Movies. If there’s one thing we know about them, it’s that they aren’t books. Probably. They’re much more likely to have a bwaaaaaah sound effect, that’s for sure. And yet, new authors often write their novels as if they were writing a film script, abandoning the strongest tools at a novelist’s disposal. We call that film POV, and it needs to stop! Fortunately, today’s episode is about how to fix it.

Show Notes

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Phoebe. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You are listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle and Bunny.

[intro music]

Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant podcast. I’m Chris, and with me is—

Bunny: Bunny.

Chris: And—

Oren: Oren.

Chris: Here’s the thing. I think if we wanna attract listeners, we need to make this podcast more cinematic.

Oren: *mimics dramatic THX-esque bwah sound*

Bunny: Ooh. I like movies.

Chris: Yeah. Movies are always better, aren’t they? The problem is this rambling voiceover. Voiceover is always tacky. It’s not working. So we need to make sure that we are only engaging in, like, third person, you know? So instead of saying I or we, we now have to name our names.

Oren: Oren would like to suggest that we also add more *bwah* sounds, because that’s very cinematic. That was in the trailer for Inception, which we can all agree is the most cinematic movie.

Bunny: No, Oren, which they all can agree is the most cinematic.

Chris: Chris thinks sound effects are just key.

Bunny: Yeah. Bunny wants to know what our background music we should have for this. Probably “The Princess Who Saved Herself,” but Bunny’s not entirely sure that the vocals would align so perfectly with her own

Oren: Oren’s just hoping that this is gonna be royalty free, like public domain sound effects and music, ’cause we’re not running a profit on this podcast.

Bunny: The three of them stood in an elevator.

Chris: Pretty sure we should get an epic version of “The Princess Who Saved Herself.”

Bunny: Ooh, Bunny likes that idea.

Chris: Epic orchestral version.

Bunny: It will have some *bwahs*. Don’t worry, Oren.

Chris: We’re talking about how to fix film POV. We actually mentioned film POV several weeks ago. Basically, it’s what happens when you don’t have a viewpoint character. You might think, okay, well if you don’t have a viewpoint character, that means it’s an omniscient narrator, right?

No. So when you don’t have a viewpoint character, but also can’t really say that there’s an omniscient narrator either because an omniscient narrator, one, should have a little personality, but will also be definitely not the characters. Citing facts the characters don’t know. Whereas with film POV, any narration there is, is usually so bland you cannot tell where it is coming from. The omniscient narrator, the all-knowing narrator still knows what characters are thinking and can actually say what they’re thinking or what they’re feeling, give little background details on them, all of those things. But in film POV, generally, all of that is missing.

And what we’ve got is just the most neutral narration possible that’s like, objective, and that never goes into anything that the characters are thinking and feeling. It’s basically replicating a camera.

Oren: And if you’re wondering why you haven’t encountered this more often, it’s because this is genuinely not something that makes it to publication very often in my experience. Most novels that I read, whatever their other problems, have at least managed to develop a more consistent viewpoint, whereas this is a problem that tends to affect newer manuscripts by less experienced authors.

Chris: Generally somebody who just doesn’t yet know the conventions and may not realize that they need to cultivate their viewpoint. The other thing that can happen, and this is if you see it in a published work, this is almost certainly what’s happening. You can have it happen for just, like, a scene. If the writer doesn’t know what to do with their viewpoint character, the viewpoint character can kind of disappear unintentionally.

Oren: That was in a scene of Project Hail Mary, which, otherwise a book that we like quite a lot and generally has a pretty good viewpoint. But there’s like one scene where the main character’s just not there, and for some reason the author really wanted to show us the scene. Whose viewpoint is this scene from? The answer is no one.

Bunny: Wasn’t that also an issue in the opening chapter of, I think it was Revenger, that you did a critique post on recently? Where the character’s just kind of floating around blandly, observing things without any input?

Chris: Yeah, Revenger basically had much of that problem where there was a viewpoint character and sometimes you could tell she was there.

But other times she would disappear and there was definitely not enough internalization, which we’ll get into, which is that narration that has their thoughts and feelings and kind of communicates what’s going on inside the character. And that is the big thing that novels can do, that film cannot do.

You know, obviously film has its advantages, it has its visuals and its sound, and those things are great, but there are lots of things that you can do in a novel that do not translate to film well. Partly because they are so internal is one reason that that can happen.

Bunny: Almost like these different mediums have different strengths specific to them.

Oren: And at least with some of the authors that I’ve worked with who have this problem, they legitimately were inspired by film and tv.

That’s like their main touchstone for how stories are told, and that’s not all bad. There are a lot of things that TV and film writers tend to be better at than novelists. There are things you can learn there, but if you don’t understand the differences in medium, you are gonna be in for a bad time.

Chris: Besides film POV, there’s the people who imagine the scene as a film and visual and then try to write description that replicates that and it’s like, no, a picture really is worth a thousand words. You don’t have a thousand words to describe this visual thing. You gotta convey meaning, you gotta focus on meaning when you’re doing things in narration, not on spectacle, which is what a film does.

Bunny: More on layout, I think I’ve seen people try to get too specific with where things in a room are, we’ve talked about this on previous podcasts, but talking about the north and south wall and like there’s this over the fireplace and the fireplace is on the left and there’s a rug in front of it, and adjacent to that is a chair and it faces another chair, and in the middle there’s a table and then there’s a couch with its back to the fireplace.

Chris: [laughs] Yeah.

Bunny: That is all things that you would see if you were looking at this visually, but you know, we’re using our mental image. Keeping all of that in your mind at once when you’re not simply viewing it. That’s a lot.

Chris: And even though novels are not as good at conveying visual information, as you know, visuals, otherwise, actually it’s much easier to convey information in a novel. But if you don’t have a POV, that can actually become much harder because it encourages you to just not include exposition.

Because a lot of times exposition does come from the narrator, whether you have a viewpoint character who is thinking through things or an omniscient personality that is proactively informing readers about world tidbits or anything else that they should know. And so if you think of your narration as just being a camera, there’s also a good chance that you will leave out really important information that would be much harder to convey in the film.

And also you might end up with exposition dialogue, which is a lot of times what films and shows do because they don’t have the option of narration. And so then characters have these really awkward lines that are designed to be exposition that don’t quite feel natural.

Oren: This is an interesting example of a different way this problem can manifest.

Sometimes the author realizes they need exposition, but because the story is in no one’s perspective, when they add the exposition as narration, it’s more boring than it needs to be. You don’t know who is thinking this, where is this information coming from? And so there’s nothing in there to make it feel like anything other than an info dump.

And readers tend to react negatively to information that they feel is only there because they need to know it. As opposed to, because it serves some other purpose or tells ’em something about the characters or whatever.

Chris: To be clear, story relevance is another purpose it can have that does make it better, right?

Like if it’s, if you have planned narration that serves no purpose in the story, that is gonna be perceived even worse. But the more purposes it serves, including characterization, including being relevant to what’s happening in the story, the better when it comes to exposition. And the other thing is that exposition can also convey a lot of emotional information.

It can actually make emotions more compelling if you choose the right details. When you have no exposition, which can happen as a result of film, POV or too little exposition, people have no idea of what’s happening, and all of the emotions are likely to fall flat.

Oren: I’ve also noticed an interesting phenomenon with film POV, where the lack of emotion makes it harder to tell what’s going on.

Like, it’s easier to get confused. Like if you have two characters and you figured out that there are two characters in this scene, and then there’s like suddenly a description of someone getting punched and you’re like, what is going on? In a more traditional narration, you would have the emotions that cause this punch.

Readers would have some understanding that maybe violence is a possibility, so it wouldn’t take them by surprise. Or if it is a completely surprising punch that comes out of nowhere, that would also be a reaction the character would have. And so the readers wouldn’t end up feeling like they missed something.

So that’s an interesting problem with this style of narration that I wouldn’t have guessed until I started seeing it.

Chris: So, yeah, the first step to fixing this is just deciding what viewpoint you are going to do. In some cases, it might be possible that moving to an omniscient narrator is simplest, but I would only use that as a last resort because it is just harder to pull off a good omniscient narration.

You have to again, set the expectation and reinforce it that this narrator is not one of the characters. And so you need a personality that is definitely not coming from the characters. And then every time a character thinks something or feels something, you need to mark that like you would dialogue, like whose thoughts it is and that these are thoughts from which character.

It’s kind of fussy and it entails a lot of management. So it’s definitely better if the writer has a strong narrator personality and with these kinds of film POV narration, generally that’s not true. It’s only a last resort if you cannot find another character that fits the information you wanna convey and you don’t wanna make revisions.

Whenever you have a character narrating the story, right, ’cause it’s either a narrator outside the story and an all knowing omniscient narrator, or it’s one of your characters who is basically narrating. When that happens, your narration is limited. It can only convey what that character knows, and that’s the biggest restriction.

And so if you look at your narration and you don’t have one character who, for instance, is in every scene to observe all events, and you’re conveying little world facts that character would know or you’re describing things that that character can’t see, that all has to change in order for that character to be the viewpoint character.

Oren: And that’s actually just a very useful limit for new authors to have. With great power comes great responsibility, and often new writers don’t yet have the restraint to not just go wherever if they have a narrative premise that allows that. So having a limited premise is a good way to make it less likely that your story will wander off on some tangent that the protagonist isn’t related to.

Chris: If you know who your main character is, which hopefully you would—character that’s more important than the other characters, that you really like them, they’re the one who is solving most of the problems, they’re in most of the scenes, that’s clearly your main character. Let’s say you have a few scenes that they’re not in, like, I would just look and see, do you need those scenes or does the rest of the story stay intact? If you cut them out, maybe the character can learn that information later. Limiting things to what that character knows and perceives is a good way to make things a little bit more relevant. There’s a good chance that that stuff that that character does not know is also just less important, and maybe readers didn’t need to hear that.

If you do decide, okay, no, I have to keep these scenes, I can’t go without them, but my main character’s not there, you can choose another viewpoint character—

Bunny: Or an interlude, baby.

Oren: Oh, no.

Chris: No! If you are even tempted to call your scene an interlude, cut it. Just cut it. Don’t look back.

Oren: Nothing good ever happens in an interlude.

Chris: That has yet to have been proven wrong in any case. I mean, normally wouldn’t go for such absolutist statements because there’s always an exception. But I have yet to see anything good happen in an interlude.

But if you’re gonna do that, if you’re gonna add a second viewpoint character, again, try to add as few as possible. The character that’s in all of the other scenes that your main character isn’t in. And you also, for viewpoint characters, you want somebody who is supposed to be sympathetic and feel familiar that you want the audience to like.

You do not want a character that is supposed to be mysterious or threatening to be your viewpoint character.

Oren: The mysterious one is a thing that a lot of authors struggle to give up. They want their main character to be a mysterious figure, but you just probably can’t do that.

Chris: Not gonna work out. It’s just gonna be frustrating and feel kind of contrived. People will see that you, the author, are arbitrarily withholding information they should have when they’re in that character’s viewpoint and it’s just not very pleasant.

Oren: It’s like, I need to know more about this character so that I can evaluate them and tell what’s going on.

And if I don’t know enough to do that, then it’s really hard to get attached to this character. Like, it might seem cool to the author, but to most readers it’s not gonna work out.

Chris: Once you’ve got your viewpoint character, you’ve chosen who they are, and hopefully that’s the easy choice, the most important thing that you need for internalization is why is your character doing what they’re doing?

I think that’s like number one. So if your character takes an action, is there thoughts or context to explain why they are taking that action so people understand, why are you picking up the phone? Who are you gonna call? Why did you attack that person? Did they make you angry? Do you have a plan? What is your plan?

Bunny: I think you’ll find, if I were to foreshadow a coming episode, all characters are motivated by sex or fear of death.

Oren: Oh, no, get outta here, Blake Snyder.

Chris: Put sex and fear of death in your narration, every time a character does something.

Oren: It’s just those words, you don’t have to explain further.

Bunny: Maria called her boyfriend, parentheses, sex. Maria paid her bills, parentheses, sex. Maria went to the store, parentheses, death.

Oren: It’s all working out, you know, we’re hacking the matrix, right here.

Chris: So after, why is your character doing what they’re doing, right? What is their motivation? What logic are they following that they’ve decided to take this action? The next most important thing is just, what are they feeling?

How are they emotionally reacting to the things that they are perceiving in the scene? Right, and that can offer a lot of context, like the punch that Oren was talking about earlier. Which person are they rooting for in that situation? They watch one person get punched. Are they like, oh no, that person got punched, or are they like, oh yeah, that person deserved getting punched.

Oren: Are they the one who is doing the punching? Do they feel angry? Like, I wanna punch that guy. All very important things.

Chris: So just understanding how they emotionally react. A lot of times when I get into how to bring out emotions, I discourage people from stating feelings, like sadness, instead, showing that they’re sad with the narration.

But frankly, at this level, it’s way better to just state, “Hey, he felt sad,” you know, “she felt sad,” or “they felt sad” than it is to just not have any emotion at all. You can always refine it later, but if you want, you can just put, “They felt sad. That made them angry.”

Bunny: Parentheses, sex.

Oren: I’m a firm believer in the Futurama bit that you can’t just have your characters say what they feel, because that makes me feel angry.

But you haven’t seen what it’s like when you have nothing. So sometimes that’s a better alternative.

Chris: That is the thing, again, about film. They don’t have internal narration, and so a lot of times they try to get their characters to do deep emotional conversations that they might not normally have or characters to state things like, this is how I feel, when they would normally talk about their feelings. So be glad that you are not writing a script or making a film because you don’t have to do that. You could just directly describe what they’re feeling.

Bunny: On the other hand, you do not have access to charming actors, so make sure your dialogue is good.

Chris: Once you get more used to it, then you can do stuff like, oh, my stomach twisted, or my heart started faster.

Oren: You can start going through like, the emotional body language thesaurus and be like, okay, which sensations have I not used yet?

Bunny: That exists. That’s a real thing. I think it’s called The Emotional Thesaurus. I have it.

Chris: And you have, again, thoughts too, like, “oh geez,” or “What the hell?”

Oren: Gee willikers, Batman!

Bunny: By Jove!

Chris: And once you have their motivation, so we understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and their thought process and what they’re feeling, if you don’t have any exposition and you have readers who don’t understand how the world works. Information management takes a lot of time to learn. It’s super advanced, it’s super complicated.

It’s just that if you have been doing film POV, there’s a good chance that there is some information that readers need to know that you’re missing. Things like when you introduce a character, who is that? Is that your viewpoint character’s girlfriend or their child? Really basic things like that.

Oren: Father’s brother’s cousin’s former roommate.

Chris: And just have a very simple two-word explanation of what new people and places are. Don’t go overboard, just a little bit. When you’re narrating from somebody’s viewpoint, you describe things when they look at that thing.

Somebody walks into the room, the character’s busy at work, they look up. When they look up, that’s when you describe the person. I bet it would be a huge pain to go through your manuscript and try to modify your description to reflect, you know, where is your viewpoint character sitting? What angle are they looking at things?

When do they see things? When they walk in a new area, that’s the time to actually set the scene and describe their environment. It just takes practice.

Oren: And that’s when you learn how to describe things that are most prominent first. If they walk into a room and there are like several people and one of them has a gun, you’re almost certainly gonna notice one with the gun first.

You might do something tricky if you’re feeling advanced, you might do something that’s deliberately disorienting where the main character missed or perhaps subconsciously ignored this obvious thing, and then it’s very jarring when they see it. But that’s like an advanced technique. In general, you’re gonna start with the most obvious things and work your way down.

Bunny: One really obvious thing taken from cinema that I’ve seen in a description before is a character panning up another character’s body in the description. Like, “I looked at her shoes and then her knees, and then her skirt, and then her belt, and then her top, and then finally her face.” I know where you’re coming from, like you’re coming from a literal panning shot up someone’s body.

But in my experience, it’s a very unusual circumstance where you enter a room and there’s a person there, and you don’t just take them in in a glance, like you might scan them later, but if you’re starting at their shoes and then whatever hat they’re wearing is supposed to be a surprise…

Chris: If you’re crawling on the floor and they walk in the room, then I will accept that you see their shoes first, and then you slowly pan up.

Oren: We’ve solved it. We’ve cracked the case.

Bunny: Yes. Okay. I can accept that. But in most cases you’ll notice the surprising thing about them first. Or just take them in. You know, “I scanned up her body, her shoes were—”

Oren: Doc Martens.

Bunny: Yes, Doc Martens, ’cause she’s edgy, she’s not like the preps and she’s wearing fishnet stockings. “And I scanned up and the baggy black sweater and oh my God, she’s got, you know, a hat shaped like a giant banana.”

Oren: Whoa.

Bunny: I think I would notice that first.

Oren: This is one of those things where if you imagine what this would actually look like of someone staring at a new person’s feet and then slowly inching their eyes up, that would be bizarre. That’s like, maybe you gotta call human resources at that point.

Chris: Again, for those scenes, let’s say we don’t have a huge manuscript-wide film POV issue. We just have a few scenes where we don’t know what to do with our character. Maybe we have made the mistake of using the Watsonian POV, who is always watching another character do important things.

That’s where this happens for just temporary for a scene, is when you have other people who are just the most important in the scene. For instance, you have a child character where you have some starting scenes where the adults do something important before the child goes off on their own. Or you have, you know, somebody who’s an employee who’s watching their boss make decisions, or you have some scenes where just for that scene, other people are the decision makers.

Hopefully that is not for the whole story.

Oren: We hates it, Precious.

Bunny: And if you wanna hear more about this, check out our episode on a sidekick protagonist. Thank you very much.

Chris: You just need your viewpoint character to not completely vanish from the story when they are basically around, just to watch a few other characters do important things for that one scene.

If this is a conversation, can they just interrupt to ask questions? Or maybe this is a scenario where they’re eavesdropping and they have to try not to get caught and we can kind of break up the dialogue with them. Like, oh no, I dropped a thing and that made a noise. They can emotionally react to what’s being said.

They can also, let’s say, notice something nobody else notices. Oh, these people are really busy doing something, but there’s a monster sneaking up in the background.

Oren: They could notice that news program that’s always on in the background that’s giving exposition that they need to know about.

Chris: Yeah, that would be a pretty funny thing to see in a written work. Obviously inspired by movies.

Or contribute important points or just think about the implications of what they learn, if they see something they can think about what it means, that kind of thing, personally for them, hopefully. So again, we don’t end up with like, a dry narrator voice that doesn’t seem to be anchored in the character.

It’s best to just look for your things for your viewpoint character to do. If that is constantly a problem, then it sounds like you might need a larger change. Like maybe you need to take out a character that is constantly doing things that your viewpoint character should be doing, for instance.

Oren: You might have the wrong viewpoint character. That happens sometimes.

All right, well, now that we’ve told you to go change your viewpoint character, no context, just go change it, I think we can go ahead and call this episode to a close.

Chris: And if you enjoyed hearing this viewpoint, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants.

Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons.

First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.

[outro music]

Chris: This has been the Mythcreant podcast. Opening, closing theme, “The Princess Who Saved Herself” by Jonathan Colton.

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