|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Good morning all!
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Welcome to our Tuesday
Professional Connection Forum.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I hope you all had a great
Labor Day weekend, those of you down here in the US anyway.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And I hope you're all counting
up your rejection slips for my 'Most Persistent Writer' crown.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I wanted to talk about
narrative voice because it is the voice I see most often in novice work,
and a LOT
of writers want to write personal narratives or memoir.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And narrative voice is one of
the most important aspects of this type of writing.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It's easy, when you're
starting out, to feel that writing in narrative voice -- that is, you the
author are telling the story -- is utterly natural. Like falling off a log.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You are you. No
characterization needed, just tell the story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Well, sometimes that is true,
but more often it is not true.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Not everyone has a strong and
compelling narrative voice, any more than the average person can sing good
opera with no voice lessons.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Notice I said GOOD opera!
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Most novices need some voice
lessons where it comes to narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
What you want to avoid is a
flat monotone...the author simply describes events, say those of a family
reunion, as they happen.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Unless the reader is a member
of that family, that's about as compelling as watching a casual friend's
home videos.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Woohoo the kids splash in the
pool again. How...uh...exciting.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Reality gives you an immediate
edge with readers.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Real stories matter more than
made up stories to most people.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
BUT...real stories told in a
boring manner are generally boring.
|
|
klmiller
|
So, how do we avoid falling into
the boring narrative trap?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
What makes your account of
that wind and water...the same scene that reader saw a thousand times on
the TV
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
powerful, is that sense that
YOU were THERE.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But you were there, right? You
told the readers that right up front. So how difficult can this be?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Plenty difficult.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You have to make yourself into
a real person for the readers, a character that seems just as real as the
neighbor sitting at the kitchen table.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That 'reality' makes your
narrative much more real than something on the TV screen.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Just as your sister's or your
best friend's narrow escape from the flood waters is much more compelling
than a TV pan of those same flood waters.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you read the really strong
narrative writers, you'll find you get a strong sense of the person.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And that is what occasionally is
a natural way of writing, but more often is something you learn how to do
intentionally.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You do that by engaging your readers,
by revealing yourself and your own reactions to the situation you're
describing
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
rather than merely describing
the scene, doing a verbal version of what a camera does.
|
|
charie'
|
If it's your sister's story, do
you, as narrator, have to be "present" in the story?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're telling your
sister's story and you, the narrator are never present, you can do this in
two ways.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You can do it in third person,
or first person.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In third person, it will read
more like fiction and you use all the techniques of strong fictional
writing....but you're not using a first person narrative voice, you're
using a third person narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You are not speaking directly
to the readers as the author.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But there, because you are
less 'present' in the story, you have to concentrate on revealing that
sister's character and her emotions. It's a hard form to write well, by the
way. You see it in biographies a lot, but many biographies
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
get read for informational
reasons rather than because of compelling writing and they can be rather,
well, flat.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Your other option is for you
to flat out tell the story to the reader.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Bailey White mostly uses this
form. You always hear Bailey White telling you about her family, her
neighbors, or talking about her class.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
She never effaces herself from
the story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Patrick McManus does the same
thing, using a lot more humor. Alice Walker does, too.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But without the humor.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Here, you really ARE a
character on this stage and you are speaking directly to the readers.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And you have a whole spectrum
of what I like to call 'author intervention' in between the author speaking
clearly and directly to the reader, and the author effacing his/herself from
the story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
There is, by the way, an
advantage to being a strong, clear voice in your story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That reminds the reader this
is you telling us about your experience. If you write a memoir in exactly
the same form you write fiction, readers can forget it's the truth and you
lose that edge of 'this is real!'.
|
|
sss1208
|
please give example of first and
third like I was told by Len that he dragged raced down miami streets.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Here's an example of a strong
narrator voice telling Len's story:
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Now Len told me that he drag
raced down Main every night and he told me he won every heat, too. But
knowing Len, who can't get up over the speed limit without white-knuckling
the wheel, I kind of doubt it.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Still, if he was willing to
buy my coffee at Starbuck's just so he could tell me about drag racing,
okay, I'm willing to listen.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Here, you have a LOT of narrator presense
in this story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Even if you subdue that
narrator a bit, you can still give readers a sense of presence.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Len said he used to drag race
on the Miami streets. The cops never bothered, he told me. He said it was
because he belonged to the Kings, the toughest gang in that part of town.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You have much less of a
narrative presence here. Here's one with NO narrator presence.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Len claimed he used to drag
race on Miami streets.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In your first example, the
narrator is probably the principal interest to the readers. It is that
person's asides, comments, and interpretation that will give that narrative
it's strength.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In the second example, the
events of the narrative will carry more weight, but the narrator's interpretation
are still a major factor.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In the third example, your
events alone are going to carry the weight of the narrative. That means
they have to appeal strongly enough to the readers to compell them.
|
|
sandyhoja
|
That was first person right? I'm
getting confused.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Those are all three examples
of narrative form, sandy. If the author uses 'I' in the narrative, it's
first person narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If the author simply describes
events and leaves out the 'I', it's third person narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But in both cases, the author
is telling the story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That's a contrast to limited
third where the story is told through the perspective of the Point of View
character.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
When you write memoir --
stories drawn from your life, you really do want to make your presence
strong in that piece.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You're writing about YOUR
life, so we have to care about YOU as a person. Or it's boring.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You use the same techniques
you use in fiction to develop a strong first person character.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Only you're creating yourself
for the readers.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Remember...it's not YOU that
the readers meet when they read your narrative. It's the you that you
create ON THE PAGE.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It's relatively rare for a
writer to naturally express his/her personality clearly and strongly in
their writing right off the bat.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Most use a very nice,
grammatically correct, and rather flat narrative form.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You need to learn to write
like you talk. Or in many cases, to write better than you talk. :-)
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I suspect a good public
speaking class wouldn't be a bad idea if you want to write strong personal
narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It'll help you express
yourself in a strong, personal voice and that will translate over to the
page.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I hadn't actually put public
speaker together with personal narrative until my cousin got into it. He
teaches public speaking classes and I realized that he's teaching people to
use a strong personal voice. Voila!
|
|
charie'
|
I imagine that reading your work
out loud would help develop the confident personality voice needed.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It should show you where you
are lacking, that's for sure, Charie. If you read your work aloud and your
audience is restless and distracted, you need more!
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You see the strongest examples
of personal narrative voice in oral storytellers. Now they use inflection
and gestures, too, which are darn hard to pull off on the page, but they
use a strong voice that engages readers.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Try saying your narrative to
imaginary friends and then write down what you actually say.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Write that piece first, then
put it aside and don't peek.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Now tell a friend, real or
imaginary, that same tale. Tape record it so you can transcribe it
afterward.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Now transcribe it and compare
it to your original.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
See how different it is.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Try typing /ask first,
mystery.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That way the question ends up
in the transcript. :-)
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Mysterwriter asked which is
more common in fiction...first or third person.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I don't know that there's an
overall distinction, Mystery.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
One tends to be more common
than the other in some genres.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Generally, first person is a
more difficult voice to write well for a novice writer.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
For the same reason that good,
strong personal narrative is difficulit.
|
|
mysterywriter
|
What is the most common in mysteries?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Generally, it makes no
difference. In Hard Boiled, they do tend to be more first person with that
Phillip Marlow/Sam Spade noir voice.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But it's not a hard and fast
rule.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
When you're using narrative
voice, you the author is telling the story, and just as you can ruin a joke
by telling it badly, you can ruin a story, real or otherwise, by telling it
badly.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I have a few students who do a
strong narrative voice naturally. They plaster themselves all over the
page. :-) Those people I really nudge hard into personal narrative.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
They have an edge from the
start.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
REaders need a sense of your reaction,
your feelings, your presence, whether you use a first person narrative
voice or whether you tell it in third person.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you are invisible, you are
reducing the strength of your piece by about half.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Now if the reader is merely
interested in the information you provide in that narrative -- it's the
biography of a famous person -- you can get away with that.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're trying to entertain
and engage readers with stories from your childhood, you really can't get
away with that.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Whenever I pick up one of my
favorite narrative authors, I want to see how he or she has reacted to the
situations that writer is portraying in the stories.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It's not the action that
particularly matters to me, it's this character, whom I have come to love,
and his/her exploits that I'm following.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If that character (the author)
was absent, the situations themselves wouldn't interest me so much.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But the author is a real
person -- not because he/she actually exists somewhere on this plant, but
because I feel that I know this person. I know him or her like a friend, I
have a strong sense of who this character is.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That's what you want to strive
for. Essentially revealing yourself as a person to your readers.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It's exactly the same thing
you do when you write a story in first person. Only there, you make up the
character.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
So, essentially, you're going
to do more than simply recite actions one after the other.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You're going to give the
readers a sense of how YOU feel about what is going on through your word
choices, perhaps asides directly to the reader, your 'tone'.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I had a student who has been
sending me narratives about his experiences in WWII. They could be very compelling,
but they are very flat at the moment. We get no sense of this man in the
situation, even though he was there.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
So they are merely a 'laundry
list' of events and you can find lots of dry, factual books about various
WWII battles out there.
|
|
charie'
|
Are the little
asides/comments/digressions what makes it personal? Can there be too many idiosyncracies?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Well sure, Charie. Everything
is a balance. If you, the narrator overwhelm the story you're trying to
tell with your asides and commentaries, this is too much.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Just as in any story, you want
forward momentum, you want the story to play out in the readers' mind's eye
without interruption.
|
|
geezer
|
So in third person I would say
something like " It was a real nail biter, but Charlie seemed to take
it into stride..."
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
This is a strong personal
presence in this piece. It is YOUR interpretation that this situation was a
nail biter and you are interpreting Charlie's reaction.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
YOu are ADDING to the actual
actions.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
The 'dry' version might be a description
of Charlie as he stepped up to the plate, tapped the bat twice and set up
for the pitch.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
We see his actions, but have
no interpretation, no sense of what you, the narrator, saw and thought as
you watched.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Again, if those events alone
are strong enough to compell the reader, you don't need the personal
addition.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're describing the last
moments of the Hindenburg, who needs personal interpretion? The historical
event alone may interest readers just fine.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
But if you're writing about
your first summer at camp, you'd sure better include a lot of sense of you
in that piece.
|
|
geezer
|
And in third I can still get
inside his head?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In nonfiction, that's more
problematical, geezer, since you don't know what Charlie is thinking unless
he tells you, right?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're doing fiction in
narrative form then yeah, you can.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
You made him up, you know what
he's thinking.
|
|
janecj333
|
It's very disappointing, on the
contrary, when a character is moved about and behaves as if the author were
thoughtless in his writing.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
In what way, Jane? I'm not
sure I understand what you're saying.
|
|
mysterywriter
|
In fiction. Is the POV character
like the narrative voice?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're using a first person
character, mystery, then that character, yes, is telling the story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
If you're writing mystery,
you're better off to use a limited third person POV rather than the
narrative third so that your readers are more directly engaged with the
story.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
That 'filters' everything
through the POV character's senses.
|
|
geezer
|
How about if you have
interviewed him? Then you can both get into his head and inject your own
thoughts into the story?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Yes, you can. I have a novel
course student who is going that...telling the stories of various elderly
folk from his town. He is blending his conversations with them with his
internal commentary and doing a nice job with it.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And it did NOT come easily to
him. This is a learnable skill, just like any other prose skill.
|
|
janecj333
|
It's as if the narrative voice
has become a language foreign to what the reader really knows.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Well, that would be a badly
written narrative, if the narrator is interpreting the action in a way that
isn't consistent with what the reader perceives on the page.
|
|
janecj333
|
I'm reading a sf book based on a
movie. The characters do and say things, and have personal quirks, that do
not fit with what I have come to expect from that character.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Exactly.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And, in case you didn't know, novelizations
of movies are handed out as a plum, generally to a relative of the producer,or
director and are generally written by novice writers
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
with no skills and good
connections. They pay VERY VERY well.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
And nobody cares about the
quality of the writing. I tend to avoid them unless I know the writer is a
good one.
|
|
geezer
|
Would you perhaps know a story I
can study that has both methods?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Which both methods, geeze?
|
|
mysterywriter
|
Can you give us an example of
limited third person POV?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Mystery, that's a whole forum
on its own. And we're out of time today. I"ll cover it at the next
Tuesday Forum okay?
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
We'll talk about limited
third. It's a hard form to master, but it can take you straight to the top
of the slush pile.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
It sure did so for me. :-)
|
|
geezer
|
Getting inside the MC's thoughts
and inject mine as well
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Check your library for one of
Bailey White's story collections. I don't have one in front of me --
they're in an upstairs bookcase, but you'll probably find examples there.
|
|
sss1208
|
Thanks again Mary for a great
forum
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Thank you all for coming!
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
I'll post the transcripts in
the usual place.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Writing Craft, Forum
Transcripts.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Remember to send me your count
of all your rejection slips between January 1 and September 1.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
See if you can win the title
of Most Persistent Writer.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
Starting this year, I'm going
to make this an annual award. Complete with a prize.
|
|
Mary Rosenblum
|
See you all on the website !
|
