feel super-productive today. I got up, got ready, had actual breakfast (am back to eating cereal in the morning because I have the time) and then waited until 1000 to leave the house. Walked the long way into Pw. to post some letters, then walked up to Av. campus to check if I'd left any essays from last year. Tried to check the year 1 timetables but they're not pinned up yet, so that was mostly a waste. Then walked to Hf. campus and paid my fees for the year. (Haha, I paid early so I got a 2% discount. So that's c.£20 I saved today, go me!) Then used the road behind the library to get back home. Am now drinking cranberry&raspberry juice (chilled so as to take off the edge) and am about to sort through today's receipts.

Then I'm going to watch more Standoff. Just because.

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Brits! Good deodorants, please. Mine is okay, but I find right now I'm sweating like a horse, so obviously it's not doing its job properly. Tips?

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Did I mention that The Flatmate and I spent Saturday evening watching Independence Day? I love that film so much. It's still one of my favourites. Also, we get Five here, so I think I might watch season 1 of Numb3rs when it starts to air. Exciting stuff, natch.

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edit: See, I feel like whilst this dress looks sort of faux-floaty and pretty on the runway, in RL, that black-mesh thing that happens to have caught on recently is just horrible. It makes EVERYTHING look like funeral wear. It's very distressing.

Comments

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

I'm a pretty big fan of second person actually, both for writing and as a reader (it seems to give more to play around with, writing wise). And that dress is lovely but yes, horrendously impractical (for me anyway - I guarantee I would rip it in five seconds flat).

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I saw one up close recently (re: dress) and it just loos horribly funereal. I was disappointed.

See, the only reason I'm asking is because I saw some comments on a fic recently wherein both the author of the fic and the majority of the comments confessed to not being fans of second-person. And then it made me as what sort of narratives people prefer.

Two of my ficathon entries this year were written in unconventional narrative voices. My apocalyptothon entry was written in future tense (which is difficult because I had to also show progression of time in the future, so sometimes the tenses got ugly) but I decided on that because I like the idea of the reader being in that split-second before the future unfolds, and seeing the characters through. My femgenficathon entry was in second person which was less difficult because I've written that before. The trick, I think, with second person is preventing yourself from making your writing a list of commands (so, it's not "you do this, you do that", but "you do this, this happens, you feel" and then a commentary on someone else, so "you feel; he reacts"). I chose second person for that fic because I think first-person is far too difficult to do justice to, and third-person is too impersonal. Second-person seems to fill that space in-between, where you are the character, but you are also detached from the character. It's not you doing these things; it's your actions being narrated to you. It's this curious sensation of being intimate with a protagonist, but also maintaining distance.

Um. OK, this comment was long and self-indulgent, but what I meant to ask was, with your writing, do you ever choose other styles, and if you do, what prompts it, and what are the pros and cons of those styles?

Long Reply Here

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

But it is a long comment that gets me pondering, so it is a good thing. I've deliberately used third person once, in a original piece because I wanted the reader to be deliberately dettached and not personalizing the character. It worked well for me in this instance because it added to the sense of awkwardly intruding in the characters life but I found it really difficult to write just simply because it was so awkwardly distant.

I do write a bit in the first person because you are really giving readers access to the complete character, without the distance of second person narration. Interestingly I haven't actually used first person in fanfic, just in my big original novel in progress because for the main character to be sympathetic and three dimensional you need to be entirely in her head and voice without distance or the story just wouldn't work. The downside is that I often feel I'm selling short on objectivity - I can't go back and take a long view on the character, I have to be defined by the limits of her voice.

And I hope this answer makes some kind of sense *smiles*

Re: Long Reply Here

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Total sense!

I think third-person singular is possibly the most common narrative form in use; I use it a lot, and I use it whilst deliberately avoiding the use of names so that the reader maintains some distance from the character. But, it doesn't have to be impersonal. It's most commonly used because that's the way we tell stories - to other people, about other people. For example, I wrote the Doctor Who/Firefly (http://community.livejournal.com/tja_rama/87845.html#cutid1) crossover in third-person singular and I think you still connect with the characters, but you're not them which is good because I don't think you can ever be River Tam or The Doctor. /pimp

I think first-person in fanfiction is much more difficult than in original fiction because in original fiction, you're defining the narrative voice, whilst in fanfiction, you're recreating a voice. The only time I've used it is in Ophelia's Flowers which needs some drastic rewriting. But yes, the objectivity disappears, but you can play with that, of course, which is what's great about first-person fiction. Dubious/not-entirely-trustworthy narrators make for an engaging read because then you're not only looking at that character head on, but you're judging it all the time. I love that.

Re: Long Reply Here

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

I just went and read that fic of yours and it was absolutely breathtakingly, darkly beautiful and just so complete *sighs happily* I tend to do the same thing with the Doctor, I can't write inside his head because to me he is a character that I just don't feel I can capture enough of him to get inside his head.

And that's definitely true about the fanfic versus original. Because I would never feel entirely comfortable about recreating, say, Toby Zieglers internal voice because I didn't create him and I don't have that level of insight that Aaron Sorkin (and Richard Schiff perhaps) do. But that's just for me personally.

I'll admit the unreliable first person narrator is a big love of mine because there's so many opportunities to muck about with the reader and leave them wondering/with things to explore.

Re: Long Reply Here

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Thank you. My point with that, though, is that (hopefully) you get a sense of the kind of person River is, and you get a sense of how she sees things. And say you have a preconception of how Rose and The Doctor are, how does someone like River see them? So, even inside third person, you learn a lot about all three characters. You learn about how The Doctor and his companion appear to the people they meet, and how even The Doctor, wise as he is, can seem to be so small compared to the universe. (In turn, he becomes small compared to River, because she becomes the universe; and in that way, they are compatible, because she is all of space, and he is all of time.) My point being that third person doesn't have to distance you, and that it can be interesting if what you have to say is worth reading. I think and she dances is the only time I've truly achieved that.

I would never want to write Toby's voice because, like you said, he is ver complex and a lot of him coms from the writing and from Schiff's portrayal. But I think Toby is one of those characters with whom you can play with his history up to a point. Like, you know that he ends up somewhat embittered, even though he's possibly the biggest believer, so you can go back to a time when he was less cynical, but still offhand and incredulous at other people. (17 People - I cannot talk about that episode any more. Toby/Schiff kills me in that one.)

[twincy.livejournal.com]

I love second person (Bright Lights!) because it gets under my skin so badly. I also have a fondness for first person, but I shy away from it in fanfic. I don't know why that is. Possibly because TV-based fandoms just aren't suited to it -- unless the canon itself contains first person narration (i.e. Scrubs), in which case I'd probably be into it.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this to melliyna and I think my issue with first-person narrative in fanfiction is that you really have to nail that characterisation.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

of giving a piece a sense of immediacy
I don't quite understand. Do you mean that they use it as a 'quick' device to establish intimacy between the narrative and the reader?

See, I find it quite rare to find fiction written in second-person, which is why I'm always interested, if not pleased, when I see it used. Which is why I was a little thrown by the comments to your post :) Not that I'm saying it's illogical to dislike a certain narrative style, I just didn't think there was a surfeit of 2nd-person around to feel that way about it.

Oh man, first-person. Aie. In fanfiction, I think you're taking way too many liberties if you're trying to pull off first-person because you really have to nail that characterisation, and often that's just not the case.

[trascendenza]

I love second person--more writing it than reading it, though, because many of the authors I've come across who use it are fledging and just getting their narrative and characterization down, and I prefer my second person to flow with confidence.

Nine times out of ten I hate first person, mostly because of tense issues (first person past can sound so *awkward* in places, but first person present doesn't always work well for telling a story). When it's done well, however, I worship it. I don't write in it often for the same reason--nine times out of ten I hate the way it reads when I give it a shot, but those rare times it does work, I'm happy with how it turns out.

Something else I love is when an author changes person and tense throughout a story, even more so if it's done unpredictably but with skill. Margaret Atwood's my favorite example of this.

And first person plural? The whole novel? This, I must see!

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Yeah, michellek is pretty awesome :)

OK, that's pretty interesting, actually, because I use second-person because it establishes a mild split-personality reaction in the reader, whereby you're closer to the narrator because it's a shared experience, but you're also distant from them because you know it's not you? Also, when you read second-person, one the one hand it's being addressed specifically to you. On the other hand, when you're reading it, it's almost as though you're narrating the text to an invisible other. So I think second-person has that flexibility to it.

But! I do agree that it has to be done right, and by that I mean, the voic has to transcend the act of giving commands and actually be a progressive narrative, otherwise it's just a set of prescribed actions, and what's the point? This is the one tense where you have to work at showing, not telling.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

and I prefer my second person to flow with confidence.
Also, I find that someone with more experience with this kin of narrative is less likely to fall into the trap of writing a list of commands, and more likely to write an actual narrative.

first person past can sound so *awkward* in places, but first person present doesn't always work well for telling a story
I agree, and actually, I was thinking about what twincy was saying, about fandoms which present in the first person (eg. Scrubs) and I realised that I've read a fair few Dead Like Me fics where the author uses first-person in the tyle of George, and that's actually pretty effective. But again: you have to nail the character's voice otherwise the entire narrative feels awkward (mostly because in my case, it throws me out of the fic).

when an author changes person and tense throughout a story
Yes! Yes, I completely forgot to add that. That's an excellent choice. I'm not Atwood's greatest fan but she does that well, as does Jeanette Winterson whose prose is just beautiful.

It's a compelling read. There's something simplistic about the narrative, and the tense makes for an engaging read. Voices and details become blurred, much like the girls at the focus of the novel. It's haunting.

[trascendenza]

But again: you have to nail the character's voice otherwise the entire narrative feels awkward (mostly because in my case, it throws me out of the fic).
Amen. If the writer is using a first person voice for George that doesn't have a voice-over going in my head like on the show? I squirm and fidget and have trouble reading, because it feels wrong.

Ugh, something else I hate with first person—and one of my favorite authors does this all the time, but I'm required to forgive her, being that she's one of my favorite authors—is when the characters thoughts are in past tense to match the narrative. That feels so clunky to me. I don't sit around thinking "When I was in a hurry, nothing was ever easy" (direct quote). Ack.

On the other hand, if an author does manage a voice that hearkens me back to the source material (for fanfiction) or a first person narrative that flows and gives me an instant connection to the character, I love them like crazy.

Oooh, blurry details... that sounds lovely. Off to the library with me!