Character perspectives and narrator styles

[Claire]

Unless I want to specifically be in the character's mind, I'd rather show what they're thinking by their actions and body language.

That I find interesting. It's actually the opposite for me. The possibility to dive into a character's thoughts and feelings and how they perceive and categorize the world is what appeals to me the most about written stories. Film or TV simply can't deliver that in the same way that a well written inner monologue can in a book. But with your background in writing screenplays, I'd be curious to read one of your stories here and focus particularly on the dialogue.

That would be a challenge, but wouldn't that also be too complicated to read? For one of my next stories, I'm thinking about using multiple perspectives and an omniscient narrator. And even then, I'm already considering how best to implement that so that it's still understandable.

I think the challenge would be to make the confusion of whose perspective you are following entertaining. But if you could deliver a powerful moment where at some point the reader has a revelation thinking "Wait? I was following THAT character?!" it could be great. For example, I'm not much of a fan of the trope of a victim that ends up liking their rape. But if I had to tell a story like this, doing that in a way where you could at some point no longer distinguish the rapist's and the victim's perspective could be a fun way to play with that trope and make it interesting.

[Vela Nanashi]

The recent idea I had with allowing first and second perspective in a clear way was to prefix the paragraph's or sections of the story with the character's name, I mostly do sections when I swap perspective but I could see it working on paragraphs too.

Then I had that other story where I wrote the perspectives side by side but that requires special bbcodes to be written, I may be playing with that today actually just to enable me to put one of my already written stories with that over on this forum right now it is in a html file, since it needs special tags. Yeah gonna look at that right now

Testing columns:

Cara:

as the sun sets I strip naked, I apply moon oil all over my body and hair and bring out my two swords and start my evening sword dance, the last rays of the sun caress me with their warmth as I make my blades heavier to really strain my muscles, as the sun sets I feel the star and moon light caress me and the cool evening winds caress my sweat glazed skin making me get goose bumps.

John:

I hear a woman straining and get curious and follow the sounds curiously, and peek from around a tree, I see a gorgeous naked oiled and glazed with sweat blonde elven woman with two elven long swords that she is dancing with, her scent is alluring, making my whole soul and body erupt with lust and hunger for her.

Tara:

You are sitting up in your hunting hide in the old oak tree and see a man watching Cara's usual sword dance, you can see him trembling and his huge erection is straining against his brown well worn leather pants, you have almost without thinking finished fletching your last arrow that you were making for the hunt you and Cara are going to go on tomorrow.

Mike:

lYou wonder where John went, he said he was just gonna take a leak, but he has been gone a long time for that, and the stew is almost ready to eat, it smells delicious.

[Vela Nanashi]

Ok that works as I desire it to for my story and should let you make it work for your own things too, I may add something to allow adding padding/margins to something too but that would be a separate bbcode/tag

[Lucius]

When I choose first-person, it feels like I'm committing to a point of view. That is of course objectively not true. I could tell a story with multiple first person narrators. But point of view shifts in that narrator style feel more unnatural to me than for third person narrators. Is that the same for you?

Not necessarily, but one shouldn't choose multiple first-person narration just because one can, I think. There ought to be a certain reason why it's not multiple third-person. For example, multiple first person narrators are a very good fit when one wants to make all of them unreliable. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears is a fine example.

Do you just default to third person limited or do you weigh your options consciously for each story you write?

It's between third omniscient and third limited for me. I used to default to third omniscient -- I guess I like the idea of a divinity perving on various sex acts. But lately third limited tickles my fancy most.

I've never tried second person and never will.

I've never been satisfied with my attempts at first-person narration. Writing from the rapist POV doesn't really excite me, and I don't think I'm that good of a (male) writer to do a convincing female victim.

[Claire]

I've never been satisfied with my attempts at first-person narration. Writing from the rapist POV doesn't really excite me, and I don't think I'm that good of a (male) writer to do a convincing female victim.

What do you imagine to be difficult about that? I simply don't view men as being harder to understand than women so the gender of the character I write about usually is not particularly interesting for me. I bet if you were to write a story from a female point of view and published that under a female alias nobody would be able to tell.

[Vela Nanashi]

Also I think you can write from different genders point of view if you have read stories written from that point of view

I mean I write from creatures that don't exist in our reality's point of view too, am I one of them, no, but I still feel like I can express things

I am perhaps not sure if I write men or women correctly myself, you men and women who read my stories maybe will have to tell me that sometime

Edit:

So try it out, and I will happily read it and will if you ask at top of story try to tell you if it seems good to me

Besides even if you write a woman or man 'wrong' it is a fantasy story not real, even if you set it in the boring real world

[Lucius]

What do you imagine to be difficult about that? I simply don't view men as being harder to understand than women so the gender of the character I write about usually is not particularly interesting for me. I bet if you were to write a story from a female point of view and published that under a female alias nobody would be able to tell.

I've tried, and the inner monologue seemed a bit off to me. My female characters seem to work better in 3L when the narrative distance is greater. Oh yeah, 'my cunt' etc. might have weirded me out a little.

I might give it another go, let's see what comes out.

[Lucius]

... So try it out, and I will happily read it and will if you ask at top of story try to tell you if it seems good to me

Besides even if you write a woman or man 'wrong' it is a fantasy story not real, even if you set it in the boring real world

Be careful what you wish for, I might write a blonde Swedish model screaming 'Knulla mig!' for the better part of the story.

[Vela Nanashi]

Yeah that can be hot so go for it

[KittyUmbrass]

Hey, I'm autistic. Writing any gender "correctly" is a challenge for me! But I don't let that stop me doing 1st person perspective. I think it does just come down to reading a lot of stuff by other writers and using that as signposts.

FWIW in 1st person, I tend not to do inner monologue, instead give the character a voice the same as for any person-perspective, and just write the whole thing in that voice unless quoting another character. Like, the protagonist is telling the story.

Also - practice helps. The more tools you have available, the better your writing overall will be.