{"id":30339,"date":"2015-10-23T06:30:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T17:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=30339"},"modified":"2015-10-22T22:34:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T09:34:46","slug":"writing-the-ever-changing-rules-of-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/10\/23\/writing-the-ever-changing-rules-of-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing & The Ever-Changing “Rules Of Engagement”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading a range of novels recently, some contemporary, some from previous eras—as long ago as the 1970s and 1980s: oh, my! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\"Steering<\/a>One of the changes in the writing “rules of engagement” that has particularly struck me relates to point of view. It’s not just that a novel can be written in First Person or Third, or even “Closed” Third Person (that is, only one Point of View character, so as readers we only know what that character either knows or will admit to)—or even Second Person, or Third Person Plural. (I have seen both used, but only rarely, for which I believe there may be “reasonz.” )<\/p>\n

The biggest change is the move away from shifting points of view. So when reading novels from the ’70s and ’80s, the point of view frequently shifts from one character to the next without either a between- or within chapter break. In fact, thinking about it, this used to be the writing norm—and I’ve never had any difficulty following the shift or the thread of this mode of storytelling.<\/p>\n

Yet nowadays the clear preference is for point of view only to shift when there is a clear chapter break, or failing that a marked break within the chapter, to delineate the change in character voice and perspective. In many ways, this trend reminds me of the shift from the omniscient narrator of the 19th and through to mid-20th century writing, to the First- and Closed Third Person models we now prefer.<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/a>Yet many of the great classics, such as the works of Dickens and Tolstoy, employ the Omniscient Narrator mode. So were these writers outright wrong, or\u00a0 their works of lesser merit because of this approach?<\/p>\n

Personally, I am inclined to think the preference for Closed Third Person\u00a0 may be more the shadow of fashion rather than a matter of writing substance. The important thing, as Ursula Le Guin notes in Steering the Craft,<\/em> is for an author to employ the method knowingly as to “how” and “why”, so the shift in point of view is seamless and\u00a0 the writing carries the reader with the change.<\/p>\n

\"To<\/a>The example Le Guin uses of writing comprising just such “effortless but perfectly clear”<\/em>\u00a0 point-of-view shifts is Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse<\/em>. And if it’s good enough for Virgina Woolf…<\/p>\n

What about you, dear readers, do you have a point of view (he-he) on this matter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading a range of novels recently, some contemporary, some from previous eras—as long ago as the 1970s and 1980s: oh, my! \ud83d\ude09 One of the changes in the writing “rules of engagement” that has particularly struck me relates to point of view. It’s not just that a novel can be written in First […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30339"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30349,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions\/30349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}