Patricia Abbott (pattinase): A Quickie

Monday, April 06, 2009

A Quickie

Prisoner reading.

Does it bother you when a first person POV story ends with that first person dying?

38 comments:

mybillcrider said...: I know people who are bothered by this, but it's never bothered me in the least.; 12:12 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Sometimes it's just the best ending and also the best way to tell the story.; 12:36 PM
J. Kingston Pierce said...: Short answer: No. It doesn't bother me one iota.

Cheers,
Jeff; 12:42 PM
Frank Loose said...: No, that doesn't bother me; there are ways to make it work without seeming hokey. What i do not like, and will not read, is a book written with shifting POV between characters in third person and one in first. The change is too abrupt, i become "aware of the writing," and lose my willing suspension of disbelief.; 1:06 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: I have trouble with multiple POVs in general. Especially if it's a guessing game on who it is. Maybe there should be a heading saying, Frank or Jeff or Bill at the top of the chapter or section if it's going to change. Or maybe I am a lazy reader?; 1:12 PM
Frank Loose said...: A lot of books are written in alternating third. Most writers make the shift on chapter breaks, and if skilled, the "voice" will make it apparent or a tag will. And Patti, i would never label you a lazy reader!; 1:20 PM
Chris said...: I confess, it isn't a deal-breaker for me, but if the character is narrating in the past-tense, it is a little jarring to have them die(unless the author addresses the fact that the character is essentially narrating from beyond the veil, in which case, I'm fine with it).

Not to start another POV debate, but if you were to use first-person present-tense instead of past, that problem disappears.; 1:25 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: The problem is that some of the story is set in the past and some in the present.; 1:28 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Shifting third between two POVs is fine. But lately I've seen shifting first and thirds between up to five or six people. Tough.; 1:38 PM
Frank Loose said...: I'm with you, Patti! I only want to keep up with a couple characters.; 1:46 PM
Dana King said...: It wouldn't bother me if it was done well. of course that could be said about almost anything. (...if it was done well.)

I like alternating third-person POV and have started using it myself. I don't even mind occasional shifts from first to third person, to show the reader things the first person narrator can't know. Constant shifting between third person and multiple first person narrators drives me up the wall. (I left out "if it is done well" because I've never seen t done well. It always takes me out of the story.); 1:49 PM
Lisa said...: I haven't seen it done much, but in the cases where I can think of where it has been done, I don't think I had a problem with it. The only thing that immediately springs to mind when I think of a 1st person story where the MC ends up dead is a movie (American Beauty), and he tells us from the beginning that he's going to end up dead. I'm sure I've read books where this was done, but I now it bugs me that I can't think of any.; 1:57 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: I can pull back from it, I think.

He put the rifle in his mouth, regretting only the expensive dental work recently completed. (HA!)

--or something along those lines. Then it's indefinite.; 2:07 PM
Chris said...: I like that solution, Patti -- and I also love the line.

And it occurs to me that one of mine ("Seven Days of Rain") ends in much the same way. it's first-person past, with a present-tense frame, and although it's technically an indefinite ending, it's pretty clear my protag didn't make out so well.; 2:15 PM
sandra seamans said...: I don't mind if there's a little foreshadowing. But something that alway stuck with me on this topic came from the author of a writing article I read on the Alien Skin site. He asked, how can a dead man tell a story?; 2:26 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Yes, that's the problem. So I will make it indefinite. Too bad I sent it out like that, a problem I will consider tomorrow. Why am I so eager to hit that send button?; 2:42 PM
Dave Zeltserman said...: nope, not at all.; 2:47 PM
Dave Zeltserman said...: about Sandra's question about how a dead man can tell a story, it all comes down to how absorbing the story is so that the the reader isn't bothered by such literal rigidness.; 2:48 PM
Travis Erwin said...: Yes, unless there is some kind of foreshadowing that the narrator is no longer of this world.

Otherwise it feels like I have been bamboozled and i don't like to be bamboozled.; 2:56 PM
Travis Erwin said...: Though I have an idea for a novel that requires that very thing. i haven't written it because I haven't figured out exactly how to handle the situation.; 2:58 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Dave-if only an writer could judge that accurately.
Travis-it might actually be easier in a novel where the ending doesn't arrive so quickly.; 3:09 PM
Dave Zeltserman said...: Patti, it's no different than anything else. It's all part of creating that fictional dream that's so absorbing to the reader that they get lost within.; 3:21 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: What might absorb me might not absorb you. I can read about the prosaic details of a life for pages. Action to me, might be contemplating a navel to you. I'm more interested in the criminal than the crime I think. And not strictly character development even-how does this person cobble a life for himself?
So I don't trust my judgment on this.; 3:36 PM
Corey Wilde said...: Nope. Done right, it works a treat.; 3:40 PM
Charles Gramlich said...: Nope. I don't see it as a problem; 3:53 PM
David Cranmer said...: I have no problem with it and Sunset Blvd. is one of the great examples of doing it right.; 4:30 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Okay. Maybe I don't need to be indefinite. Maybe that's annoys too.; 4:36 PM
Barrie said...: In a word, yes. But if it's explained well, I'm fine with it.; 5:49 PM
Joe Barone said...: A lot of us might have the same book in mind. What do you do if you've written a popular first person series and you are tired of it? Especially if the hero is not someone who would or could retire? I don't suppose an author has a choice but to kill the person off. With the book I have in mind, it sure surprised me.; 7:44 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: It must be more difficult to kill a series when it's written in the first person. A sort of suicide almost.; 8:04 PM
Todd Mason said...: It would bother me more if a story persuasively told in the second person demanded death at the end. Simply rude.

Yeah, if your narrating protag is a suicide, said protag can also be a failed suicide...or telling you in the past just up to the last act...or, indeed, a ghostie.

For shifting point of view...well, sometimes I think that might be the greatest weakness in some of Kate Wilhelm's stories. Insufficient transition, or unnecessary POV change.; 8:15 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: I can see the desire to tell a story from multiple POVs but sometimes it seems like filler to me. Do we really need to know the POV of every major player to understand an outcome? We may tell ourselves that we are looking at it more complexly but sometimes actually a dilution takes place IMHO.; 8:34 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: HA, Todd. I just got it. Ever slow but ever here.; 8:35 PM
the walking man said...: *shrug* It doesn't bother me if it compliments everything that came before.; 4:28 AM
Joe Barone said...: Multiple points of view always seemed to me to be a little like playing tennis without a net. I read those books, and some of them are OK, but I prefer one point of view.; 6:35 AM
Anders E said...: In short: nope.

Way back in the summer of 1975 - when I was eleven and a half - I borrowed from my local library this Swedish horror anthology that contained, amongst other stories, "Christ in Concrete" by Pietro di Donati, "The Graveyard Rats" by Henry Kuttner, and (above all) "The Loved Dead" by C.M. Eddy, Jr. All of it great stuff, and I have since acquired a private copy, not to be traded under any circumstances whatsoever.

The effect of reading this kind of material at such a tender age - well, that's another story altogether.; 5:25 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Sounds like a wonderful anthology. Thank God for anthologies. They let us sample and search for more work from writers unknown until then.; 5:59 PM
Cormac Brown said...: I prefer it, some characters I never want to write about again and I'm sure some authors feel the same way.; 1:11 PM