More on Point of View

A while back, I got into a conversation with my critique group about when something is a 3rd person point of view that jumps and when something is an omniscient point of view.

We were looking at Ursula K. Le Guin's writing book, Steering the Craft, which we're reading together really slowly.  Le Guin talks at length about point of view.  Specifically, we were talking about her example from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, where the point of view shifts from one character to the next and back and around.  It's masterfully done, and most of my group agreed that trying it themselves just made a huge mess, and this was a lesson in sticking to the point of view of one character.

When I tried to write something like Woolf where the perspective shifts from one character to the next (and in my defense, I tried for about ten minutes and declared it good enough) I looked back on it when I was done, squinted at it, and said, "Well, that's just omniscient."

So that got me wondering, if you manage to make this work elegantly and smoothly, if you manage to change perspectives mid sentence without losing your reader, at what point is it still 3rd person and at what point have you moved to omniscient?

Feeling a sense of exasperation, Charlie Brown said, "Good grief," unknowing that Snoopy's activities were completely reasonable.

So we get information from Charlie Brown's point of view (he feels exasperated) and then information from Snoopy's point of view (his plan is reasonable, if you ask Snoopy).  So, without seeing any of the surrounding sentences, you could argue that this is in third person limited, but jumps from Chuck to Snoopy, or you could argue that this is omniscient and told by someone who knows what they're both thinking.  I think there's two things going on that lean towards one or the other. 

1. Voice.  If I did a better job of having the first half in Charlie Brown's voice and the second half being in Snoopy's voice, that would be evidence for a shifting third person POV.  If the voice is consistent through the whole sentence (which is not to say that there is no voice) that would be evidence for an omniscient POV.

2. Scope.  Or how far the camera that shows us the scene is zoomed in.  If this were a movie, and if the scene shows a wider view of the events, that's evidence for an omniscient POV.  So if the camera can pick up Chuck's exasperation and Snoopy's motives at the same time, it's like we have both characters in frame at the same time in a wider shot.  If the camera is zoomed in on Chuck, and then swivels or cuts to a close up of Snoopy, that's more like 3rd person POV.  I can't really tell if you could say which one this is from this example, so maybe that's not helpful here.  But one of my critique partners pointed out that an omniscient POV would be able to tell you something that the characters don't know themselves, and that seems to fit with this.

The Masked City Review

This week's novel is The Masked City, the sequel to The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman.

Irene is enjoying being the Librarian-in-Residence in a magical, steampunk world.  But when Kai (her student and secret dragon) gets kidnapped by Fae and brought to a high chaos world, Irene has to rescue him before the dragons declare war on the Fae, potentially destroying whole universes in the cross fire.

There's a cool thing going on here where the Fae get power from inhabiting leading roles in stories.  So the more stereotypical and overly-dramatic they are, whether they're playing villain or hero, the more powerful they are and the more easily they can draw random passersby into their story.  This leaves the humans in worlds controlled by Fae to act like puppets whenever a Fae walks by, shifting in and out of stories without any control at all.  Lesser Fae gain power by getting closer to the main plots and being less like side characters.  So you've got this culture where everyone is trying to be a main character, and everyone is trying to out-drama each other. 

The thing I like best is that Irene has to keep asking herself what role she's playing in a story.  If she's the villain, she's likely to be caught through unbelievable coincidence.  If she's the hero, she's likely to out maneuver the people chasing her.  It's a cool set up, and I wish more time was spent digging into it.  Aren't we all the heroes of our own stories?  And if so, how do two conflicting stories interact?  I would have liked to see Irene consciously grab the reigns of someone else's story, or I would have liked to see one of the lesser Fae rise up to become a main character.  I would have liked to see some investigation of genre or tropes.  I want to know more, because this is a cool idea.

As with the last book, I think Irene is neat.  She's collected and reasonable and she has sweet Librarian powers.  And as with the last book, I'm pretty ambivalent about Vale, the detective.  I outright got irritated with him when he showed up to announce that he'd figured out everything Irene had figured out, but more easily and stealthfully, plus he'd figured out the one thing she couldn't get.  On the one hand, it was fortuitous in the way that a story with Irene as the hero would be overly-convenient.  But on the other hand...shut up, Vale.  I don't need some dude coming in to make Irene look stupid and show that the last hundred pages or so of her investigating stuff was worthless because he'd already done it.

Shut up, Vale.

***

Next week: Central Station, sci-fi by Lavie Tidhar.

The Privilege of the Sword Review

This week's novel is The Privilege of The Sword by Ellen Kushner.  This one was recommended to me by my friend Dani, who thought I would like that the main character is a girly girl who has to learn to sword fight (and also probably thought I'd like the steamy parts).  She was correct.  This book was fun.

Katherine is a noble country girl, whose family has been in a legal battle with her uncle, The Mad Duke, for years and it is bankrupting them.  When her uncle randomly says he'll forgive all their debts and leave them alone if they send Katherine to him, Katherine thinks she's going to have a season in the city, living in an elaborate house and wearing beautiful, expensive gowns and going to parties to meet eligible young men.  Instead, her uncle decides that she's going to learn to be a swordsman, handle his duels for him.  He gives her very nice clothes, but they are clothes for a swordsman, and therefore involve pants.  Horrors!

Katherine was a fun character.  I appreciated the complex relationship she had with learning to sword fight.  She's resistant to it because it's typically a thing that men do and she's the girlie-est of all girly girls and it's going to ruin her reputation as a Lady.  But she's also honor bound to help her family the same way she would help them by marrying well, and her putting up with the Duke's whims is going to do that.  And then she starts being really good at it.  She takes it seriously and prides herself on learning.  Then she gets obsessive in a very teen girl way about a book about swordsmen, and she's drawn to the drama romance of her new profession, to the point of getting upset when it turns out that real duels are kind of boring and unintelligent and over less than heroic squabbles.  The push and pull is really interesting, as is her growth through the story.

It was also a really well put together queer narrative.  The Mad Duke is openly bi (I assume.  He never says how he identifies so it might be more along the lines of pansexual).  But more interesting than that is Katherine's sexual awakening.  She's also bi (again, I assume), and her discovery of that is really well handled.  In their pseudo-Regency society, no one has really talked to her about sex, so when she realizes she wants to kiss ladies, she has to simultaneously piece together all the innuendos that have been going over her head (which is an entertaining thing for a lot of the book).  She freaks out because she feels sexual attraction, not because she feels it towards women.  And she never feels guilty about it, which is really cool.  It's more of a light bub moment than a dread filled moment.

The other thing that stands out for me about this book is that it's fantasy because it's set in this word that's not ours and doesn't really exist.  However, there's no magic or monsters or supernatural forces of any kind.  It's people doing people things in a sort-of-Regency setting.  I find it gratifying how malleable the fantasy genre can be.

The narrative often shifted from Katherine's point of view to cover some side character or another, and I wondered why I should care about them and how they fit into Katherine's story.  They all come together in the end, but a lot of the time I felt as if I was missing something.

***

Next week: The Masked City, the sequel to The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman