Continuity in Narrative
I've been thinking lately about continuity in narrative, "continuity" rather in the sense it is used in film: what the author narrates to the reader in getting a character from one point in the plot to the next point. I imagine it's been on my mind since I recently finished a novel by an author who had ideas that diverged from my expectations about what was necessary to narrate, resulting in something akin to a badly edited film.
When I'm writing fiction I sometimes think explicitly about continuity, but more often my characters move around and the plot unfolds according to my intuition–until one of my initial readers points to a problem where his expectations differed from my intuition. It's also under the heading of "continuity" where I file most of my thoughts about what makes one writer different from another. At the most abstract (and silliest, tautological) level, different authors choose to put different words after each other from the gazillion of available choices.
Still rather on the obvious side: different authors choose to show us different things to tell their story. Some authors show and describe in lots of detail; others go for a less opulent approach. I tend towards the latter, partly because I don't tend towards flowery, over-abundant prose* I also prefer psychological characterization to physical characterization, particularly when I want the reader to fill in many of the details to suit his own taste, for example. I also have a taste for ambiguity.
But still, all of us writing fiction have to get characters from here to there, whether in physical reality or in psychological unreality (with the exception, I suppose, of some experimental writing). There clearly is a great deal of latitude in what an individual author can choose to show, but just as clearly there are boundaries not to cross. Where are the boundaries? Are the boundaries the same for different readers?
For instance, this passage cuts way to quickly for me not to be jarred by reading it.
Mona looked quickly around the hotel lobby. Near the stairs she saw a glint off gun metal. She had to get out of there!
She floored the accelerator in her Porsche, squealing tires as she backed out of her space and sped out of the parking lot.
On the other hand, this level of detail is hardly necessary, until the author feels it is revealing something about the character.
Mona looked quickly around the hotel lobby. Near the stairs she saw a glint off gun metal. She had to get out of there!
Mona rotated forty degrees to her left and began striding quickly towards the revolving door ahead of her, starting with her right foot. After forty-two paces she reached the revolving door, which she pushed heavily to get it moving. The rubber flashing on the door flapped twice as ….
Sorry, but that was just getting tiresome and I didn't really care to figure out just how many steps in her red high-heels (2.5" heels) it would take to get to her car.
Some of the continuity choices affect the pace at which the action seems to move. Quick cuts and fast action go with a sort of blur of background detail as it rushes past. Slower action and more detail might accompany a more reflective mood on the part of the character in the middle of the action.
I hate for this to be like the joke where I say "have you heard the one about…" and then realize half-way through that I've forgotten the punchline, but I don't think I have many good answers–I'm not even quite sure what the question is yet.
I'll get back to you on that.
__________
* This is not to say, however, that I don't tend towards writing excessively baroque sentences. In my first drafts I can easily have subordinate clause pile-ups that endanger writers in neighboring states, but at least that gives me something useful to do to get into editing a story.
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on Friday, 27 June 2008 at 22.51
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Mona looked quickly around the hotel lobby. Near the stairs she saw a glint off gun metal. She had to get out of there!
She floored the accelerator in her Porsche, squealing tires as she backed out of her space and sped out of the parking lot.
this one really only works if Mona, for some reason, is driving her Porsche through (or parking it in) the hotel lobby.
my default (ie not thinking closely about it) mode of writing also tends to be infested with subordinate clauses. when I'm editing my own text, the most common mental mutter as I wield the blue pencil is "break into two (or more) sentences". And I tend to over-use "this" and "that" instead of using the antecedent nouns.
maybe I'm more aware of this having just put a newsletter to bed this morning, wielding my blue-pencil the while.
on Sunday, 29 June 2008 at 02.20
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Tip: it should be toward, not towards.
on Sunday, 29 June 2008 at 12.34
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I've known a number of people, myself included, who have tried to distinguish between "toward" and "towards", to no avail. Others say that it's merely a difference between predominant usage in American vs. British English, but I haven't even noticed that. (There are others of that class that are easily spotted, the "that/which" pair being the most troublesome to me.) The best summary I've found of the futility is from–my favorite!–the American Heritage Book of English Usage:
My ear claims a preference, most times, for including the 's', so I do. Besides, it gives all of my copy editors something to do when their house style insists that it be "toward". I don't really mind, either.