Will #2 and Will #1

Here's where the narrator's attitude toward his subject comes in. Call the narrator Will #2, who narrates the story from a distant point in time, and Will #1 who is Will at the time of the telling.

On p. 15, we have the following:

My father-in-law and one of the great living cellists is asking me to help him? Ordinary me? And I'm supposed to say no? Not a chance in hell.

Here's where Harrier's Watson differs from Holmes' Watson. Holmes' Watson never felt intimidated by Holmes. He felt curious, intrigued, perplexed, bewildered, impressed, but never intimidated.

But here's the thing. Was Will#1 really intimidated, or did he have some other motive? What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

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What Will Values, Part 4: Being Strong

On page 4, Will remembers his conversation with Henry. Henry came on very strong and Will, while trying to stand up to him, wilts under the pressure of Henry's personality. So here we have arrived at a key point: the narrator's complicity in characterization.

Will comes over as a kind of wimp. But, the narrator of the story, Will at a later point in time, has something to say about this. He doesn't want Will to look too strong because the narrator (later Will) wants to show how much he's improved since the time the story takes place. Complicated, huh.

Are you interested in all of this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of that activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman.blogspot.com and for my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Memory

This story is being told using a 1st person retrospective point of view (POV). Will is narrating his story from the vantage point of the future. That brings the intimacy of 1st person point of view with the opportunity of allowing that person to have learned things he or she didn't know at the time the action took place. It brings the reader into the story in a more intimate fashion while freeing the narrator from some of the most Draconian limitations of 1st person. It also provides for the use of dramatic irony.

My second most favorite POV is 3rd person limited. Knowledge of the world is limited to what the character has perceived or learned, but it's told from the 3rd person. This separation of the character's voice from the narrator's voice lends tension which makes the story telling much more interesting.

Anyway, Will's telling the story at a time much advanced from the time of the action. Is his memory correct? We all have memories. Yet, each time we bring up a given memory we massage it a bit, which alters it. We don't know if what we remember happened as we remember it yet we can't get outside of it to "what really happened." In the words of Joni Mitchell: "We're trapped on a carosel of time." Maybe nothing really happens, and our memories come from some other source. But if so, what would that be?

Will's vantage point differs from ours. Maybe he has access to perfect memory.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Jung, Characterization, and Story Telling

On pp. 148-9 Henry describes a Jungian dream. When I was writing this I read a lot of Jung, whose discussion of archetypes I thought had great promise for advancing my ability to tell a story by fleshing out a character more deeply. Jung shows us how seemingly banal events can give us great insight into the inner life of a character. For example, Jung tells of a client who was walking across a field and saw a red barn. Seeing that red barn unlocked for the client many memories to which the client had previously had no access. In this way, we can use cues to show readers many things about a character than tell the reader about the character.

If you're interested in this, go look at Jung's work. He broke with Freud over the interpretation of dreams. Freud thought dreams were clues to something else. Jung saw them as things important in themselves. Maybe they were both right. If you have an opinion on this, post a comment. And Christmas is coming, order a copy off this website.

Writing for me is an entrepreneurial activity. If you're interested in my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

In Scene and Story Telling

In deciding how to tell a story, the writer has to decide whether to present material "in scene" or not. In scene means that you re-enact the conflict right in front of the reader. Off-scene happens where the reader just learns about it.

Laurel Yourke defines a scene as "a visceral enactment of characters in conflict, creating movement rather than inactivity, and suggesting the illusion of a motion picture rather than a photograph or a summary." See p. 202 of Laurel's book, Take Your Characters to Dinner (Lanham, NY: University Press of America, 2000). The writer needs to have the best stuff in scene.

And Christmas is coming. For a friend or family member who is or knows a mystery or classical music lover, order a copy right from this blog. And if what I say grabs you, post a comment.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog