Hmm.

[katallison]

OK, I'm still trying to write a Vividcon con report, with marked lack of success, but in the meantime -- I'm very curious about something I've come across a couple of times lately in LJ comments, and that is the issue of the name you use to refer to a character when you're writing a close-3rd-person-POV story about that character.

Ahem. Let me see if I can be clearer. Say I'm writing a story in 3rd person about Fraser, where he's the POV character. I always refer to him as "Fraser" because that's, y'know, what I call the guy. But I've seen a couple of people lately saying that in such situations the name used should be the one that the character himself uses when he thinks about himself, so the question is does he think of himself as Fraser, or Ben, or Benton, or whatever?

See, in my head this is kind of, sort of, related to the issue flambeau was talking about a while ago (here, to be specific), where you can't sneak in descriptive stuff by having the POV character musing about his own tautly muscled abs or emerald eyes or whatever, or on the other hand providing detailed descriptions of scenes he regularly moves through and is familiar with to the point of obliviousness. You have to maintain the authenticity/integrity of the character's own awareness. And one could argue, I guess, that using the name the character would use about himself inwardly is part of that authenticity-maintenance, except -- I dunno, I just have never thought of it that way. It feels strange to me, and I'd love to hear others' views.

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Much though I hate to disagree with you, I think there is no technique that would automatically make me bail out of a story the instant a writer used it: only whether or not a writer used a technique well or badly.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like I'm going to suddenly declare you anathema just because you disagree. :)

My issue with this one is that it is almost always used badly, and is almost always the sign of a poor writer. Not always, but close enough that it's a bail-out sign for me. I don't know if you're on Prospect-L at all, but I sometimes do something called "Bail-Out Theater" on there, where I go through the last 7 days of archived stories and read them until I have to bail out. The reasons for bail-out are many and varied, but many of the triggers are certain techniques - because good writers don't usually use those techniques.

Not that good writers can't, or absolutely don't, but they *usually* don't, so the technique becomes (to me) a marker of an author whose work I will almost certainly not enjoy.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

You know, I keep thinking I should join Prospect, not because I have any particular interest in Sentinel, but just 'cause cool stuff seems to go on there at times.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Occasionally, yeah. Sometimes it's nothing but stupidity day-in and day-out, though.

While searching for back issues of Bail-Out Theater, though, I found an interesting essay by <lj user="cesperanza" on queerness, and a bunch of other interesting discussions, which I will not reproduce here. It's kind of a crapshoot, though.