It all depends on your point of view

This week I hit another milestone for Daughter of Aithne, topping 65K in the word count. My goal is 120,000 words, so this means I'm just over half way through the novel.

Writing is always slow going once the semester is in session. This fall, I've been able to set aside just two hours a week for writing, so I've had to be modest about my expectations, and happy with any progress I've made. As a general rule, if I can add on 20,000 words to a novel during a semester, I'm satisfied. Right now, my fall semester word count is at 15,000, which puts me a little behind schedule, but still hopeful that I'll make that goal. 

The chapter I finished up this week deals with a reunion between Eolyn and one of her students, Mariel, after a harrowing set of events has kept them separated for some time. The reunion is one of mixed emotions, because what has come to pass has left lasting scars, and what is yet to come will not be any easier.  I struggled with this one chapter for nearly a month; in part because I only have two hours a week to write, but also because it wasn't until this past Wednesday that I finally realized I needed to write the scene not from Eolyn's point of view, but from Mariel's.



NASA shows how the solar sytem looks from Saturn's perspective;
another example of how switching point of view can transform
the same scene into something entirely different.

This is one of the moments I love most in writing: When I switch the point of view, and everything just falls into place.

Every author has a somewhat different approach to point of view.  I like to write my novels with 4-6 character viewpoints, two of which generally carry the story.  For any scene written with the protagonist, the default option is always to write that scene from her point of view.  Of course, the default option is not always the best option, and for this particular chapter, Eolyn's voice was not the one that needed to be heard.

It's not always easy to determine which point of view should be used in a particular scene.  "Rules of thumb" for making this decision abound, but all of them have exceptions. 

For example, I once heard that the point of view for a scene should be given to the character who has the most to lose.  I followed this rule rather faithfully until I hit a chapter in High Maga that involves a brutal interrogation of one of Eolyn's followers.  I tried to write that scene from the point of view of the victim of the interrogation, and it just wasn't working.  When at last I decided to try writing the scene from the point of view of the interrogator, everything fell into place.

Beginning writers often have wobbly points of view in their stories; I know I did when I wrote the first draft of Eolyn.  We are anxious to communicate what all the characters -- or at least two of the characters -- in a given scene are thinking, and so we jump from one head into another without reason or warning. 

One of the best pieces of advice I received in my early days of writing was to clean up my approach to point of view; to pick one point of view and stick to it for any given scene.  Again, not every writer has to do this, and not every story is meant to be told this way.  But I think sticking to one point of view is a phenomenal tool for learning and refining the craft.  Not only does it maximize investment in a single character, but it also forces the writer to pay attention to all the subtle ways in which characters can communicate their thoughts without speaking, much less letting us into their heads. 

Gestures, facial expressions, and especially actions all communicate a wealth of information, and often in more engaging ways than knowing that character's thoughts. Also, there is an interesting interplay between what is said and what is left unsaid; one tends to wrap around the other, so that what is said defines the nature of what is not.  This, too, adds dimension, mystery, and tension to any scene. 

A great exercise, and one I inadvertently did with this last chapter, is to write the same scene from two points of view.  If you have it clear in your head what the non-point-of-view character is thinking, you will discover many opportunities in which those unspoken thoughts come across loud and clear.

~*~

 

I'm now proofing the galleys for High Maga, which will
go out for editorial review next week!

Over on Heroines of Fantasy this week, Terri-Lynne DeFino has started a fun discussion about holidays in fantasy.  Please stop by to read her post and participate, and help yourself to the virtual brownies at the back of the room.

 

Speaking of HoF, we are in the midst of planning a major expansion of activities on our group blog dedicated to the discussion of fantasy, and especially women in fantasy.  I won't reveal much about this yet, because the details are under discussion,  but stay tuned because it is going to be very, very exciting.

 

And I know I've been promising a cover reveal for High Maga for a while now; we are getting very close.  Thomas Vandenberg and I have been settling on the details of the Naether Demon featured on the cover.  He's also given Eolyn a mild makeover, and now we're just trying to decide what font we like best for the title and author.  As soon as these details are settled and approved by my editors, we'll be good to go. 

 

Release date for High Maga is still on course for 04-04-2014.  Watch for giveaways and other events leading up to the big day!

 

 

The Landscape of My Imagination

I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when I was in high school, as part of my English class. To this day (and it’s been a long time since then), the cover art of my high school edition of Frankenstein remains vivid in my mind: A man in 19th century dress, his back to the viewer, his figure small but distinctive in a vast landscape of ragged mountains and hidden valleys.


It was wonderful surprise – while I was refreshing my memory of Shelley, Frankenstein, and Romanticism – to come across this same image on Wikipedia. It didn’t take much; just one click on “Romantic” from Wikipedia’s Frankenstein page. The artwork, entitled Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, is by Casper David Friedrich, a painter of the Romantic period.

I also remember our classroom discussion of Frankenstein, where our teacher talked about the importance of wilderness for the Romantic movement. Shelley is a prime example of this.  In her timeless novel, she devotes ample attention to the untamed landscape in which her characters live. Were she alive and writing today, I suspect Shelley would find herself embroiled in some vigorous debates with fellow authors, who now live in a world where generous attention to landscape is often seen as an impediment to a story rather than an integral part of it.

My own writing is heavy on description and landscape. I believe a reader cannot fully understand the characters of a story unless he or she also experiences the setting in which they live -- this because the landscape with which we interact shapes who we are.  I would have been a happy camper (literally and figuratively) had I written during the Romantic period. As it is, I am constantly challenged by my readers and fellow authors to strike a balance between my own convictions regarding the importance of landscape and more contemporary lines of thought, which often insist setting is not only unimportant, but actually in the way of the 'real story'.

Why shun landscape in our stories?

This question has come back to me often during these last few years, as I’ve engaged with different perspectives regarding what makes good writing. It has resurfaced again these past few weeks, as I reflect on my experience as writer-in-residence at Andrews Experimental Forest and the short story inspired by it – a story that in its current draft is, perhaps even by my own standards, ‘too heavy’ on description.

But what is ‘too heavy’? What determines the point where we stop looking out the window, because we just don’t want to see anymore? Why is that cutoff in a different place now than it was some 200 years ago, when Shelley wrote her immortal tale?

The biologist and philosopher inside me can’t help but wonder whether rejection of landscape is simply about ‘good technique’ in writing.  Perhaps it's more than that.  Perhaps it is also a reflection of the context in which so many of us now live: a world where wilderness has been fragmented and pushed to distant corners of the earth; where we have no point of reference for the organic nature of our surroundings, living as we do in climate controlled spaces, attached to our ipods and cell phones, purchasing pre-packaged boneless meats, avoiding fresh fruits and vegetables because they must be peeled, treating our next door neighbors as somehow less ‘real’ than the person we just met on Facebook.

Not that the modern lifestyle is bad perse; just that we lose something, I think, if we let ourselves become too absorbed by it. There’s a larger world out there; larger even than the internet. Filled with sensory experience -- sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. A world that would speak to us, if we let it; just as the forests of Moisehén speak to the Magas and Mages of Eolyn's world.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Romantics like Shelley, I have read contemporary fiction that takes place entirely inside the mind of the main character. While I appreciate the artistry behind this approach to storytelling, it has little appeal to me as a reader. A disembodied mind in an organic world seems not so much a reflection of real life as a precursor to madness. I cannot engage with someone who is so removed from their surroundings; indeed from their own flesh and blood.

I suppose for me as a writer, the landscape and its components – forests, plains, valleys, rivers, cultivated fields, mountains, plants, animals, rocks, weather patterns, and so forth – will always be characters in their own right, and deserve to be treated as such. My protagonists interact in intimate ways with the environment in which they live; so, then, should my readers. 

And even though I tend to cull descriptive passages as I move toward the final draft, I'm rarely fully convinced that by doing so I'm creating a better story. Indeed, it often seems like I'm deforesting the landscape of my imagination, just as we have deforested the landscapes of our planet. 


This post is part of a series of reflections inspired by my week as a Writer-in-Residence at Andrews Experimental Forest.  To learn more about my week at Andrews, visit the links in the box entitled "Spring 2011 Residency at Andrews Forest" on the right hand bar.