fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3582 ]

[ SECRET POST #3582 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3582 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries]

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[Daredevil, Wilson Fisk/Vanessa Marianna]

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[Overwatch]

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[Mob Psycho 100]

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06.

[Malcolm in the Middle]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #512.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What do I do if my story is pretty clearly from one main character's POV, but there's a scene I'd like to include where he's not around. Do I still include it-- it's two people talking about him-- or do I work around without it, or include it and try and do more of an omniscient POV overall?

Basically, MC's brother drops a hint to MC's friend that MC isn't as straight as the friend thinks, which leads to the two getting together. And while the boyfriend might eventually tell MC this, it's less interesting secondhand; because the timing/context the brother said this in is very significant. Boyfriend could not articulate all that.

Advice?

Either drop the scene or switch to omniscient third person narrative. Those are your options. How badly do you need that scene, enough to warrant rewriting your story? Authors have done that before, if the scene is critical then total rewrites of entire novels have been done. Or the scene could be garbage and filler with what little vital info is contained in it delivered in other ways. Is it something the reader needs to know or the character needs to know. With your chosen style you are pretty much limited to only having stuff the character needs to know being in it.

Don't ruin a good limited 3rd POV because of one scene you're married to - and, at that, a reveal scene better left out for the purpose of ratcheting up tension. Imagine how much more interesting it would be for the reader if you were to have the other character's behavior towards the MC suddenly change. Then it's a mystery the MC/POV character - and the reader - has to figure out.

OP

I was leaning this way, yeah. But it's also not as conventionally linear a narrative as all that. Big gaps in time between scenes. The context the brother tells the friend is extremely significant and can only be achieved without MC around. But it's the wrong voice, arrgh.

Can't you reveal how important the timing was during the inevitable big blow-up?

I'm unclear as to whether the bulk of the story is in 1st or 3rd person. If it's in 3rd, you can swap POVs for the scene easily via scene breaks. If it's in 1st, you can still swap POVs for the scene by scene breaking and giving it a title such as "Interlude," and maybe italicizing it.

This is assuming the scene is absolutely essential and not a darling you should murder. I like the solution of the person above who said "have the behavior change and the character have to figure out why."

"If it's in 1st, you can still swap POVs for the scene by scene breaking and giving it a title such as "Interlude," and maybe italicizing it."

Ehhhh. Tbh, OP's idea of "surprise, MC is gay!" twist is already a tad heavy-handed as a way to bring the MC and his friend together. Making a fuss over the scene and setting it off with italics or as an "interlude" is only going to make that more conspicuously out of place.

It's not a twist/surprise for the reader. Earlier scenes establish MC is bi, and trying to process whether Friend is into guys and if telling him will hurt their friendship and their work relationship (this part is v. important, because it's not just their interests, but their employers', and the media and the public eye is on them all the time).

A majority of the story actually even takes place after MC and this friend have broken up romantically (time skips, as I said), but they still have to work together. There's snapshots of the period they were together, but they're all in the past, sort of a "how did we get to here?" I liked my scene as an idea of one of those snapshots/vignettes, but it doesn't quite fit right.

Sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "twist". What I meant was that sometimes when plots that involve a misunderstanding/miscommunication that serves as an obstacle between two people and their romantic relationship, it's common (and a little cliché) to have this ridiculously simple missing puzzle piece that makes everything okay and knocks that obstacle down. In this situation, the puzzle piece is "MC is actually bi and friend didn't know it".

The reason why I said these devices were a little unsubtle was that unless the writing is very good, it's super obvious that this is a contrived obstacle engineered by the author, an easy obstacle that's easily overcome with just one teensy bit of information. This isn't to say it's a bad idea, just that it's probably a good idea NOT to draw any more attention to it than absolutely necessary.

Okay, that makes sense. There is more to it than that, involving the secrecy of the relationship-- I'm the same anon who was asking for some thoughts on issues involving closeted characters a few weeks ago.

Basically, in the grand scheme of the story, this is unimportant for plot reasons (as you say, getting together is not that big an obstacle), but years later the boyfriend still finds that scene significant for emotional reasons because the older brother was his mentor and it's the last thing he told him before he moved on.

So I'm torn between something that's better-structured and YES THE FEELS.

If it's in 1st, you can still swap POVs for the scene by scene breaking and giving it a title such as "Interlude,

This^.

I mean, yes, doing something like this probably does bring down the quality of the writing a little bit. But unless you've arbitrarily decided to hold yourself to a particularly high writing standard, then I say go for it.

In my opinion, this is one of those instances where fanfic calls for something different than original published fiction would. If you were writing original published fiction, I suspect your editor would say to make the scene fit smoothly and cohesively into the narrative or else drop it. Because that's the kind of rule professional writing tends to hold itself to quite strictly.

But what makes fanfic enjoyable for the majority of readers is typically more about giving the reader the emotional payoff they want. And it sounds like the scene you're grappling with will strongly contribute to doing that for the reader. To axe it for the sake of "better writing" would be to put the principles of original, professional-caliber writing ahead of the principles of fanfic writing.

True, fanfic readers don't want good writing as much as feels.

And that's ok.

It won't destroy the story to switch POVs. Example: the Harry Potter books are written mostly from Harry's perspective but still include scenes that Harry is not physically present to witness.

I don't remember there being many scenes that Harry isn't present for. But I'm not sure if I'm forgetting something.

There are plenty of times where another character is narrating something Harry wasn't present for, or some other flashback device (the Pensieve, Riddle's Diary, etc) allows Harry to see things he wasn't physically present for. And there are the opening chapters to a couple of the books where he's not there, obviously. But the narration & flashback stuff that I can recall is still always from Harry's POV - it's being told to him, so it's nested. And the opening chapter stuff seems more like scene-setting than like an interruption in the narrative.

Is there something that's more of a break in POV that I'm forgetting here?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3582 ]

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