Okay, so my previous post on first person POV raised some hackles. I must explain.
As Andy LeBlanc theorized, that post came from a deep place of personal hurt. As Managing Editor of Every Day Fiction, I’m exposed to an unending stream of terrible, terrible fiction in the form of a deep slush pile. The “rules” that I mentioned in my previous article were, like any rule, meant to apply to beginning authors only. Masters* are free to break them (at their own peril).
For your convenience, here are a few rules about first person POV for you to break:
1) Your narrator cannot die in the end. Otherwise, who is he telling the story to?
2) There should be no scene breaks in first person POV. What do these mean exactly? Your narrator is taking a cigarette break?
3) No meta-narrative. Imagine you`re standing around a barbecue. Your friend is telling a story. How in heck does he relate the meta-narrative?
Anyone want to fire off a few more?
*Special note to Creative Writing Majors. This is not you. Masters have been published in one of the pros.
15 Comments(+Add)
I’m still not sure I’m with you on the scene breaks. If a story incurs a three-day gap, that gap should appear in the story as something. In a person-to-person telling this might take the form of a head scratching while the storyteller regroups to pick up the story in an interesting place.
Jumping to an outside POV is something else. I see it done well in novels but it would be tough in a short story. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done it, but it requires extreme circumstances and should only be done by trained professionals. Should.
Maybe you meant something else by “scene break” than a jump to another time and place marked by a line break. If you mean a break without transition (“Two days later Jody caught up to me at the Steak Pit…), I probably agree.
Anyway, the other two points are reasonable. Of course violating the no dying clause is a SF staple, but it ain’t easy.
Nick Mamatas agrees with me about scene breaks, so the rule certainly applied when he was editor of Clarkesworld.
For a time jump, I’m not sure why you can’t just say “three days later”, and leave it at that? Why do you need a scene break there? Scene breaks are most often used for changes in perspective, aren’t they?
I’m not sure I have ever read a published first-person narrative that did not have scene breaks. And the book I’m reading at the moment also has POV shifts.
I for one enjoy rules, and believe in a lot of them, and don’t break them just “to be different.” Everything I do in my writing is a conscious choice. But if half the published world is ignoring a rule I think that rule can safely be used by an amateur, or not, as suits her particular story.
I’m with Mishell on this one in that I feel like every first-person story I have ever read has scene breaks of some sort. Could they be edited out? Maybe. I know mine could. I certainly wouldn’t fight an editor over the need for a line break.
A scene break (I picked up calling it a line break somewhere) can present a shift in POV, time, place, mood, or emotion. I agree a first person story should provide transition. I just prefer to have a visible reference to go with the transition.
If you can reference an available (read: free) story with multiple scenes but no scene breaks, I might get your point better. I feel like I’m misunderstanding it.
While I’m not sure I necessarily agree with all points, I certainly agree with the point about the narrator not dying in the end (unless the narrator is supposed to be a ghost or one of the legions of the undead, that is, which might just happen in spec fic.). I once wrote a poem like that, written from a 1st person POV. The editor that I submitted the piece to liked the basic idea of the verse, but she suggested that I change the POV. Basically, she wondered how the narrator would be able to tell readers about his own bones sinking into the muck. It was actually a better poem after the revision.
Then again, a tale occurring in the present tense COULD possibly have the narrator dying at the end, but for all I know present tense could be one of those current writing taboos. Like all writing “rules”, it probably takes some skill and talent to successfully and effectively break them.
Scott,
I read The Wizard/Knight series by Gene Wolfe, and I don’t remember it having any scene breaks other than chapter breaks, and he’s pretty much the darling of SFF. Do you guys have any examples?
In any case, we’re talking about short fiction here, not novel length stuff, where it might be necessary to add scene breaks in order to give the reader a break. Doyou have any examples of speculative short fiction 1st person POV with scene breaks?
Richard, an example of the narrator dying in the end that I can think of is “American Beauty” (a movie, not a SFF story, I’ll give you that, but…)
The trick there is that right up front, he tells you he’s going to die and that he’s narrating from beyond the grave. That might be a way to do it, but it’s a conceit that almost never works, and can be easily overused.
Narrator dies: Sunset Boulevard.
Scene breaks depend on how long the story is. If it’s flash fiction scene breaks would be silly.
But if you’re talking longer documents, scene breaks could be crucial.
Manuscript found in Zargoza uses narratives within narratives to tell stories, and breaks occur all over the place. For example, a man begins to tell the story of a man who went insane, then the insane mane in the story tells another story.
It’s kind of like a literary Matrushka.
Anyway, I guess it depends on:
1) your skill level
2) the function it serves
3) your knowledge of the form.
Rashomon, the movie, for example, tells the stories from first POV to reveal the ‘truth.’ The short story on which it is based also alternates between the different POVs of the “witnesses” and there are section breaks when they each start telling their story (The Wife, the Thief).
But I understand about the slush pile.
Creative types typically dispute absolute rules, right? By way of example, I’ve just read Paul Park’s “The Last Homosexual,” and he uses 1st person POV with breaks to give dramatic pause in the narrative or to reset the locale, mostly. It’s worth pointing out these issues with POV when talking about craft; we should be aware of stylistic choices and be able to justify them or suggest more effective uses.
@Tracie W.
I’d argue that Paul Park qualifies as a Master, especially since he’s teaching CSD this year.
No “rules” apply to someone above a certain style level, even the rules of grammar (I’m looking at you, Cormac McCarthy!)
I grabbed a few F&SFs of the shelf and sifted through them looking for first POV. They all had a scene break or two. Not many, but a few, kind of an Act I, II, and III thing. On strange Horizon I found a first person story littered with them (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090316/nira-and-i-f.shtml) This did strike me as unusual.
I’m not arguing the point of limiting scene breaks, but I don’t find many examples completely bereft of them.
-Oso
@silvia
It definitely depends on your skill level, but most writers are not as good as they think they are… which makes for painful reading.
@Oso
Well, that Strange Horizons piece is first person AND present tense, which is two rules broken right there.
I intend to post about present tense in a future post.
I’m going to submit a first person dead guy POV story witrh breaks in present tense just to make you twitch. Ha!
I’m glad to get a little more clarification on the scene break issue. My first person pov novel on the verge of coming out is full of them. But then again, if I had written it in first person omniscient instead of limited, I would agree more on that score, even for a novel. Then it is more like sitting down with someone to tell a story. But telling the story in first person limited isn’t much different narration wise than third limited, except you’re more in their head.
As far as death, yes. In general I’d agree, though I’ve violated that a couple of times, no, make that three and the pieces were all published. One is the last story in Infinite Realities where the main character dies, but we follow him to Paradise and back to Earth again. So he dies, but he’s not really dead, I guess.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by meta-narrative. If you mean what I think you mean, then first person omniscient would probably fall into being able to do that, I’d think. But I may not be sure what you’re getting at there.
Interesting points, though.
Gene Wolfe’s Wizard/Knight series is all third person and there are no scene breaks. He’s generally acknowledged as a Master, so perhaps we could learn from that.