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mary rosenblum
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Hello all! I hope you had a
great weekend!
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me, Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer and today
we're talking about narrative distance. If you're new here, remember that
you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next
to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the ask a
question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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I thought I'd bring up the
term 'narrative distance' today and talk about what it means... because
some books on writing use it and don't really explain it well.
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mary rosenblum
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But before I get started, I
think we should give our own speckledorf a hand.
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mary rosenblum
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She has taken the great 'leap
off the cliff' and has actually become owner and editor of Wax Romantic,
the online Romance 'zine.
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mary rosenblum
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And is working on turning it
into a really hot, paying market!
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mary rosenblum
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So if you want a good, solid
short romance market out there, go to the website and subscribe. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Support your local fiction
markets!
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mary rosenblum
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www.waxromantic.com
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lucky
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Who'd have suspected? A romantic
troll.
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mary rosenblum
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I always thought trolls were
romantics at heart. :-)
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lucky
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But don't they have hearts of
stone??
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mary rosenblum
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Maybe gemstone...that's
romantic. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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The problem with writing is
that there is no standard dictionary of terms...
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mary rosenblum
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and so various writers,
including moi, use words that another writing instructor may not use or may
use differently...
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mary rosenblum
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so it is ALWAYS important to
define your terms.
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mary rosenblum
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Narrative distance is simply
the position of the reader in terms of the action.
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mary rosenblum
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If the reader IS the main
character, the narrative distance is in effect zero.
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mary rosenblum
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The reader is living the story
along with the MC...this is what Orson Scott Card calls 'deep penetration
third person'...it is a very limited third person point of view.
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mary rosenblum
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As the reader is moved farther
and farther from the action, to the point where the entire stage is visible
and we readers are clearly sitting in the seats in the theater...
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mary rosenblum
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we move to omniscient POV and
finally cinematic.
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mary rosenblum
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And of course, the farther
from that 'ground zero' of the POV characater's head we get, the more aware
we readers are that we are reading a story...
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mary rosenblum
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and not actually sharing the
adventure with the MC.
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me, Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer and today
we're talking about narrative distance. If you're new here, remember that
you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next
to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the ask a
question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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And various 'distances' are
appropriate for various types of fiction.
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mary rosenblum
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And they are used less
extensively in nonfiction...
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mary rosenblum
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either in anecdotes used to
illustrate a point or in personal narrative or creative nonfiction.
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mary rosenblum
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They way you identify your own
'narrative distance' in a story is simple.
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mary rosenblum
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Read a scene. Now ask yourself
where YOU need to be standing in order to see everything that scene
describes.
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mary rosenblum
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That gives you your narrative
distance.
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mary rosenblum
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If you must be sitting inside
the POV's head in order to see the scene the way it is described, then the
narrative distance is zero and you are using a very limited, deep POV,
either first or third.
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mary rosenblum
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If you find that you are
standing outside that character in order to see all the details described,
then you have incrased the narrative distance, and the reader is no longer
sharing headspace with the POV.
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gwanny
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Do you want to maintain the same
distance throughout?
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mary rosenblum
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Depends, gwanny.
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mary rosenblum
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Are you writing short story or
novel form? And what effect are you striving for?
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mary rosenblum
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Let's look at a short story,
an intense, character driven piece where we are inside the POV's head...
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mary rosenblum
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as that person struggles with
a very internal conflict and resolution.
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mary rosenblum
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There, if you step back
outside the POV...increase the narrative distance...it will probably jolt
the reader out of that intimate story.
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mary rosenblum
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But if you are writing a
novel, using several POV characters in all, you may vary the narrative distance
to suit each character.
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mary rosenblum
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When the MC is the POV, the
narrative distance may be zero. A scene featuring a dominating, not very
likeable POV may increase the narrative distance dramatically...
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mary rosenblum
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because the readers really
don't want to be too deeply inside this guy's head.
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geezer
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How does narrative distance
interplay with interior monologue
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mary rosenblum
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Interior monologue is either
A: a character's thoughts in third person or B: a first person POV where
the character seems to be thinking to himself/herself rather than speaking
to a listener.
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mary rosenblum
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You can use internal mono in
all forms of third person except cinematic...
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mary rosenblum
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with is simply a scene without
any internal POV at all...it is seen through a camera eye, in other words.
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mary rosenblum
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In zero narrative
distance...that very deep third person...all description is filtered
through the POV character's awareness, so actual description and internal
monologue almost blur together.
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mary rosenblum
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In omniscient POV...the
opposite end of the spectrum, where the reader is pushed way out into the
audience seats and watches the story on a stage...
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mary rosenblum
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we can perceive any
character's internal monologue as the author chooses to reveal it to us.
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mary rosenblum
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In really well done zero
narrative distance, it reads almost like a first person narrative. Except
for the pronouns. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Most of the time, we add just
a bit of narrative distance so that even as we preserve that sense of being
inside the POV character's head...
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mary rosenblum
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we can sneak in a few details
that the character really wouldn't notice without obviously violating the
POV.
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geezer
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Can you give an example of
internal dialogue with third person?
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mary rosenblum
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I assume you mean monologue,
geezer? Unless our POV character has a serious personality disorder?
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geezer
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Yep
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mary rosenblum
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Girard pushed the door open
cautiously and peered into the shed. Serena couldn't be in here. She was
scared to death of spiders. He eyed the thick,silvery webs festooning the
ceiling. That left the well. He swallowed.
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mary rosenblum
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Now I rarely use long
stretches of 'direct thought' because we don't think in dialogue form and
it sounds phony. The above monologue is paraphrased rather than represented
like a 'quote'.
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mary rosenblum
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But Girard thinks: Serena
can't be in here. She's scared to death of spiders. The leaves the well.
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mary rosenblum
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I have interspersed it with
his actions to keep the momentum going.
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geezer
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Is this wrong? He opened the
door./ There it is! / He walked down the steps
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mary rosenblum
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That works fine. And we often
think in coherent snatches like 'There it is'.
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mary rosenblum
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I wouldn't put in a long
soliloquy though. I have to say, I have moved away from using much direct
thought at all...
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mary rosenblum
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because many editors insist on
italicizing thought and I don't LIKE italicized thought.
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speckledorf
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Is it standard practice to
italicize thought? That is the one thing my instructor kept getting on to
me about. And I see it a lot in the books I'm reading lately?
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mary rosenblum
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It depends on the house. You
can do it either way, but every publishing house has its own 'style sheet'
and you will get stuck with it in many houses.
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mary rosenblum
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If I know the editor won't
insist on italic, I'll use direct thought. If they are stubborn about it, I
won't use it at all, I'll just paraphrase.
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t green
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what if your MC is thinking
about himself... using 3rd person... we still use the "I" and
"me" pronouns, right? And what about when your character is
alone, no one to talk to, on a long trek. How does one keep the 'thought'
and the 'dialogue' separate?
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mary rosenblum
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Dialogue is by definition
spoken out loud. Quotation marks tell the reader that this character is
speaking out loud.
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mary rosenblum
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A lack of quotation marks and
the clear indication that this is thought makes it thought.
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mary rosenblum
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You can either use ,he thought
or you can make it clear from the context that the character is musing to
himself.
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mary rosenblum
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If your story includes a lot
of monologue, if your character spends a lot of time by herself, you might
want to try it in first person...
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mary rosenblum
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even if you normally use
third.
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t green
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i think what i'm asking... does
it make a difference if the character is alone, whether you use dialogue or
thought. or would you balance the two?
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mary rosenblum
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Yes it makes a BIG difference,
t.
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mary rosenblum
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We DO NOT THINK IN DIALOGUE
FORM.
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mary rosenblum
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If you have your mc thinking
to herself in long, grammatically correct sentences...
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mary rosenblum
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it will either sound phony to
your reader or your reader will begin to hear it as speech.
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mary rosenblum
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Better to make it speech in
the first place...your MC just likes to talk to the trees!
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t green
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but when we're alone, we don't
really TALK in dialogue form either...
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mary rosenblum
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We do talk much more in
dialogue form than we think, t, and we'll accept a more recognizable
dialogue form in speech as readers than we will a long internal monlogue.
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mary rosenblum
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And believe me... I eavesdrop
on people talking to themselves all the time. :-) They're pretty coherent.
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mary rosenblum
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I usually know what they're
talking about. LOL
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mary rosenblum
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(Us character writers are
total Peeping Toms ...or Tomasinas)
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t green
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especially when trying to sort
out thoughts or feelings
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mary rosenblum
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Oops, didn't get the end of
your post, but even then...
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mary rosenblum
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your out loud dialogue will
seem more realistic to your reader if your character is addressing the
squirrels than if he/she is thinking it.
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me, Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer and today
we're talking about narrative distance. If you're new here, remember that
you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next
to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the ask a
question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question to reach me.
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lucky
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When should you start worrying
about these issues? I'm thinking this is mostly second or third draft stuff
after you get the bones of the story in place.
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mary rosenblum
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Oh you bet, lucky.
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mary rosenblum
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Don't mess with this kind of
editorial stuff consciously while you;'re writing the first draft.
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mary rosenblum
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Let your creative mind run and
keep the editor in its box.
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mary rosenblum
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Worry about it on draft two.
Or later.
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mary rosenblum
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Now the better you get at this
sort of thing, the more you WILL work with it in draft one, but it won't
get in the way of creating...you'll simply be aware of the craft issues.
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mary rosenblum
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But when you have to
concentrate on a craft issue...when you ahve to think about
it...DON"T...at least not in draft one.
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mary rosenblum
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All you should be thinking
about then is your story and how it is unfolding.
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mary rosenblum
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I've actually been working on
the 'revision section' of the new novel course this week...
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mary rosenblum
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and there, we've broken down
revision into three stages...
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mary rosenblum
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a 'story' revision...where you
really pay attention to your dramatic arc, characterization, and the
like...the big picture...
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mary rosenblum
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a 'craft revision', where you
look at things like this...narrative distance, POV, transitions, the
strength of scenes and chapters, etc...
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mary rosenblum
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and a 'polishing revision'
where you pick all the little nits...strong words, adjectives, adverbs, and
so forth.
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mary rosenblum
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You have plenty of time to
mess with your POV and narrative distance later...save draft one for
creativity only!
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me, Mary Rosenblum, LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer and today
we're talking about narrative distance. If you're new here, remember that
you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next
to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the ask a
question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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And there ARE reasons to vary
your narrative distance, by the way.
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mary rosenblum
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Zero is not always the best
and omniscient rarely is the best in terms of choice.
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mary rosenblum
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it really depends on your
story and what you intend it to do.
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mary rosenblum
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Nearly everybody begins
writing in omnicient POV...
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mary rosenblum
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you simply describe the action
and when readers need to know wha ta character thinks, you simply tell the
readers what that character is thinking...
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mary rosenblum
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You describe everything going
on, even things that none of the characters could possibly know about.
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mary rosenblum
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This is just the novice author
trying to squeeze everything into the story! We all start that way.
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mary rosenblum
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But the effect is to push the
audience off of the stage and out into the theater seats...and why
shouldn't that person go watch a movie or a play instead of reading this
book?
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mary rosenblum
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What separates fiction from
visual media is that at the moment, it is the only medium where the
audience gets to participate.
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mary rosenblum
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You can't get up on stage and
you can't step through the movie screen...at least not in most theaters!
:-)
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mary rosenblum
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However, at times you DO want
more narrative distance.
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mary rosenblum
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Especially in literary
fiction, you often find that the reader is held at a significant distance
from the characters...
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mary rosenblum
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and it IS more like watching a
play. It is the interaction of characters...often characters the readers
really don't entirely like...that powers the story...
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mary rosenblum
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rather than personal
identification with a main character.
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mary rosenblum
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And in a 'come uppance story'
, where the power of the story is that the unlikeable character gets
his/her 'just deserts' at the end...the readers really want that distance.
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mary rosenblum
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Oooh, yuck, I don't want to
know what's going on inside him!...
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gwanny
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hemmingway is like that, I can't
get into his characters
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mary rosenblum
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Exactly. And it is not the
personal identification with the characters that powers Hemingway's
stories.
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mary rosenblum
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Steinbeck tends to put you
into character POV more deeply, but he still backs out to give you larger
pictures when needed in his novels.
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mary rosenblum
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His narrative distance varies
quite a bit from chapter to chapter in his books.
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mary rosenblum
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And of course, you can be much
more flexible with craft issues like narrative distance in novel form...
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mary rosenblum
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because you simply have a
larger landscape to play in.
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lucky
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Gary's working on a story 12 to
15 thousand words, and one of the characters has jumped up to rival the MC
and POV in importance. Is that long enough to support two MC's? Or is it
better to stick with one? I want to add the girl, but he's being stubborn.
--Lucky
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mary rosenblum
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Depends on whether it works,
Lucky. :-) If the plot is pulling much of the 'weight' of the story, then
dual POVs can work fine...
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mary rosenblum
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As I recall Alexis Glynn
Latner, my friend and Analog writer, frequently uses more than one POV in
her novelettes...
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mary rosenblum
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but she tends to be a plot
driven writer and it works fine. Hers run about 10,000 words.
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dutchboy77
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Wouldn't using a small narrative
distance help to escalate dramatic effect...more so if we deviate slightly
for the sake of foreshadowing?
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mary rosenblum
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It does indeed, dutch...even
in the movies, the camera tends to zoom in on the MC whenever something
really dramatic is about to happen...
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mary rosenblum
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and when your reader is at
zero distance...smack inside your MC...that reader is right there in the
haunted house as the monster bursts out of the closet.
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mary rosenblum
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As to foreshadowing...speaking
as a mystery writer who has to deal with a single POV and planting clues...
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mary rosenblum
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you don't really need to back
out of a small narrative distance in order to foreshadow future events...
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mary rosenblum
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you simply have to make your
POV plausibly overlook or misinterpret them. :-) (And in mystery, hopefully
your readers, too!)
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owlybear
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It's like real life and we are
trying to copy it. If we are watching an event we are really interested in,
we try to move closer. If it's a ho hum event we,ll hang back a bit because
it doesn't matter so much.
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mary rosenblum
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Exactly, owly! Bravo! THat is
indeed the absolute bottom line: It's like real life and we are trying to
copy it.
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mary rosenblum
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Think about the times you
really were transported into another universe...
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mary rosenblum
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where you had an instant's
blink of disorientation as you returned to the real world and the sofa you
were sitting on.
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mary rosenblum
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We are a LONG way from being
able to do that in any other media, but we can do it with ink on white
paper...and THAT is why I"m a writer. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Narrative distance is also a
component of pace and tension.
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mary rosenblum
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If you think about the way you
perceive events, when you are not under stress you multitask.
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mary rosenblum
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You might stroll along a
street, think about your conversation with your mother yesterday, notice
the azaleas in bloom, and sort your grocery coupons at the same time.
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mary rosenblum
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But when you're being chased
by that big, nasty dog, all you are thinking about is...can I get over that
fence at the end of the alley? And nothing else much matters.
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mary rosenblum
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You can replicate that a bit
with narrative distance.
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mary rosenblum
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In a relaxed scene, you can
slip in a few details in third person that your MC might not reaaallly
notice and your readers will accept it.
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mary rosenblum
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That is increasing the
narrative distance a bit, but not really pushing your reader too far back
from the MC.
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mary rosenblum
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But when your character is
involved in an intense scene, you can stuff that reader firmly back into
the POV character's head...
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mary rosenblum
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and give that scene the intent
focus that it requires...just like that character fleeing the dog and aware
only of potential escape routes.
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mary rosenblum
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And by the way...
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mary rosenblum
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I KNOW I'm going to confuse
people with MC (main character) and POV (point of view character)..
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mary rosenblum
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I have been using them almost
interchangeably at times, and while they CAN and usually ARE the same
thing, they can be different characters, too.
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mary rosenblum
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MC, main character, is the
character without whom the story is not a story...
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mary rosenblum
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it is the character who has
the most at stake, the one who has the most to gain or lose.
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mary rosenblum
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POV is simply the character
through whose perceptions the story is portrayed.
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mary rosenblum
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In a novel, you can have more
than one POV and more than one MC for that matter.
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mary rosenblum
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And usually, the POV character
is the MC...
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mary rosenblum
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but occasionally they are
distinct.
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mary rosenblum
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For example, Scout in To Kill
a Mockingbird is the POV...she tells the story.
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mary rosenblum
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But she is not the main
character.
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mary rosenblum
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Just to straighten out this
pair of writing terms. :-)
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margieh
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I was just wondering about To
Kill a Mockingbird! Why was Scout a good choice for POV and how do MC and
POV and Narrative Distance work together?
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mary rosenblum
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Well, TK a M is a narrative
story...Scout tells us what goes on as the trial plays out, with Jem as the
focal point of the situation.
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mary rosenblum
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And here, the narrative
distance is pretty large in terms of the main character...
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mary rosenblum
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As to why she chose to do it
this way, I don't know. :-) But it allowed her to show the actions of the
main characters and to add that 'naivete' of Scout's commentary...
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mary rosenblum
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to make the reader look at
these events through the perceptions of a child rather than through their
own perceptions, their own preconceptions...
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mary rosenblum
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Jem would have been less naive
and Scout probably wouldn't have been able to be the central fulcrum the
way Jem was.
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mary rosenblum
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End of literary analysis 101.
:-)
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mary rosenblum
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But it's a nice illustration
of choosing your characters on purpose rather than because they occured to
you!
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mary rosenblum
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Remember the story never
controls you. YOU control the story, even if it doesn't feel like it at
first. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Well, this has been another
fun Oregon Hour...
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mary rosenblum
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Next time you write a story,
pay attention to where you have to stand in order to see the scene and that
will give you your narrative distance.
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mary rosenblum
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I'll post the transcript in
the usual place...Writing Craft: Forum Transcripts.
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mary rosenblum
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Have a good week all!
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mary rosenblum
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See you tomorrow for our
casual chat, same time, same place!
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mary rosenblum
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Have a good week, all!
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mary rosenblum
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Bye!
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