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

foot-->mouth

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Okay. Was reading a few comments about this that said that fiction writers (as in not FF) look at this differently, and I suppose they do. But as I am not one of them, I can give two POVs that come to mind:

Fanfic is a bizarre experimental art form, in a way. We don't have to cater to an editor, or worry about being paid for our work, so sometimes we can afford to ponder technicalities to the point of wank. Case in point, there.

1. Because I treat fanfic as experimentation, I have tried all the viewpoints I can get. What I think I have to be conscious of is when I am writing in third person limited and when I'm writing in omniscient and simply focusing on one character. When the story is about Methos and the POV is limited, he's Methos, and he never bothers to note everyday stuff like the way that Duncan's hair falls. But he does tend to notice movement a great deal, because I imagine that's what he'd be attuned to.

2. When I slip to the omniscient, I like to document everything, mostly because there's probably more than three people in on the plot at the moment. I try not to get too introspective to people's feelings, et all. But do a lot of outward observances of all the characters. To get into individual thoughts and feelings of each character all in one scene is, for me, a great way to muck up the flow of the story. If the main character I am choosing to focus on at this point in time is, oh say Joe, he's going to be calling Methos as such, even if it's not aloud to the room. Likewise, to augment the fact that I'm choosing to loosely filter everything through Joe's eyes, I'll call him Joe, though many people would call him Dawson.

What the heck was I saying? Awwww...shoot me.

Is it bad to say that I think of myself as nothing? I never say "I " in my thoughts, nor do I talk to myself as in "amanda, you're psycho." I simply act. The only time I think "I" is when I'm writing. Ow. The meta made my head hurt.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

I'm still embarrassingly vague on distinguishing 3rd person from omniscient; I mean, yeah, in theory I know the difference, but it's sure not one of those things I consciously attend to when I'm reading or writing. Your two examples really help clarify this for me, and I'll hold them in mind for future reference (if I ever again in my life manage to write something that's not freakin' *first person yet again* aarrrggghhh).

And totally OT, but I was so revved to find you on LJ! We've gone in different directions fannishly, but I still love your HL stories, and every time someone starts ranting about second person and how they hate it and it doesn't work for long stories and blahdity blah, I just point them to "Heat Goes to Cold." And then I sneer at them.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

3rd person and omnisicient are different, but because they're two different qualities of point of view.

Person is whether the writer is writing as a character (first person), as if the audience is the character (second person), or outside of the characters (third person).

Omnisicient is a third person where the author reveals information with no concern as to whether or not any particular character could know it. Third person limited means the author is focused on one character's perspective (or at least one character at a time.) There's another word to modify whether the author knows thoughts inside people's head, but I forget what it is.

POV

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Although this is a little late in the game, I dug out the textbook I use for juniors and looked up these two.

Omniscient is definitely what it means: "the narrator knows everything that's going on in the story, but is outside the story, a godlike observer who can tell what all the characters are thinking/feeling."

3rd POV Limited makes me think of something: "the narrator is outside the story, like an omniscient one, but tells the story from the vantage point of one character only. The narrator goes where this character goes and reveals this characters' thoughts."

What that SHOULD mean, I guess, is that true 3rd person limited would stick with ONE character throughout the story, like, oh, say, Harry Potter. But when I write, and I've seen others do this to, they switch from one character to another in the story using different scenes to make transitions. That would mean that one is still using the tools of 3rd person limited, but is not sticking to the tenets of it.

I seem to recall that Stephen King does this all the time. I learned it from Mercedes Lackey and never thought to question it. Bizarro.

This book has interesting insights about internal and external characterization that pertain to this thread much better than the above, but I'm tired.