POV in the Corner

On one of the author loops I am on, there's been some discussion of how many points of view to use. And when deciding who to tell a story, or how . . . writers can agonize. First person? Third? Omniscient? What are editors buying for that line? Can I pull off multiple POVs? Can I pull off first person?

Sometimes the voice just comes to you. I know Cassie Hayes's voice was so tough and strong and funny, and so (in some ways) like my own . . . that I couldn't possibly imagine writing Spanish Disco any other way. It was my first completed novel. I know Ava's voice in The Roofer was tough, but oh-so-weary, and again, I couldn't imagine writing it any other way--or allowing any other POVs to intrude on these two women as they told their very different stories.

What I have found, as an editor, is one thing as far as POV goes. POV must be chosen--or it can choose you--but before you get 100 pages into your book, you must examine your POV and make sure you can get not just the little details but the big picture through your POV. There is a lot of discussion in the film world of the 5 1/2 minute tracking shot in Atonement. Put "tracking shot" and "Atonement" into Google and see how many placements come up--USA Today, CNN, Baltimore Sun . . . everyone's talking about it. Because that sweeping, near-impossible-to-film shot sets the big picture of unbelievable defeat, chaos, and the grim reality of war. While Atonement is the story of three people . . . the backdrop is important as well. The shot sets it up.

I think you must consider the same thing in your book. When I KNOW a writer is in trouble? The sudden addition of a POV. And when I ask a writer why? Why this shift in tone? Why this new POV? The answer is ALWAYS the same.

"I wrote myself into a corner."

And then they had to write themselves out.

And they were in so deep, and couldn't see a way with the POV they were committed to. They needed this clue dropped in, this bit of information, they NEEDED this viewpoint, to tell their story. And their POV met a corner and found them all painted in.

But I think, no . . . you must write yourself out using dialogue, foreshadowing, mood, something. Don't just add a POV to make your job easier. The POV must be organic and central. It's not a quick fix. That tracking shot in Atonement was no easy cinematic feat--it was an audacious bit of filmmaking. We writers face the same challenges.

Write yourself out of the corner. Organically.

Thoughts?

A View Up Close

My last post was about going wide--expanding the themes while digging deeper. This one is about going in tight, small, close, claustrophobic.

I first learned about writing close when observing my kids. I could tell you one of my son's marches to his own drummer, is unique in a wonderful, day-dreaming, yet math-intensive way, BUT . . . it's still hard to describe him. However, one time when we were in a rush to get to school--he was a preschooler, I think, and I may or may not have been pregnant again. With four kids, seems like I spent a lot of time pregnant. But I do remember rushing along, and one second he was behind me on the way to car from the front door. The next second he wasn't. When I turned around he was completely stopped, backpack on the ground. Then he seemed to walk like a drunken man. And when I, exasperated, went back to collect him, I realized he had stopped to watch a line of ants. He squatted down to them, putting his finger down, watching them march around him. THAT is my son. Stopping for ants or butterflies, rain, babies, cats, dogs, a cool cloud, the moon. Pretty much anything. And that, describing him, is going in for the tight shot. I tell you more about him with the ants, than I do with big sweeping generalizations.

In THE ROOFER, Ava collects the stuff of childhood--a parasol from a drink, smooth rocks, subway tokens--in a cigar box. She has to hide it because of the abuse in her life, and when her treasures are found, they are taken and destroyed. It's not a huge moment of abuse. It's a small microcosm of abuse--of the way in which a tiny soul is destroyed in a small moment.

In Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, Lily's small "huge" yet small moment is when she has sex and reveals her mastectomy to her lover. I don't pan back--in fact at no point prior has Lily talked about what the scars look like. I don't discuss how she feels about losing a breast. I don't even let the reader SEE it. It's the small moment when her new lover kisses the scar, licking along its edges. It's small and tight and intimate.

You can go wide . . . you can go really small. Each is for revealing what you want as writer.

Thoughts?

Peace,

E

The Shot

I often think of writing in film terms. I don't have outlines, I have story arcs. I don't do character sketches, I have "back stories." And this week, I learned a valuable lesson about going wide.

What do I mean? You know in movies where you have a camera shot--and it's narrow and focused Maybe it's the main character seeing a dead body. And then the shot goes wide or pulls back and becomes a more panaramic view--and now the viewer realizes the dead body is just one of thousands upon thousands in The Killing Fields.

I learned something this week in one of my scenes, thanks to one of my critique partners. I wrote a scene in which a preacher gave a sermon and sitting in the pews is my main character, a woman who has literally never known the meaning of compassion in a religious sense. The sermon is an OK one. My preacher is ninety-two, and he's basically conveying that God knows what you want to pray about before you ever pray it--but still likes the conversation. And in a small shot, a small sense, it's a perfectly servicable sermon.

But my CP told me that I missed the boat entirely. The scene failed because I missed the opportunity to go wide with it--to use the sermon to basically offer up a larger thematic scene in which the entire story arc of my character and the theme of redemption is explored. I missed a chance to, as he put it, "lay out the entire book" in the subtext of the sermon.

And I had one of those "A-ha" moments. Man, did I. I was keeping it small and missing the opportunity to go wide, to take the vision to a panoramic place in terms of themes.

Sometimes, it can seem like a scene is just moving the plot along--but embedded in each scene is the opportunity to go deeper, go wider, to explore the landscape of the novel as a whole.

My daughter can't believe novelists really think about the symbolism, the actual point of view or the "shot" or written camera angle, if you will, of what we write about. But to me, all this is digging deeper.

Thoughts?

Discovering Your Voice

People who know me in my real life find it rather remarkable that for the first thirty years of my life, I was petrified of confrontation, and rather quiet in a way. Once I discovered my voice, so to speak, well, I haven't shut up since. I found my courage and then I ran with it. Whether it was working as a mentor to unwed teen mothers in horrific neighborhoods where I feared drive-bys, or quitting a comfortable job so I could have my own editing business, or having four children despite the doctors telling me I shouldn't, I blossomed and found my voice and inner courage. I figured out who I was.

But what about voice in your book? I actually think it's a very similar process, in a way. To me, voice is the very character of your book. Just as in real life, my "voice" makes me uniquely me, makes my soul and essence what it is, your book's voice, or your character's voice, is the very essence of the manuscript or work. It's that which makes what you are writing completely yours.

To use the expression we've been tossing around here the last couple of days, without a strong voice, your book is just a heaping pile of plot. Voice is the color, the nuance, the thing that makes that pile of plot become something extraordinary. It's your vision.

I think of it in film terms because I am a huge movie buff and very visual. So think of your favorite movie directed by a director whose visual style is unmistakable. For me, I'll use DAYS OF HEAVEN. It was directed by Terence Malick and visually, it is one of the most famous and beautiful films ever made. It won the Academy Award that year for cinematography. Now, I could tell you the plot--a poor farmhand convinces his lover to marry their rich boss so when the boss dies, they can claim his fortune. Simple enough. But it's only when you see the sepia images of the fields and the sky and the farm, and the images of the 1916 Texas Panhandle that you can begin to grasp this monument of a movie. The stunning filmmaking is the voice of the director poured onto celluloid.

In my own work, The Roofer, the storyline is rather simple. A writer does a long, in-depth piece on the Irish mob, wanting to expose my heroine's father as a murderer. Instead, in America's mob-obsessed culture, a movie is made based on the piece . . . and the men in the book are embraced as heroes. But the entire story of the magazine piece, its fall-out, and the lives of the men portrayed are told in a first-person narrative of the daughter of the most infamous of the mobsters over the three nights and day of his wake and funeral. Simple enough. But what makes it MY story, my book, is Ava's voice. She has been brought up amongst these men, loves them all dearly, but has been through so much by her association with them, and thus she tells the story in an almost deadened voice as nothing surprises her anymore. Her voice, her longing for a normal life yet her inability to ever imagine that for herself, is what makes it "her" story, my story, my writing. I chose her to tell the story, not her brother, not the mobsters. Because I knew I could BE her and tell it.

What if you find you can't nail the voice? What if the voice isn't unique enough? I think it's a matter of choosing your POV wisely, and then knowing that person so deeply that you FEEL it. For me, and this is only me, I have to be in the pain, be in the joy, be in the angst. I guess, when all is said and done, I am a "Method" writer, much like some actors are "Method" actors who never drop character.

How about you? How do you find your voice?

Peace,
E

AND EVERYONE VISIT SARA HANTZ'S BLOG--link on the right--SHE IS LAUNCHING HER FABULOUS BOOK THIS WEEK!!!!!! PRIZES, GREAT DISCUSSIONS, AND LOTS OF FUN. CELEBRATE WITH OUR SARA!