Writing lessons on BART

What I thought about today, reading The English Patient

Narrative: There are limitations to the first person narrative that I am using. It is exceptionally hard to show the character from a different angle. Say from another character's eyes. It is like switching the camera. The effect is quite wonderful, but it takes more delving into the other characters. It is amazing how well Ondaatje knows everyone of his characters. So it is a payoff. The first person narrative, what it allows though is commentary. What seems really cheesy in third person narrative and would read like rhetoric is acceptable in the first person narrative. I guess what I mean to say is that the first person is allowed to make judgments and commentaries about his world view. This becomes very strange in a thrid person narrative. Even the best writers, have trouble I believe stating a character's worldview in third person, because it is at these moments, that the reader is so aware of being spoken to by a writer. Those valuable thoughts, perceptions,and observations about the world clearly come from the writer, and for a moment, the reader feels that he is being talked to. Or worse, talked down to.

Technique: Technically, I also notice the pause. There is also a pause at the end of a section, that feels close to how one would feel at the end of an excellent short story. A sense of completion, a coming to an end of sorts. But in a novel, every section gives this kind of a punctuation. Not logically but emotionally. The event occuring may be broken into two sections and is logically the same section, but emotionally, the breaking off into a new section is like a kind of emotional turn.
It is this kind of turning that is sustained and threaded throughout a good novel.
The art then, is not just learning how to tell a good story, but also learning how and when to pause.

Labels: Writing Lessons on BART