{"id":627,"date":"2015-06-24T07:56:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T11:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=627"},"modified":"2015-06-24T07:56:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T11:56:28","slug":"p-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/24\/p-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"P. U. S."},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 15, 2015, Melissa Mead (formerly carpelibris on the old blog) wrote, I’m having trouble figuring out who the story I’m telling is really about. (Gail, it’s the version of \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d that I told you about at the book festival.) It’s not the title character. I thought it was the Eldest Fairy’s story, but then the Youngest Fairy started to come to the forefront.\u00a0The usual “Who has the most to lose?” trick isn’t working, because there are different ways to “lose.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Any suggestions for figuring out whose story this is?<\/em><\/p>\n

Michelle Dyck responded with this: Whose story is the most interesting\/exciting? (I guess that’s pretty similar to the “Who has the most to lose?” question.) Whose personality or voice grabs you the most?<\/em><\/p>\n

Just a random thought: could you compromise and pick a few POV characters? Or do something like the movie HOODWINKED, in which the same story was told multiple times from multiple points of view, and each one fleshed out the tale a little more. That might be cumbersome in book form (or might be better suited to a series rather than a single book). But maybe that idea could be modified.<\/em><\/p>\n

Melissa came back with: That’s the problem. It’s a tie!<\/em><\/p>\n

This is just a short story, so I don’t think there’s room for the Hoodwinked treatment. (I did have fun trying to pick that movie apart, though!)<\/em><\/p>\n

I had trouble choosing the POV in Fairest<\/em>, and I tried out three\u2013zhamM, Ijori, and an omniscient narrator\u2013and wrote hundreds of pages I couldn\u2019t use. Finally I figured out how I could write from the first-person POV of Aza, my Snow White character, even while she\u00a0was out cold from the poisoned apple. The problem with zhamM and Ijori as narrators was that they\u00a0weren’t present for a lot the story. The trouble I had with the omniscient voice was that I couldn\u2019t resist dipping into the minds and hearts of everybody, and the story slowed to a slug\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n

But for those of us suffering from\u00a0POV Uncertainty Syndrome (PUS!), an omniscient narrator may be the way to go. If we do, we can delve into the thoughts and feelings of those characters who particularly fascinate us, in Melissa\u2019s case, the youngest and oldest fairies. Of course, we have to avoid my failing of getting too interested in everybody and losing control of our story.<\/p>\n

Another advantage of trying an omniscient narrator is that it can be diagnostic; we may naturally find ourselves dwelling more on one character than the others, and, voila!, without tearing out a single strand of hair, we\u2019ve discovered our POV character. We can switch then and there to that POV and clean up the omniscient voice when we revise. In Fairest<\/em>, the omniscient narrator came right before I figured out that Aza should be my POV character, so it worked for me.<\/p>\n

Similar to an omniscient POV is the POV of a character who is not our MC. We could choose the median fairy, for example, the one halfway between youngest and oldest, to tell the story. She wouldn\u2019t be as impartial as an out-of-the-tale narrator or as partial as the oldest or youngest, because she\u2019d be on the periphery of the action. A magnificent example of this kind of narrator is Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby<\/em> (high school and up). And if you want to read prose that\u2019s marvelous enough to cause heart palpitations, this is the book for you.<\/p>\n

My idea with zhamM as narrator was to have him be in love with Aza and have it be a doomed love, because he\u2019s a gnome and she\u2019s human. But I didn\u2019t know how to work him into all the scenes I needed. If I had decided to keep him as my POV character, I would have had to make the story belong to him, with many of the \u201cSnow White\u201d events happening in the background.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I\u2019ve gone with the obvious choice of MC: Cinderella; Snow White; in my Princess Tales with Sleeping Beauty, the \u201cPrincess on the Pea\u201d princess, the \u201cGolden Goose\u201d lad, and so on. But I didn\u2019t in A Tale of Two Castles<\/em>, which is sort of a retelling of \u201cPuss In Boots.\u201d The miller\u2019s son is a character, and there are many cats, but Elodie, my MC, and the dragon detective Meenore don\u2019t exist in the original fairy tale. Since Aza, Meenore, and the ogre are at the center of my plot, I had to invent a new story arc and many scenes.<\/p>\n

As I think about \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d I notice how full of feeling the story is. Sleeping Beauty is an infant, but her parents experience horror when they first hear she\u2019s going to die young. After the terrible gift is ameliorated, they still have to wrap their minds around the hundred-year sleep.<\/p>\n

The oldest fairy is mired in rage. She may have other emotions as well, like loneliness, jealousy, and hurt for being left out. The youngest fairy may be frightened, because she\u2019s going against an elder. She may be worried, too, that she\u2019s going to mess up the spell. She could be ambitious, a meddler, a very kind soul.<\/p>\n

When we choose our POV character, we can decide which feelings we want to explore from the inside out. This is like Michelle Dyck\u2019s wondering about which character is the most interesting, in this case most interesting from an emotional standpoint.<\/p>\n

We can ask which character is most like us and which is most different. Then we can decide if we want the security of the familiar or the risk of the unknown. (Both choices are fine.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another metric we can use: Which character is most likely to be talky inside her head? A character who isn\u2019t introspective may be more challenging than one who is. Do we want that challenge?<\/p>\n

Also, one of them, may lie to herself about herself. If we\u2019re in her mind, we have to see past her self-deception. Do we want to always be on our guard?<\/p>\n

We can try one way and then another. As I\u2019ve said many times, writing isn\u2019t efficient. Wasted pages are a small price to pay for the right POV.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never written from the POV of a non-human. Regardless of which POV is chosen, it\u2019s fun to consider how a fairy might think. She has to think in words or we can\u2019t write her, but can we introduce an element or two into her thought process that will reflect her alien-ness?<\/p>\n

When Melissa Mead first posted her question, I wrote a note to myself that I still think is worth thinking about, and it was that maybe this should be a novel as Michelle Dyck suggested and not a short story. It\u2019s possible that the idea is too complex for short story treatment. Or not.<\/p>\n

Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write a scene from \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d in the voice of an omniscient narrator. Delve into the thoughts and feelings of everybody, even the baby.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the story of \u201cAladdin\u201d from the POV of the genie of the lamp.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Using \u201cAladdin\u201d as backdrop, tell the story of the genie and his imprisonment in the lamp. This means moving away from the original fairy tale and creating something new.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the thoughts of any one of the \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d fairies when she first sees the baby princess. Give the thoughts an inhuman quality. Do this one way, then another, and another.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Try \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d from the POV of a minor fairy, who has opinions but is more observer than actor in the story. You can make her a busybody, so she insinuates herself into all the major moments.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 15, 2015, Melissa Mead (formerly carpelibris on the old blog) wrote, I’m having trouble figuring out who the story I’m telling is really about. (Gail, it’s the version of \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d that I told you about at the book festival.) It’s not the title character. I thought it was the Eldest Fairy’s story, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}